Your community needs an art teacher. Part III: The Pay Off

This is part three of a three part story.  Revisit Part I or Part II .

When my daughter started junior high she had to decide whether to take band or art as an elective.  I'm an art teacher, my husband's a professional musician.  Decide child!  Which parent do you love more!!?!

It wasn't really like that.  She is already very musical, and band seemed the way for her to go.  Since I was opening an art studio with after school art enrichment classes anyway, she'd hopefully get her art education gaps filled in.

The opening of No Corner Suns Art Studio coincided with this new policy in our school district.  I found the scheduling system completely unreasonable.  But, it did help convince me that our community needed quality arts education.

I took the plunge, and devoted myself to the art studio in the summer of 2015.  I maintained my philosophy that arts education is for everybody.  I developed classes for all ages and abilities and kept advertising and advocating.  I couldn't quite keep my eye off of the public school job postings though...

It's scary okay!  I just quit a job I had for nine years.  I'm making no money. We're paying for health insurance out of pocket. Paying rent for two small businesses!  Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that?  My husband is self-employed too? We have a mortgage. Three kids!  Two of them have braces! What was I thinking!?

At one point I noticed a .2 job posting for a neighboring school district.  Between running the business and my sporadic teaching schedule, it took me awhile before I actually applied - and for some reason I emailed the principal expressing my interest in the position (which - you know- I don't really want to have to talk to people...) She emailed me back almost immediately saying they were having interviews the next day! Aaahhh!  I'm not ready!  But, I pulled it together.  I was offered the job the same day my dog died.  It was such a relief.  Not the dog dying.  That was the worst.  Having that part-time job to return to in the fall in a respected school district. It eased a little of the pressure of my new life endeavor.

Over the past year and half I have maintained working super-part-time (as I like to call it) in the public school.  I haven't had one day of standing like a deranged Mona Lisa in the front of the room either.  I have also kept the art studio and maintain a pretty steady weekly schedule.  Classes and students have evolved and I have started teaching more adult enrichment, and less wine + paint.

I've also become that art teacher.  My community did need an art teacher.  When I started blasting ART CLASSES! ART CLASSES! ART CLASSES! All over town, I should've realized that even two years later, people remember.

I've become this GO-TO person for after school enrichment, mural painting, sign making, Brownie painting & pottery badges, libraries looking for unique programs, park district classes and children's events, school programs, museum functions... and more.  Most recently I was asked to teach classes at a small private school twice a week.  It was the easiest job I ever got. I'm known as this art teacher and I was asked to do a job that I actually love doing.

When I say "Your community needs an art teacher" it's because I started to think - who was doing all this stuff before I came along?  Nobody.  Honestly, until my junior high kid had to make that decision between music and art, I didn't even realize how little art my community had.  We didn't have quality after school arts classes, or wine + paint parties, or after school art club, teen nights, make-n-take art projects at our street fair, or paint parties at the park district, or real art teachers teaching library programs.  How were those Brownies earning those badges?

The pay off.  Yes, so now I am the richest and most famous and most powerfulest art teacher in all the land. Ahhh haaa haaaa haa.  Not quite. The business pays for itself; and fancy dance lessons, camps, and all those little extra things for my daughters.  Real school goes towards family expenses, but we are living off my husband's earnings. I can't recommend just quitting your job willy nilly.  The real pay off is the actual work.  I still come home physically and mentally exhausted, but it's different.  I have real pressure to advertise and sell my teaching as a business, but I also have the power to teach what I want when I want.  Sometimes I'm at the studio till 9:30pm, or on a Saturday afternoon, but there are only six kids in a class, and they are hilarious and we are learning some awesome stuff.  Sometimes there's a kid who's not hilarious, but I only have to see them an hour a week for five weeks!  Instead of a whole year, or six years!  Sometimes I have to talk on the phone *eeeewwww* or respond to email, or talk in person to other people.  Amazingly, this has been easier over the past two years.  It's almost as if repeatedly doing something over and over again makes something easier to do.  Oh yeah, and there is paperwork, insurance, taxes and bills, but there are also classes where we drink wine, and that's been a pretty good pay off too.

