Serving Art Educators
and Students Since 1994

Advice for New Teachers and Mentors

The purpose of this page is to give advice to Cooperating Teachers and student teachers. It was started in response to a question on Getty TeacherArtExchange list serve. Included is a portion of a handout/evaluation rubric for student teachers, a sample lesson plan summary and weekly schedule planner - along with web resources. Web Resources are helpful for student teachers, new teachers and veteran teachers. See Advice for New Teachers below.

Advice from Patty Knott:

Having a student teacher gives you the opportunity to review your own practices and development. "Practice" along with the student. Question yourself as much as you question the student and truly have conversations.

Advice from Sheree Rensel:

I have learned I can do nothing to MAKE them love teaching. I can model the mechanics. I can sing praises. However, you just never know what they are thinking or their attitude about their experiences. You just have to hope for the best and want them to be able to experience the joy of teaching.

Web Resources

IAD's Teacher Toolbox - A section on this site devoted to new teachers.

Teacher Mentoring Page - by Sheree Rensel

Advice for Beginning Teachers - by Sheree Rensel

NEW TEACHER'S SURVIVAL GUIDE from McGraw-Hill (pdf file). Several useful forms have been included with this New Teacher's Survival Guide along with guides for organization, student conduct, planning your first day, and more

Confidence for Teachers - Helpful Hints for Beginning Teachers. Article by Jane Bluestein, Ph.D.

New Teachers- A page with many resources for new teachers. This one has a focus on teachers in the UK.

Hints for a Better Student Teaching Experiencearticles by Pam Stephens. Scroll down to the articles as well as excellent advice on lesson planning. Pam is a professor at Northern Arizona Universisty.

Top 11 Traits of a Good Teacher from Reach Every Child. Article by Alan Haskvitz

What Makes A Good Teacher? by Marie F. Hassett, Ph.D.
Triad journaling: A tool for creating professional learning communities by Silva, Diane Yendol

Many Ways to Reach Parents - suggestions from Scholastic

Eight Secrets of Good Class Design: tips from Scholastic - adaptable to the art room.

Freeology - forms for teachers - a number of forms

Forms

Submitted by: Pam Stephens
Teacher Candidate Field Experience Rubric

OBJECTIVES

It is my goal to help make your teacher candidate field experience as beneficial and successful as possible. For that reason, I am providing a set of learning objectives and an assessment rubric to help guide your field experience. These tools are meant only as guidelines, not as all inclusive of everything you must do; however, using the objectives as you plan and using the assessment rubric for self-evaluation will help you to focus on some of the most important aspects of quality, comprehensive art teaching.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR TEACHER CANDIDATE FIELD EXPERIENCE

The teacher candidate will

1. Effectively and regularly plan grade-appropriate interdisciplinary, arts-based lessons and assessment to meet the learning needs of a culturally and economically diverse group of learners;

2. Efficiently deliver (including re-teaching when necessary) in a variety of ways interdisciplinary arts-based lessons;

3. Consistently monitor and track the learning and behaviors of all students;

4. Effectively and consistently communicate with students, parents, and teachers about student progress in learning and behaviors;

5. Adequately demonstrate competencies in art history, criticism, aesthetics, production, and correlation between and among the disciplines of the arts and other content areas;

6. Persistently address Arizona’s Academic Standards and Accountability (AASA) for the Visual Arts as well as district and national goals and learning objectives;

7. Constantly follow and comply with all campus and district codes of conduct for faculty, staff, and students;

8. Demonstrate a consistent willingness to accept and utilize constructive criticism from cooperating teachers and university supervisors; and

