The graphic designer, Milton Glaser, once said, “You teach what you are, not what you say.” ​

“You teach what you are, not what you say.”

This is why I take summers off to make art and why I make art during the school year. Art first. Teaching is something that happens because of it.

If I have to have a job that isn’t making art, in order to survive (and I do), I’m thankful that my job is something sourced from my life’s work. I mine from my own research and processes and work with as much empathy as I can muster up, in order to share- not what is “correct,” but something elusive that I believe we all can reach, as magnificently unique individuals influenced and affected by our world, our instincts (and who knows what else). Whether creativity is something my student approaches in their life to create a painting or catch fish or work in finance or write code or novels or direct movies… whatever it is- there is a confidence to be brought out during the act of creating and failing and reworking and sharing and creating again. I like to work on that with people.

This is why I hate the emphasis placed on grades. Terrible things, grades. Oh, I hate them. But of course, I participate. I must fill out the required rubrics and templates and allow the great machine to calculate these percentages that will spew forth, now online, for an email to be sent to parents which will describe the day-to-day progress of their children through the demon sent from hell that I know as, grades.

With art, a grade can do so much harm to a child’s sense of confidence in something so universally useful- creativity.

I have seen it! Every semester I have students who are terrified to even put a pencil on paper because they once tried their hardest and received a grade less than an “A,” simply because the teacher graded the work around some kind of parameters that didn’t take into consideration the kind of elusive and very unique energy each of us must activate and express in order to make something that is a visual representation of themselves at that moment in time. Not that the teacher necessarily had ill intentions. We're just very busy and are a part of a structured system.

It's one thing for a student in college to be critiqued, but it's entirely something else for someone who is just starting to find out who they are, in so many ways, to be rated for their creative expression, which, in its most genuine form, is by nature linked to such vulnerability. We're talking about a very raw nerve that deserves some time to form without jabbing into it while at a pubescent stage.

That being said, even in my hatred of grades and my belief in those last two paragraphs, I know that in some ways I’ve been a disheartening force to some of my students over the years through grades given and things I've said. I must have been. I hate that.

The creative process is one that takes mood into consideration. How productive one can be depends on energy levels. What is produced can depend on so many things, and sometimes, the best art can be something that we throw away because it doesn’t hit the mark, but it is what is needed in order for the next, “better” thing to come through. The less-than-polished work done during a class semester might be what leads to something fantastic outside of that time period. Grading systems have a hard time accounting for that.

I realize my perspective may not be the case for other art teachers and teachers that focus on other areas of learning, but it’s certainly how I feel about the subject. 

So, I tell each of my students at the beginning of the semester to not look toward that art grade. Listen to what I say about your progress and your work. Ask questions about your work and then listen when I answer in a strange way to your question of whether or not I think it’s “good.” Engage in meandering conversations with me about what you see in your work or in the work of other artists or things in nature or whatever it is- 

I promise that I care deeply, even if it isn’t the kind of care you expect. I promise that I will be present with you and bend toward the ways you wish to learn, if I am able to.

Here’s to another year.
​

During the school year I am often asked to make giant birthday cards for the teachers and administrators who are my colleagues, for the purpose of having the students and staff sign them. It's a nice "officey" thing to do, you know, we sing and have cake at lunchtime... it's a task I take care of when I have a minute between classes and the Sisyphean daily charting that our school requires teachers to complete. While I appreciate the idea of the cards, it makes my already busy day extra busy.

This summer, we were asked to think of things we might do and be paid for, since we are a year-round school, but the summers are obviously very slow. Kids are mostly on vacation.

I asked if I could make the giant birthday cards during these slow months, that way I could be compensated for the task and life would be a little bit easier during the school year. The administrators thought it was a great idea.

Turns out, I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm still teaching (as I mentioned in earlier posts, we teach students on a one-to-one basis), but I now have hours designated for me to be paid specifically for this creative work; something that we all assumed I, or the other art teacher, would do for free.

My reaction to this task led me to think about an animated lecture called, Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, that I sometimes play for my students when I teach a class called, Life Skills.

It's about motivation and I discovered it before I became a full-time teacher. It's about our human sense of purpose, value, and desire to contribute. I think my birthday-card-making task this summer is causing me to feel a teensy-tiny bit like I'm receiving or living inside of this sort of motivation, and it's not just because I'm being paid for a task that I enjoy...