Your community needs an art teacher. Part II: Teach where you can, 'cause you are teaching

This is part two in a three part series. Revisit Part I

June 4th, 2014 will be a day long remembered.  It was the end of my long non-teaching teaching-streak, and it was the beginning of No Corner Suns the business.

On June 4th, 2014 I hosted my first wine + paint event.  I wrote a little about it on the blog, but more importantly, I was teaching. I was actually teaching.  Whippee!  I'm an art teacher!

I turned No Corner Suns the blog into No Corner Suns the business that year. I can't type out the proper word to describe how I remember that time.  Let me think.

Have you ever made frozen French fries?  You pull the hot cookie sheet out of the oven and put it on the stove top to cool for a bit.  You rummage around in the cabinet for a serving dish, and get ready to slide the piping hot fries off the pan.  As you reach for the spatula you snag a rogue fry on the countertop and pop it in your mouth, but that fry ain't hot, and that fry ain't cooked. You just ate a cold uncooked french fry. Your mouth is filled with little chalky, mushy, greasy potato, and your chewing, and swallowing, and spitting all at the same time.  That's the word I would use to describe that time.

If you are driving to school thinking, "Hey, maybe I'll get into a car accident and wont have to go to work!" Then you probably don't have a job you love.  The cold greasy french fry feeling of your life might be a better alternative.

It started off with getting classes hosted at our park district (yes, I had to talk to real people).  They were very eager to have programs for their guides, so that wasn't too bad- it's getting students to actually sign up for your classes that is the issue.  I got my name out there and started spreading the word. ART CLASSES!

Mid 2014 was the year that kicked my ass.  I started to teach where I could, 'cause I was teaching. Library classes? Yes! Wine + paint parties? Yes!  Private events? Yes!  Children's birthday parties? Yes!  A volunteer art booth here, there, & everywhere? Yes! Yes! Yes!  I was also determined to get my name everywhere.  I emailed every art teacher and principal in close vicinity. I passed out flyers, hung up posters,  and became a general nuisance.

I started renting a classroom.  I advertised everywhere I could (that was free) and offered classes and events for cheap.  I took every job I could manage. No wait.  I took every job.  I wasn't managing anything.

I'm smiling like a crazy person. Everything will be Allllllll right.  There's nothing creepy happening behind you.

I was still teaching in my school .75 time

I was not supporting myself doing this.  My .75 job was supporting my family, all the crazy extra teaching was supporting the business.  Furniture, rent, supplies, advertisements - everything was going back into the business. Why would I possibly be doing this?  I was actually teaching.  My days at real school were mostly miserable. My time in the studio was not.  I was hoping it would pay off at some point, I just had to hang in there.

Your community needs an art teacher. Part I: How my job made me crazy

In June of 2015 I decided to quit my "cushy" .75 art teaching job in the public school system.  I had been part-time in the same school district for eight of my nine years there and I wasn't going to get tenure.  As part of every art teacher's unwritten job description, I had worked constantly to advocate for my program and it just wasn't doing anything.  I was tired. My time there was done.

I didn't just walk into the principal's office and decide to quit. It had been on my mind and in the works for over a year, and it wasn't easy.

Do you have those days when you are at school and you've prepped this pretty cool lesson that maybe you've taught before, or maybe is new and you are kind of excited about. The kids start to file in, and your smiling and greeting them, because you know to make that personal connection and it's fun to see them. But then, one kid is pushing another kid, and they start chasing each other around the table, and there goes a kid over by your desk for no reason, and they all start talking, and one kid is sitting in the wrong seat, so another kid starts to push the kid who is in their seat, and you walk over to deal with that, meanwhile another kid is on the floor crawling under the tables, and another kid is grabbing crayons and moving piles of supplies and finally your like "what the hell?"  Yeah.

