Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I volunteered to be Nick's Art Masterpiece parent for his class this year. Crazy, I know, but I was feeling a bit of parental guilt. This is his last year of elementary school, what I am assuming is pretty much the last year of parental involvement in the educational process (beyond home work help, and driving to and from activities, and such). And I started thinking about how little I have been involved in his classrooms in the past and I came up with very little. I helped out with a Halloween party once, and, ummm, that pretty much sums up my involvement. I think I did help grade some papers once or twice too. The sad part is is that the kid just eats it up. He's so delighted to have me there. But, you know, he's the oldest, and Zach was born like 5 days into his kindergarten year, and I hate asking my friends to watch my teeny little ones cause they are so much work, and the two year olds cry when you leave them, so I'd do it as little as possible, and then I would go and have another baby. And Nick would be disappointed but understanding, cause that's the kind of kid he is.

Excuses, excuses. I figured this was my last shot to be involved so I signed up. In the 6th grade your options are pretty limited, so art masterpiece it is. Don't get me wrong, it's not that bad, it just takes a bit of dedication on my part. Once a month, every month I have to get to go into the classroom and do about a 60 minute presentation on a particular artist and a specific piece of art. Complete with some kind of activity. To add to the pressure, Nick's teacher has only had one mother show up once in three years of teaching at Spectrum.

This month was Renoir. They help you out, and provide materials and info, and art supplies, but you come up with the lesson. I prepared for a month, I even bought a book to supplement my own education, but I got Renoir and Rembrandt mixed up, and only realized this after I read the whole book.

So of course I managed to work baked goods into the lesson. I started off with a cookie analogy, and how there are many many different kinds, and how it is okay to like or dislike different cookies, but we need to be respectful other others rights to do the same. And then I compared cookies preferences to art, and at that point I passed out chocolate chip cookies.

It went surprisingly well, the kids seemed to enjoy it, they seemed to all be paying attention, and some even contributing to the lesson. These kids are far more knowledgeable about art stuff than I was at their age. But then again, we never had cool programs like art masterpiece when I was a kid. We never even had a real art teacher. Sometimes our home room teacher would trot out some construction paper and we'd make some seasonal picture to hang on the bulletin board in the hallway, but that's as good as it got. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Gilbert Unified School District kicks Granite School District's butt.

Since Renoir is an Impressionist, I made a little display of Halloween stuff, and they got to look at it for a minute or so, then I put it all away and they had to sketch what they saw from memory. Sketch their own impression of what they saw. This was the hardest part for some kids. Some started panicking cause they needed to be able to stare at it and copy detail for detail. Or they were afraid they would get something wrong, or forget one of the items, like it was a memory test or something.

Nick said that some of the kids asked when I was coming back. Apparently my panicky "I think I'm going to throw up cause I don't know what I am doing and everyone is going to see right through me" feeling before hand was another classical reaction of me over-reacting and getting more stressed out than I need to be.