Friday, February 1, 2008

The skinny on my job!

Well I have one more day left of my first week of work. Tuesday I arrived to find out I would be "training" for the day. My boss walked the other new girl and I through a lesson as if we were the students. The boss chose pastels for me to do and oil painting for my new co-worker. Eventually we will learn pastel, watercolor, and oil painting teaching techniques. I ended up doing 9 pastel drawings. Here are three of the drawings:



This is my first drawing. I love the simple step-by-step drawings that each student can created the background for.



This was trying to work with grass and stone. I like how the stones look real.



This was my absolute favorite drawing I did. I was to work with the dirt and the cactus to see how to make realistic dirt. I just love this picture!

What I really enjoy about the teaching method is the ease of going from drawing/sketching to using pastels (chalk). The beginning step is to sketch the shapes from the step-by-step drawing we chose. Then we do an overall color with the chalks from largest area to smallest area. Then we blend and add lights and shadows over all the areas, then we go into adding details to make the picture amazing. Then we sign it and move on to the next drawing.

Wednesday and today I actually was teaching students already. Wednesday was rough because I had two students that were strong-willed and really wanted to see how far they could push me. I was really frustrated and left wondering if I was cut out to do this job. I'm glad I had a day off because I was trying to think of a new plan of attack. The boss and some of the veteran instructors just kept saying, "you need to put your foot down, be firm" so I know that's what I am trying to do but it seems like I get the kids who like to bulk the norm.

So that is my challenge right now is learning how to get the kids to do what I want them to do...and have fun at the same time.

Today I had a brother and sister I was working with ages 7 and 5. The 7 year old girl was easy to work with and when I gave her an example she understood the difference between what was on her paper and my example and made the changes. The 5 year old had his own ideas of what he wanted to do. I am trying to find some balance between stimulating creativity and using our teaching method.

I have tomorrow for about 4 hours then off on Sunday and found out my schedule for the next week is working monday, tuesday, wednesday, off on thursday, working friday and saturday...

HOLY COW that's work! it ends up being 24 hours, but still I am wiped after 2.5 hours...I need some more energy...from somewhere.

So I will probably update a bit more tonight. Jeremy and I are headed out on the town for dinner and a movie with two guys that Jeremy knew from IBM in Rochester. We all live in the Bellevue/Redmond area now and are excited to hang out. We're going to Ruby's Diner and going to see Cloverfield the scary movie (I'm the only girl going so I get to see a scary movie with the boys). So more later!

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