9. Establish a commitment to the field of comprehensive arts education.

10. Regularly reflect upon teaching experiences.

Teacher Candidate Field Experience Assessment Rubric

Objective	Superior (Exceeds Expectations)	Proficient	Limited Proficiency (Below Expectations)	Unsatisfactory
Effectively and regularly plan grade-appropriate interdisciplinary, arts-based lessons and assessment to meet the learning needs of a culturally and economically diverse group of learners	Plans on a daily basis grade-appropriate interdisciplinary, arts-based lessons and assessment to meet the learning needs of a culturally and economically diverse group of learners	Plans less than daily, but regularly, and attends to grade-appropriate interdisciplinary, arts-based lessons and assessment to meet the needs of culturally and economically diverse group of learners	Plans occasionally with generally grade-appropriate interdisciplinary, arts-based lessons and assessment to meet the learning needs of a culturally and economically diverse group of learners	Does not plan on a regular basis with grade-appropriate interdisciplinary, arts-based lessons and assessment nor attempts to address the learning needs of a culturally and economically students
Efficiently deliver (including re-teaching when necessary) in a variety of ways concise and accurate interdisciplinary arts-based lessons	Always delivers (including re-teaching when necessary) in a variety of ways succinct and accurate interdisciplinary arts-based lessons	Usually delivers and re-teaches in a variety of ways succinct and accurate interdisciplinary arts-based lessons	Delivers and/or re-teaches in a limited ways interdisciplinary arts-based lessons that are sometimes rambling or inaccurate	Does not deliver or re-teach concise and accurate interdisciplinary arts-based lessons or is ineffective
Consistently monitor and track the learning and behaviors of all students	Always monitors and tracks the learning and behaviors of all students	Usually monitors and tracks the learning and behaviors of all students	Sometimes monitors and tracks the learning and behaviors of all students	Never or irregularly monitors and tracks the learning and behaviors of all students
Effectively and consistently communicate with students, parents, and teachers about student progress in learning and behaviors	Always communicates with all or most stakeholders about student progress in learning and behaviors	Usually communicates with all or most stakeholders about student progress in learning and behaviors	Communicates with some stakeholders about student progress in learning and behaviors	Rarely or never communicates with stakeholders about student progress in learning and behaviors
Adequately demonstrate competencies in art history, criticism, aesthetics, production, and correlation between and among the disciplines of the arts and other content areas	Demonstrates complete competencies in art history, criticism, aesthetics, production, and correlation between and among the disciplines of the arts and other content areas	Demonstrates general competencies in art history, criticism, aesthetics, production, and correlation between and among the disciplines of the arts and other content areas	Demonstrates somewhat less than adequate competencies in art history, criticism, aesthetics, production, and correlation between and among the disciplines of the arts and other content areas	Rarely, never, or inappropriately demonstrates competencies in art history, criticism, aesthetics, production, and correlation between and among the disciplines of the arts and other content areas
Persistently address Arizona’s Academic Standards and Accountability (AASA) for the Visual Arts as well as district and national goals and learning objectives	Always addresses AASA as well as district, state, and nationals goals and learning objectives for the visual arts	Usually addresses the AASA as well as district, state, and nationals goals and learning objectives for the visual arts	Sometimes addresses the AASA as well as district, state, and nationals goals and learning objectives for the visual arts	Never or inappropriately addresses the AASA as well as district, state, and nationals goals and learning objectives for the visual arts
Constantly follow and comply with all campus, district, and NAU codes of conduct for faculty, staff, and students	Always follows and complies with all codes of conduct for faculty, staff, and students	Follows and complies with most codes of conduct for faculty, staff, and students	Follows and complies with some codes of conduct for faculty, staff, and students	Disregards and rarely complies with codes of conduct for faculty, staff, and students
Demonstrate a consistent willingness to accept and utilize constructive criticism from cooperating teachers and university supervisors	Always accepts and utilizes constructive criticism from cooperating teachers and university supervisors	Usually accepts and utilizes constructive criticism from cooperating teachers and university supervisors	Sometimes accepts and utilizes constructive criticism from cooperating teachers and university supervisors	Rarely or never accepts and utilizes constructive criticism from cooperating teachers and university supervisors

Reflective Commentary

Submitted by: Pam Stephens
Lesson Plan Summary

Standards: ______________________________________________________________

Title of Lesson

Enduring Idea

Grade Level

Measurable Objective(s)

Students will:

Essential Questions

Resources and Materials

Motivation

Activities / Sequence

Objective

Novice

Acceptable

Mastery

Assessment RubricStudent Reflection

Name _______________________ Teacher ______________Date ____________

Submitted by Pam Stephens

Weekly Schedule - Student Teaching

Name __________________________ School _________________________________

Week of ________________________________________________________________

Use this key to describe your activities for each time period each day.

Observing = O Assisting = A Duty = D
Planning = P Teaching = T School Function = SF

Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday

Cooperating Teacher _____________________________________________________

Notes
ADVICE FOR NEW TEACHERS

From Tina:

I just finished my fifth year of teaching art. It was also my first year at the high school level. I taught three years of junior high before that, and a year of elementary before that.

The things that I feel would be most helpful to a new art teacher would be with regard to organization, discipline, and assessment. Figuring out how to pass out materials, store materials, storing projects, organizing lesson plans for quick reference, storing sample projects--that was all stuff I had to figure out on my own. It depends a lot upon the type of room they have, storage, etc. But some general guidelines would be helpful, I'm sure.

