I've been thinking about the types of classes I'd like to teach and came up with a list of possibilities.
- Recycled art (again)
- Exploring color
- Sharing our stories (Studying different modes of storytelling—books, scrolls, making spoken word recordings)
- Cultures of the world (through their art)
- Printmaking
- Exploring light (working with translucent objects, painting on glass, stained glass, lanterns, etc)
- Puppetry
- Mural class
I'm going to teach the recycled art class for 2-5 year olds again, because it was pretty successful, and I realize how much I love working with that age group. I might change the age range to 3-5, though, because with myself being the only teacher, I felt the 2 year olds missed out on some of the activities because they needed a teacher right there with them explaining each step of the project (e.g. how to dip your paintbrush in paint and put it on something) and I had six other kids to assist. In terms of those basic art skills, there's a bigger difference between a 2 year old and a 5 year old than there is a 5 year old and a ten year old.
I'm also going to contact some high schools students I met through our activities at the vocational-technical high school who had expressed interest in being assistant teachers. One of the “trades” that students can focus in is child care, and they all need service learning hours, so hopefully I can get some students who are willing to come regularly. Then I wouldn't be the only one in the classroom with all the 2-5 year olds. They might be able to get class credit for volunteering, too. I'd also love to get a grant to pay high school students to help out with our classes, but that's something to think about for the future. But it's something that we hear constantly from teens we talk to about getting involved at our center: Where's the money in this? We've talked about having art sales where students can sell their work at the end of the semester, but I'd also like to do a paid internship/apprentice program as well.
The center also wants me to try and teach a drawing class again, for adults. I had a lot of great lesson plans for that and we had 0 students all semester so I wasn't able to use any of them. I want to try for the storytelling class next term, and maybe try to raise funds for audio equipment. We are definitely struggling financially right now, which strongly affects the kinds of materials we can order, which in turn affects the quality of classes we can offer.