So, the kids go back in the hall and you practice lining up quietly and you talk about tip toeing like mice and sitting like the Mona Lisa and looking for ready tables and keeping hands to ourselves and not touching supplies and smiling at Mrs. Kostal and... one kid pushes another kid who bumps into another kid who steps on another kid but they manage to sit down but they are still talking or touching supplies or making noise.  Your standing in front of the room looking like a maniac with your hands folded and a deranged smile on your face modeling the Mona Lisa again thinking "what the hell?" Yeah.

So, you kind of wait and wonder if you should go back in the hall or start with kind of a clap or a loud "ALLLLllllll RIIIiiiiighhhhhht CLLAAAasssss."  Your still standing there with the deranged smile on your face when one kid starts shushing everyone. Not a nice shushing either.  A loud, obnoxious, oh my goodness, way worse than the talking shushing, shushing.  Another kid yells, "SHE'S WAITING!" and although you are waiting, that's not helping, and you now realize you've lost complete control.  You're still gripping your hands in front of you in the polite Mona Lisa fold, but now the skin underneath each fingertip has turned white, and there are actual nail marks forming in the top layer of skin.  The deranged smile has definitely morphed into a clenched mouth and your nostrils are flared.  Yeah.

Almost every class, almost every day.  I'm not a new teacher.  I know when I've lost control of a class, and I know what I have to do get it back.  I know when I'm actually teaching, and when I'm just controlling an environment.  I know when my kids are learning too.  I also know that teachers can't do it alone.  I was coming home physically and mentally exhausted every stinkin' day and I hadn't felt like I had actual taught in a long time.

I had only been in my old school district one year when I first tried to get out.  I was teaching at three schools, one was art-on-a-cart, one had a principal who made the special area teachers sit at a child size table during a staff meeting, and one had a passive aggressive secretary.  However, the window for getting a new teaching job is kind of small, and art postings are slim.  Bonus however- I'd need a maternity leave my second year so I stayed, and finagled part time and two schools. Although, without some headache. A certain principal wanted me to teach the same exact amount for .75 time.  I started trying to get out again four or five years later.  I would start looking in February.  I would religiously stalk all the nearby school districts websites looking for postings.  Did I even want to BE a teacher?  What if I never got a new job?  What if I'm stuck here forever?  What else could I do?

I contemplated switching careers all together. Could I do graphic design?  Should I try getting into illustration?  I took a design class at our community college, and eh... I started trying to build up an illustration portfolio. eh. I decided to start on my masters degree. Luckily the program in curriculum and instruction fell through and I ended up getting my MA in art ed.  I don't know.  I love art.  I love making art. I'm just meant to teach it, even though my situation was driving me insane.

I had to take the bull by the horns and change the situation.  I couldn't keep letting year after year pass without it getting any better.  I started thinking of places besides a school where I could teach.  The park district, the library, after school programs.... Ughhhhh that seems hard. I wouldn't have a classroom, I'd be lugging around supplies, I'd have to advertise, I'd have to talk to people...

I kept not doing that.  At some point though, I did that.

This was the email I got from the administration office on my last day of work.  I had worked in the district for nine years. I wasn't expecting a love note, but geez... a little cold.

Teaching Art at the Park District: How I got that gig and why I love it.

Do yo want to take an art class?

I wrote an email in the winter to the recreation supervisor and my local park district.  I asked if I could teach classes there.  I didn't get a response. So, I went one town over.  I wrote asking if I could teach art classes this upcoming summer, and got a reply right away.  That was my "in" with parks & rec.  I was feeling like a real Leslie Knope.

I had no idea how people were chosen to be part of a park district brochure.  I didn't know the criteria, or how you'd get paid.  I did know that I wanted to teach private lessons, I wanted to get my name out there,  I was on a mission, and it seemed plausible.

First, I was organized.  I came up with a list of about 10 different classes I could teach.  I formatted the list to look like how the classes would be listed in the brochure.  Catchy titles, descriptions, age ranges, and class time were included.  I tried to think of projects that were successful in my public school teaching, and I tried to think of tools and media that would not be too expensive.

