I teach free classes for the community here once or twice a week and for the most part the students are children. We have had an adult or two stop in every now and then but I think they felt a bit silly about being in a classroom with a bunch of people 1/5 their age and they felt embarrassed, which is completely understandable.
Some of the parents use this time as free babysitting but that is fine by me. I have only ever had one kid that definitely didn't want to be there and was problematic. That is the only rule I really have in my classes that the students need to behave themselves. We have fun but the students need to remain focused on what we are doing and there are no devices such as phones or tablets allowed in the classroom unless we are using them for a project using a grid program that is free to download and use.
Thankfully, keeping children focused on art is a lot easier than it would be if this was a math class so things are pretty fun and easy to do.
I have been quite impressed with the progress of some of the students in the class and I can even see a bit of my own style that they have incorporated into their work as well. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so when I see hints of my style in the students' work, I don't get offended, I am quite pleased.
I do encourage students to find their own style though but many of them have taken to a style that I use where I don't place a great deal of emphasis on things looking real. This is especially true of people or animals that are in their drawings or paintings because I think that this is very easy to do wrong and is too time consuming. We work on portraits as well though, and the students enjoy that for different reasons. When doing portraits we focus on realism but for things like scenery, we instead try to focus on getting an overall picture and allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks on their own. It works out nicely and the children do not get frustrated since there is no "wrong" way to do this.
One thing that the students have embraced is how I will encourage them to first start with pencils and erasers and then later go back over the picture they are working on with a felt tip pen, and lastly apply color.
Without being prompted to do so a lot of the students are including shading based on where the sun is in the picture and this is something we focused on only for a few lessons. It makes me feel happy that this has stuck with a lot of them and I feel as though their works are better because of it. Of course they are completely free to do whatever they want provided they aren't just screwing around and wasting art materials.
We have around 10-15 students each week and most of them come into class with enthusiasm and this is wonderful in my eyes. With art programs being defunded in public schools these sessions with me is often the only art time that they get in their lives and to me that is just a shame.
Our program is funded by charitable donations and I am very grateful for that. It is a shame that the first thing to go (or so it seems) in public education is the artistic side of things. I'm happy to fill in the gaps for as long as I can do it!
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