This week really got me thinking about the first time I got acquainted with creating and making art. When I was 16, I decided on a whim to go out and buy art supplies. I had seen photos and videos of people using watercolors, and for whatever reason I knew that if I tried it I would discover something that I loved. So, that is what I did, I went out and bought supplies and began painting. My Highschool, which I largely accredit now with providing me with the experiences that shaped not only my current path but much of my personality and interests, had many different types of art classes. Everything from jewelry making, to photography, to ceramics, and drawing and I had taken almost all of them by my junior year. I stuffed myself full of all the knowledge about creating that I could, well almost all of it. I say almost because I refused to take a drawing or painting class, I was afraid, which seems silly, but I was afraid that if I took one of those classes and was told that I was not good enough, it would break me. Because painting is what I loved, and to be told that I was wrong, or bad at something when it was the one thing I really loved doing made me feel like concrete was drying in my chest.

 

So I did the only rational thing and decided to not take those classes, later however I took AP studio art a year long Art course. A class in which it was self driven, where I got to paint and draw without expectations. It was in the second semester when I was paralyzed by this fear of being out performed by my peers again, so much so that I actually dropped the course. My AP studio art teacher, who was also the drawing teacher, asked me why I hadn’t been to class and when I told him that I dropped the course he looked baffled. I still remember the way his brow creased when he told me that I deserved to be in that class, and out of everyone's growth in that class he was most proud and surprised by mine. I felt seen, and that small moment made me rejoin the class, and later when deciding what I wanted to do for my undergraduate Major, it is the class that led me to major in Art. My fears have often led me to not pursuing things, I wrote several applications to creative writing contests that I never sent in, I have a collection of Art show pamphlets on my desk that I wanted to show at but didn’t, offer letters and department letters for sororities, honor societies, and study abroad information that I was interested in but never followed through with. And the one single commonality in those lost opportunities is me, because I was scared that I wasn’t good enough, or I wasn’t what they were looking for, or simply just afraid of being told no.

 

I know now that I can never let go of those feelings, of those things because you can never forget and erase. You can only move on. Every past day is a brick in the house of your life and you can't just kick out the foundations and expect the rest to remain standing. I am still terrified, nervous that I will not be able to provide my students with the knowledge and support they need to succeed. Scared that I will be told no, or that I am not good enough. But I won’t let that stop me from following my dreams anymore, I know as an educator now that passion, drive, and personal stories can be a driving force behind art making. But they can also be a driving force behind doing things you may be scared to do. I am currently looking forward to teaching our peer lesson because it was a situation that put me outside of my comfort zone, with a technology that I did not know how to use, but by focusing on the big ideas of my lesson plan I was able to bridge the gap between what I know and am interested in and what I am looking for in this lesson from my students. And by doing that, learning and growing myself I think I was able to think and understand foundationally how to better connect big ideas and personal thoughts for my students, or at least to help them probe and develop their thoughts better than I previously had been able to.

 

This is something that I want to continue doing in the future, growing and learning so that I can develop lesson plans more thoughtfully and learn how to better connect with my students. Something that I never really thought about until now is that to understand how to teach you have to think about how you learn, you have to learn and be a student yourself. This gives you the opportunity to think about how to be a better and more thorough educator, how you learn and educate yourself with your own lessons. Many students may not try something new because it seems scary, putting yourself out there to fail seems a lot scarier than it is. The worst you can be told is no, and then you try again. I want my students to know that it's okay to be scared, to experiment, and to not feel comfortable all of the time when making, or doing something. It happens to me too, but also to teach them to try, to teach them new things that I can connect with them and also teach myself so I am also becoming a better student and therefore a better teacher.