If you want to teach at a park district, you are hired as an independent contractor.  You are your own entity hired by them to teach classes with your own expertise and supplies.  They provide the promotion, registration, and space.  You are responsible for everything else.

I had nailed down a summer schedule with the supervisor - but before it became official I needed to supply her with a current resume and references.  This was easy for me since I am currently employed in a school district and have two principals who were eager to let anyone and everyone know how fabulous I am. (I'm sure that is how it went down.)

Second, insurance.  I needed to provide proof that I had professional liability insurance up to $100,000,000.  I think this could be done fairly easy, and I've learned that many people can get this for about $200/year.  However, I ended up with the fanciest, most premiumist, most bestest insurance in the world - and I'm paying a lot more.

Third, how will you get paid.  I looked at all the surrounding communities and saw what other franchise programs were charging for their classes.  I had an idea in my head how much I'd like to get per hour/student.  I just didn't know how these would come together.  I would have to purchase supplies and I figured classes wouldn't be that big.  I learned that the park districts take out a flat rate per student/class.  I've also learned that this is negotiable and could vary.  In the end, I figured the amount families were being charged and the amount to the park district was worth it for the publicity, and experience.

Fourth, planning the classes.  I've had some experience with teaching art in weird places before.  I used to teach through the youth department at our local community college.  I didn't have to provide my own supplies, but my classes would be set up in a teacher's lounge or lecture hall. I have experience schlepping supplies too.  I co-lead my daughter's Daisy Troop and invested in a wheely suitcase from Goodwill to bring crayons, markers, sharpies, glue, scissors, etc. to 15 antsy girls 2X a month. And who could forget about my Art-on-a-Cart experience that lead me to this experience?  I've become a pro at teach anywhere art classes.

Fifth, teaching the classes.  This was the best part.  My classes this month are small, but the children are wonderful.  Every single one wants to be there and has a real passion and talent for the subject.  It makes steps 1-4 worth it.  I felt like I was really teaching and that my students were really learning.  I had not realized how tense and on edge teaching in the public school had felt lately.  Discipline, Common Core, differentiation, modifications, technology, STEAM, PBIS, and interruption after interruption, after interruption,  - it's stressful!  Teaching with the kids in the park district was what I needed to remember what it feels like to be teaching. To ACTUALLY be teaching.

Paint, Drink, & Be Merry! Our philosophy, "Drink a little wine and learn while making art."

June 4th was No Corner Sun's Art Studio's first Paint, Drink, & Be Merry Event!
Wine & Paint events have become very popular... but I wasn't happy with what I was seeing produced in these 2 hour mini-franchised-classes.  Overwhelmingly every adult student copied line for line, color for color, what the teacher demonstrated, or a masterwork the studio chose.  I searched several local studios and Google, and I kept coming up with the same results.

No Corner Sun's sought to change that.  I went about designing the lesson just as I would for my elementary students.  It was a challenge.  I knew I would have students who had not had any sort of art class since they were in elementary school, I would have art enthusiasts, and I might even have some serious artists.


Here is our Flickr slideshow from the event.

My co-teacher and I spent an afternoon practicing the lesson, rehearsing the information, and noting difficult or confusing things that may cause speed bumps.  I was nervous about the information being vague or watered-down for more experienced artists, but I was also worried that it would be too much information for a newbie.  We put together packets, prepped visuals, and were able to successfully teach a lesson for everyone.  Adults need differentiation too!

The lesson was well received.  Several students commented that they enjoyed choosing their own subject within the theme. Many students remarked how much they had learned and asked about our next event.  That was all the motivation I needed to set up another one... or two!

In August, No Corner Suns will be hosting two Paint, Drink, & Be Merry events.  Both will be hosted by The Sweet & Savory Spot in downtown Westmont, Illinois.  Classes are limited to 20 people and guests must register online in advanced.

August 13th, 6:30pm - 8:30pm Thiebaud, tints & shades

August 27th, 6:30pm-8:30pm Kandinsky, complementary colors