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. 🤷‍♀️

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 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.

Draft Folder Clean Up: Things that stick in my mind from student teaching....

This post was started on 11/19/14. Hilarious.

This was almost 16 years ago, but I remember the cheap yet delicious lunch the teacher's got from the cafeteria.  Mmmmm cheese fries everyday.

The labels of art class: Am I second class?

This post was originally started 11/21/2014

The arts are the second class citizens of my school district.  I feel comfortable writing this because it wasn't me who gave me that label.  It happened when "every teacher at every school will get an ELMO projector" happened.

It wasn't every teacher.  It was every classroom teacher.

It took me a year and a half to get one, but I did finally get one.  Our wonderful tech support guy went through a lot to get it, find it, and make sure it was installed.  What wasn't wonderful was when he came to check on it and complained about what a pain it was to finagle, and said just that: "the special teachers are like second class citizens around here..."

Ugh.  That was deflating.

That's where it ended.  Kind of sad.  

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.  

Watercolor Heaven! That brief moment when everyone is painting and everything is perfect.

I've mentioned before how 3rd grade is often a challenge for me.  I finally got up my nerve to  watercolor paint with them, and it was everything I ever imagined it would be.

We have been learning about implied texture and making awesome alien portraits.  We drew an imagined formal alien portrait and added implied texture.  We traced in crayon and were planning a wax resist painting.

My class right after lunch was a disaster.  It took us forever to get supplies.  Several students did not follow set up directions.  Several students were not listening to instructions.  Several students ended up not able to paint.

We never got to watercolor heaven in that class.

I was already super cranky when my end of the day class came in.  I went through my same spiel.  We set up, we listened to directions, we got supplies.  And then it happened.

Watercolor heaven.

The room was silent except for the occasional excitement when the water changed color, or when they started to paint over their white stars and saw them magically appear.  I circled the room and everyone was on task.  Colors were translucent, brushes were in a point!  No one's brush was having a bad hair day, or scrubbing holes in the paper.  No one was using tissue to clean up spills and no one was wiping their brush on their smock.

Watercolor heaven t'was just a fleeting moment though.  Soon someone needed clean water, and another table spilled.  Two kids ran out of yellow, and another reallllllllly had to go to the bathroom.  One kid was done, another stuck their fingers in the paint, and of course one kid splattered water at their tablemates.

The hustle and bustle of cleaning up began.  The rest of the hour was a blur, but when their classroom teacher asked how they did, all I could remember was watercolor heaven.  "They were WONDERFUL!!  They did such a great job today!!"

K-2 Complete Substitute Lesson - "Candy House" available to download.

I published a book full of 12 complete lessons an art teacher can just leave on her desk with little to no prep for a sub.  It hasn't been getting much action - which I think is ridiculous!  This is the best thing ever written for an art teacher.
I know, I'm completely biased, and the years and hours I've spent putting this masterpiece together skews my thinking....but I called in for a sub about a week ago at 5:00am.  Then, I just rolled over and went back to sleep.  My sub plans were done!  When I got back to school the next day, my room was clean and I could tell my students had been busy.  My amazing book just sits at the corner of my desk always ready.  You should seriously think about getting a copy.

At any rate, it occurred to me that these lessons could also be great for homeschool parents, and classroom teachers who want to turn their craft time into art time.  I have begun putting each lesson from "The Art Teacher's Substitute Notebook:  K-2 Lessons" on TeachersPayTeachers individually.

Now available for download, "Candy House."  It's a sweet little architecture lesson complete with step-by-step directions and a colorfully illustrated brainstorming page.  It can be left on a desk for sub or taught by a non art person in a non art setting, The student will learn and the results will be great.

 I do have several free sub resources on this page too (so maybe that's where everyone is getting their plans!)  Either way - be prepared for your sub!
Thanks!