Ever-so-helpful Art on a Cart tips and tricks!

This year, like many art teachers across the land, I've been displaced due to Covid restrictions.  Once again I am forced to manage a days worth of art making onto four wheels.

Oh man, teaching art on a cart sucks.  I've written about that before, but I never really explored the actual tangibility and organization that goes into actually teaching on a cart here on the blog.  Here are my helpful tips and tricks from unfortunately many years of experience.

Things on my cart at all the time during Covid restrictions:

• Pencils (if they need one I let them keep it)
• Sharpies with two containers. They return them to the “used” container when they are done.  I usually wipe them with a wipe when I need them again.
• Tape
• White Glue (This is mostly for my demonstrations since I hate glue sticks)
• Glue sticks ( I have a million. I keep a box on the cart and if a kid doesn’t have glue I just let them keep it)
• Scissors  (I have adult scissors and an assortment of random kid scissors.  Again, I have a million, so depending on the kid, I just let them keep them.  So many times this year students will tell me they do not have glue and scissors.  This is rarely the case.  Usually their desks, backpacks, coats, and crates strapped to their desks are so full and such a mess that they don't want to look for them.  My response lately is, "I guess you just have to sit there then" and miraculously they find them.
• wipes/paper towels/Kleenex
• Magnets
• A few crayon boxes. (These are my plastic boxes of random crayons.  This time of year they are missing a lot of colors.  I will just give them the crayon to keep if they need it.)
• Sorted Oil Pastels with two containers - like if we are using white, I pass them out then have them return them to a “used” bin to quarantine for a few days
• A box of “Free Draw” paper. My kids have sketchbooks but since they have been with them all year in the classroom, they are mostly all filled up. I keep the shoebox of paper for early finishers.
• Regular 80lb paper and some construction paper for projects. (I try to bring what I need, but in case of emergency’s I have extra on the cart.
• Your computer, class rosters, water bottle.  These need a place on your cart, even though they probably go with you.  I got a water bottle with a pop up straw so I can just tuck it under my mask to drink!

I set up two carts at the school I'll be teaching at in April.  One for upstairs, one for downstairs.  Both of these carts are pretty small and not ideal, but we are hoping the situation is temporary!

Things in my apron

Over the summer I sewed an apron.  I edited the template a little and made big giant pockets.  It's been great, and now I realized I need another one for my other school beginning there art cart life... but I don't want to give up an entire day sewing another one.  So, I got this one off Amazon.  

• Pencil
• Notepad (for writing notes to teachers about stinkers, or more commonly writing words on if a kid needs to spell something 😂)
• Bandaids
• Sharpie
• Hand sanitizer/hand lotion
• White board marker ( I usually erase with a paper towel)
• Magnets
• Big rubber eraser. 
• Usually a pair of kid scissors too for easy access
• Keys or ID.
• My phone - my schedule is crazy.  I literally set recurring alarms for every class for when it is clean-up time.  Which, isn’t fun on a Monday when we don’t have school… But, it helps a lot. The kids know that means it is clean-up time and hopefully that gets me able to move to my next class in a timely fashion.  Although, it’s impossible to end one class at 11am, when the next one starts at 11am.  Especially when teachers are super slow coming back to the room.

Not to be a downer, because who knows how long this situation will last, but lots of people will try to convince you that art on a cart is fine.  It's not.  Delicately complain that your students are not getting a quality art program as often as you can.

Yes, kids can do amazing things while you are teaching off of a cart.  No, you shouldn't just sacrifice your skills and decide the projects are going to be crap all year.  However; you are going to make yourself crazy trying to do the same things you once did in your classroom off of a cart.  You will be disappointed and frustrated.  

Then you will get used to it.  Don't forget though, this is not how it should be.

More tips:

I still have access to my art room - which is great!  I do all my planning in there, eat my lunch, and use it as my home base throughout the day.  I have taught on a cart where I didn't have a "home base". I would shove my coat and purse in a storage closet or weird filing cabinet in the hallway.  That is definitely not ideal.

