Outstanding Teacher Award

Many thanks to Crossett Brook Principal Tom Drake for nominating me for the University of Vermont 2014 Outstanding Teacher Award.

From left: Fayneese Miller, Dean, College of Education & Social Services, Nan Hathaway,
Martha Allen, President, Vermont National Education Association, Luke Foley, 2014 Vermont Teacher of the Year 

 I am thrilled and humbled to receive this honor, and my mother, a retired art teacher is over the moon. For an Art teacher to receive this recognition, she notes, is worth an extra measure of celebration. Nationally and historically, Art often receives short shrift (one of Mom's favorite expressions); in budgets, in scheduling, and in recognition. Not so at Crossett Brook Middle School. Thank you to the Washington West Supervisory Union community: administration, fellow teachers, parents, community members, and students, for the strong and on-going support. 

TAB 2.0 Winter Gathering

It was cold, it was windy, it was Saturday...morning, and yet ten art teachers from as far away as Orleans county gathered in the CBMS art studio to talk TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behavior.) By meeting to share ideas, innovations, struggles, successes, and questions, these art teachers engage in creating their own professional development, targeted to their own needs. 

Although we met for 2 ½ hours, it was not enough time to cover all the topics raised. Follow-up happens after; in emails, through online posts to the  TAB Yahoo Group, on  TAB Facebook and among peers back at our own schools. Here is the list of topics that were raised:

• Teach Concept or Content? What % of each?
• Do you have to be an artist to be an art teacher?
• Fostering imagination through play - what do you think?
• Talk/Show and tell - Career Screen! Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)
• Managing getting work up on display regularly
• Quantity over Quality
• Challenging Self
• Overcoming Teacher Aesthetic Elitism 
• Persistance (or lack of) - How to influence students who give up too easily
• Stuck Students - only do one thing over and over 

We called this meeting TAB 2.0 because this time, we focused on issues of teachers who already have a measure of experience teaching in a Choice-Based setting. Next time, we will again open the gathering to all who are interested in learning and sharing about TAB at all levels.