Last night I finished reading Illeana Douglas' memoir called, I Blame Dennis Hopper and boy, did I enjoy it! I'm a sucker for Hollywood stories, but I am especially interested in the stories told by people like Illeana Douglas. People who are funny, hard working, and reveal an authentic love for the craft, the roots and the history of whatever it is they do.

During our lunch break at school yesterday, I was listening to my fellow teacher, Niki, talk about her friend's daughter who had an unexpected experience lead to a sweet costuming job in Hollywood, and I had read a section in the memoir that related to Niki's friend's daughter's experience, so I shared what I had read as a way to express, "sometimes that's just the way it happens!" Another teacher, Armando, who teaches math and loves movies (especially low-budget horror films) overheard our conversation and recognized the name, Illeana Douglas, and asked me why I mentioned her. I told him that I was reading her memoir while commuting to and from work on the bus and train, and that I was really enjoying it.

He was curious to know what led me to reading about her and asked me what it was that drew me to her, initially. He wanted to know about the first time I took notice of her in films. It's fun talking to Armando about movies, music and pop culture, because we have a similar sensibility, and it's nice to talk to a teacher about something other than kids or teaching. Also, I appreciated his question, because I didn't know how to answer it. I couldn't remember the first time I took note of her, but I know that I saw and liked the 1991 version of Cape Fear and I liked her in To Die For as well as Allison Anders' Grace of My Heart... It would be many years later that I found her web series, Easy To Assemble, which is hands-down one of my all-time favorite creative projects in existence. (It's so smart, warm, meta, and funny!)

Then I remembered Ghost World. "Ghost World!" I exclaimed. I asked Armando if he saw the film, and he had. He read the graphic novel before watching the film, and is a fan of Daniel Clowes' work. After he told me a bit about the author, we got back to the movie, when he remembered that Illeana Douglas played the part of the art teacher. I said, "When I first saw this character I could not believe how correctly she depicted a high school art teacher, and I vowed to never, ever, become a high school art teacher, and now of course, I am one. So yeah, I think about that character a lot but it isn't the first time I paid attention to her." 

Not only am I a high school art teacher, but in college I studied performance and video art and let me tell you, I have made some real, Mirror, Father, Mirror-type stuff. While teaching, I sometimes show my own artwork to students (Yikes!) and I even sometimes catch myself moving my hands and arms the way Ms. Allsworth does in that scene when she talks to the kids about "externalizing the internal" (Double yikes!). Yesterday was a reminder that Ms. Douglas' performance of Roberta Allsworth is a kind of guide post for me. A post with a sign on it that tells me that it's okay to be good at teaching art to teens because we can help kids who draw comics in their journals get into art school, even if they choose to instead take a bus going to nowhere– but that sign also says, "never wear that outfit again" and "press delete on anything you write that can be reduced down to the words, 'mirror, father, mirror.'" Unfortunately, I don't always take heed. 

Buy I Blame Dennis Hopper here: http://www.illeanadouglas.com/?page_id=14
Buy the graphic novel, Ghost World here: www.amazon.com/Ghost-World-Daniel-Clowes/dp/1560974273/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495214902&sr=1-2

Before I was a full-time teacher I used to participate in readings around Los Angeles. Mostly involving poets. Even though I focused on fiction writing in grad school, it was the poets (and in some cases, comedians) of L.A. that welcomed me and allowed me the chance to combine my art with my writing in a public setting. I integrated dolls and costumes or outfits I designed. Readings, to me, are performance art.

When I teach, it's not as much of a performative outlet as you might think it could be, because, well, I'm there to help children and also, my school requires us to teach one-to-one. Despite the "audience-of-one" I have sitting across from me, six, seven or eight times a day, I do my best to be prepared, focused and enthusiastic. I'm sure the administration and parents of the kids I teach would be pleased to know that I do not consider this performance art. I do, however, think I've learned a whole lot about improvisation by way of this experience, over the years.

Sometimes we are encouraged to perform things with and for all of our students (who are teens and tweens) as a group, during lunchtime. When I have something prepared, I try and take advantage of this opportunity to perform. In the photo above, I was participating in a poetry-reading event. It happened about a little over a year ago. I took the opportunity to show off a puppet I made for a larger project I started but haven't had time for. I also shared a "prose poem" written from the perspective of the puppet-character I invented. I call him Mr. Nibbles. The project has to do with a cat that is simultaneously anthropomorphizing and transforming into a liminal creature.

Here is the poem:

"You could say that life itself is a stupid tradition. Don't analyze it. Just go."