I use a plastic 10 x 13" sorting tray for each class to keep all of their project stuff in.  I have a little alcove of supplies where I park my cart.  If I’m not seeing that particular class, I will leave their bin in the alcove area.  I also put some milk crate things there that hold the other supplies we’ve needed more routinely like sorted cups of (like warm and cool colors), boxes of colored pencils (I have enough so they do not have to share). I also have a bin with watercolor stuff that I can pick up and take to a room.  It has my wc brushes, paint sets, a roll of paper towels, water cups, and a pitcher since we don’t have sinks in our rooms.  This is also a problem when a whole class has dirty hands from pastels.  I’ve been using the wipes and have them clean their hands then table with the wipes.  If I’m out of baby wipes or Wet Ones - I have given them the Clorox wipes and said they were for “Fingertips” and tables since they aren’t supposed to be used to wash up skin.  

If you do decide to water color paint - my best solution so far has been to pass everything out then walk around with the water pitcher to fill cups - like a waitress filling up drinks.  When they are done I have them “carry their painting like a pizza” and put it on the dry rack I have in the hall.  It is a small stand alone rack and I have it centrally located in the hallway outside the younger kids’ rooms.  I let the big kids just walk to it when they are done. Then I can clean up their stuff.  I dump all the dirty water back into the pitcher and stack the cups etc.  None of my classrooms have a sink.

Passing out other supplies, or letting kids choose things has become pretty much nonexistent.  I have spread papers out and try to call them up individually to pick a piece- but they touch everything. They can’t make up their mind, then they want to change it, etc…. With the little kids, if it’s random colors or something- I just past them out randomly.  I don’t even let it be known that they have a choice.  With the older kids I’ve walked around and made them tell me what they wanted and I gave it to them and tell them they can’t exchange it.  For a few construction paper projects I’ve actually divided papers and things into baggies or clipped them, and passed them out like that.  Then I know they all have the right sizes/colors.

Another not so flexible thing is if kids have been absent.  I have more unfinished projects than usual because I may not have the supplies with me they need and there isn’t extra time for them to finish.  My older kids who have had to quarantine have been good about doing their work at home since it’s on their google classroom anyway.

When I taught on a cart before, each classroom teacher had a box in their classroom for all of the projects we had been working on.  Like a large flat portfolio box.  This was nice because I could also keep resources and things in it and had a little more control with what was going on.  I didn’t want to be touching or passing stuff out this year at all so I got the kids these 11 x 17” folders to keep next to their desks.  They all have crates strapped to their desks to hold stuff since we are not using lockers.  The folder fits good between the crate and desk.  At the end of the year they will just take them home with all their stuff inside.

Because the desks are spread out you will probably not be able to wheel the cart into the room and you will probably not have any counter space, and everyone’s technology will be set up differently in every room.  

And one last thing...If you haven’t been with the kids too much when they are wearing masks, you might find that you do not know who is talking to you- like ever. I still hear a question and look directly at the wrong kid to answer it. 🤷‍♀️

Filling Miniature Paint Pots for Second Graders

 

Here is a little video I made showing how I used miniature paint pots I got from Amazon to make custom palettes for a project my second graders are working on.  If you want to see the project they are doing, here is a video about that!

Here are the Paint Pots I got for this project.  They have worked well for teaching on a cart this year, but they are hard to open when you have to do all of them at once.  My hands started hurting opening and closing them for filling, and the second graders were completely distraught about it.  Third grade however, did fine.

Draft Folder Clean-up: (Story Hour) Life on the cart. I absolutely hate every second of it.

This post was originally started in February, 2014.  This year I have both of my classrooms back.

I've found a few art teacher blogs and pins that brag about how easy it can be to teach from a cart.  There are pages and pages devoted to all the fantastic and wonderful things you can still teach, how to organize your supplies, and how to manage discipline.

They are all lies.

There is nothing good about teaching from a cart.

Art teachers make these blogs and pins to reassure themselves and their community that this is a perfectly acceptable way to teach.  They are desperately convincing themselves and others that their students are receiving a quality art education.  They are assuring everyone that there is nothing wrong with a professional hanging their coat in the break room and using the hallway as their office.  I think these teachers have just given up.