I think discipline has always been a big issue with me, and it varies greatly with each grade level. It might be good for new teachers to get copies of discipline procedures used by other teachers in their building, because they usually have some good ideas! But my biggest tip is that all consequences for misbehavior be logical consequences. I don't believe in "punishment" because it doesn't teach students how to make the right choices. I believe in logical consequences that teach students how to self-discipline.

Assessment is also very important, and it's a real challenge. I challenge myself constantly to use authentic assessment--that makes sense to me and, more importantly, to the students. I use rubrics for almost everything. I develop one for almost every project, with specific criteria that is aligned with my course of study and with the outcomes for the project itself. Kids need to understand what their "grade" means and how they got it. I know art teachers who look at a project and just write a percentage down for it. How can that percentage be justified? It baffles me. Good assessment should not baffle anyone, so I highly recommend rubrics as a means of authentic assessment. There are tons of rubric websites out there. And make sure kids know up front what the grading criteria is--show them the rubric ahead of time, if necessary.

I think the last tip I have for new teachers is they need to know who and what their resources are, and they need information about the basic day to day procedures in the classroom and in their building. I was at that junior high for three years, and there were some very basic things that I still didn't know until that third year! Communication is so important.

Advice for Elementary Teacher from Patti Caiola

Patti's list of 10 Things I wish I had known when I started Elementary Art:

1. How to control the mess that quickly accumulates in the Art room. Leave enough time in each art class period to have an effective clean up with the student's help. If you do not tidy up after every class, you have a ton of extra work to do at the end of the day. Kids are great helpers and love to wash desks, put pencils away, help carry paintings to the Drying Rack, etc.

2. Classroom teachers do not always see you as a teacher, but as a babysitter while they have their planning period. Be an advocate for your program, even if it is just hanging up the art in the school with a brief explanation of what the kids learned in that lesson. You have to prove to some of these teachers that you are a hard working educator as well, and that they can learn so much from every subject in our class.

3. Kids wanting to sharpen their pencils is contagious, much like bathroom brakes, Kleenex, and water fountain drinks. If one goes, they all suddenly have to go.

4. Cafeteria lunch trays make excellent holders for daily supplies: easy to wipe down, they catch spills from going all over the tables, pencils don't roll away. I put one tray for each table or group and it has the pencils, sharpeners, erasers and any other supplies that are needed for the class on the tray. The kids put all the supplies on the tray when they clean up. Student helpers collect supplies from the trays.

5. Crayon and marker boxes will tear/break from the bottom from repeated use if you do not tape them closed. Those Gladware plastic tubs can be purchased cheap from the $1 store and are great for storing Crayons and markers.

6. Changing the volume of your voice can really effect the volume of the talking in your classroom. If you talk quiet, the kids will get quiet to listen. Students love art, don't want it to get taken away, so if the punishment means something to them it is more effective. Make taking their art away for the day a consequence for braking your rules.

7. What to do with all the left over Construction Paper scraps? This is a mess that can get out of control quickly. I make 3 boxes and label them Warm Colored, Cool Colored, and Neutral Scraps. Every time I cut down paper and have leftovers, I put them in one of the boxes. When we work on a project where the kids need to use the scraps, they can just go over to the labeled box and pull out the color they need.

8. How to use the lamination machine. Art posters and the like can get pretty expensive. Cheap alternative: make your own. Library books (free), color copier, and a lamination machine. I have made quite a few posters for my specific lessons from this method. Kinko's copiers will enlarge and crop the color photos. Postcard books are also a great and cheap way to get a lot of pictures. Pull them apart, number the set, and laminate.

9. Always try the project first with the same materials the students will be using. Laminate and save this example so you won't have to make it again next year when you do the lesson again. I have laminated the actual written out lesson on the back of the flat teacher examples. The completed example can help the different types of learners in your room.

10. It gets easier your second year, and easier your third, etc. You pick your best lessons and do them again the 2nd year, you already have all these lesson examples made, and lessons written, your discipline is more refined, you have more confidence in yourself, you know what your kids can do at each grade level and choose new lessons that will be more successful for those ages.

Advice for Elementary Teachers from Maria Smith

What I learned in my 20 years of teaching--is to work very hard to bridge the gap between the classroom teacher and me as the art teacher. I do this through information sharing. I intensely integrate the art program, I send teachers a monthly newsletter of what I am doing with heir students, and meet with teachers to get more input, I display all over the school. If you don't tell them--they have no idea what you are doing. This is very successful and I have the respect I feel my program deserves.