I was displaced from my classroom when school resumed in January.  Another section of free preschool was entering my building and the quickest, and least disruptive solution for everyone else was to take my room.

It is several weeks later and I am still furious about it.  I get physically sick on my way to school and mope through the hallways.  I got sympathetic looks in the beginning, but now I think people are avoiding me.  I'm not much fun.

Now, I know I won't get much sympathy when I reveal that I only teach at that school 1.5 days a week,  I only teach six classes, and I have a gorgeous art room at my other building.... But that's not even the point.  Granted, my loathsome behavior would be better justified if I was full time and taught 35+ classes a week.  Anyway, the point is Why Art?

Why art?

Historically, my discipline has not received much respect in my district.  When I arrived I was full time and taught at three different schools in three completely different environments.  I was on a cart, I had a cruddy but huge classroom, and at one I literally taught in a break room with no sink.  Coincidently, that room is now the break room, and they installed a sink.  

The "woe is me" portion of this is:
Every day was a challenge.
My trunk was constantly full and I was becoming used to carrying trunk loads of supplies from school to school and up stairwells while pregnant.
It became commonplace for me to forget visuals and lose worksheets, thus enacting many days of last minute and on the fly changes.
I never got to know many of the kids because I was never in a building for very long.
My cart school had supplies strewn all over the building and my cart was an old AV cart.
I hardly was in the right place at the right time to attend building meetings.
I had three different administrators, and three schools with different philosophies.
No one ever asked me what I was teaching, or what students were learning.
No one seemed to care what I did or where I was.

All that sucked. I had little babies at home and a crappy work situation. But, I also know all that stuff is secondary.  All that stuff was hard on me, but a situation like that effects all the kids at those three schools' art education too.  How come nobody ever did anything about this?  So, I started speaking out.

I made sure my administrators knew the importance of an art classroom.  I wrote position papers advocating for a classroom at one school, and a room with a sink at another.  I spoke in favor of grade level centers, and petitioned to be part-time and only at two schools - instead of one teacher picking up some of my classes while I'm at the third building (when was that ever a good idea?)  I wanted technology and made it known constantly.  I don't know if anyone was ever really listening to me, or reading my emails, but things changed.  Slowly things started to improve.  It started in baby steps at one school, sharing a room with music (but with a sink!) Finally a room to myself, to finally a dedicated space.  I got a room at my cart school, when our enrollment dipped.  I jumped at it and tried to make it as much of an art room as possible.  I started to know the students.  I started to understand my administrators. I was part of the discipline system. Students finally started to respect a teacher they knew and they finally started to respect a subject they seemed to know nothing about.

Finally students were winning competitions and being included in national and statewide exhibits.  I had a full Artsonia Gallery, a parent blog, an art show, and community displays.

This is where the post ended.  I don't know where the post was heading, and that is probably why I stopped.  

Under the Sea in Kindergarten. An on the cart modification that worked!

 I teach a basic shape drawing project to kindergarten called "Under the Sea."  For years it has been successful.  I draw on the board as kids give me ideas and they practice drawing along.  Then they are responsible for making their own under the sea picture on watercolor paper to paint and create a wax resist.  I made a modification of it for my sub lesson book "The Art Teacher's Substitute Notebook:  K-2 Lessons."

This year, I wanted to teach it, but the thought of a 30 minute kindergarten class watercolor painting in their classroom gave me nightmares.  I taught the lesson as usual.  I substituted watercolor paper for 80lb. drawing paper and told the students to color in everything nice and hard with crayons.

The next art class, we put the finishing touches on our crayon drawings and crumpled them up!  I prepped a tub of blue tempera mixed with water.

Students came up to the tub individually and we dipped their papers in the blue water.  I set them on a dryrack I had pulled into their classroom.  The next day they were completely dry and looked beautiful.  It solved the 28+ kids painting in a classroom for 30 minutes problem and the turned out really cool!