Hi! My name is Katie Rindler. A few years ago I stumbled upon an opportunity to teach art in afterschool enrichment programs. This experience helped me realize I really enjoy working with kids and as someone who loved art in high school & college this experience helped me reconnect with a part of myself I had lost touch with. Each year I taught I was drawn more towards fine tuning my skills as an art educator. I am in my second year of the Art Education, initial certification program.
I have continued teaching art the last year I have been in the program, however the way I teach and deliver those teaching has changed a lot. A big factor in this is everything that has happened as a result of the pandemic. Right before the pandemic I was teaching private art classes and after school class at various elementary schools in Westchester County. Within a week of going into lockdown all of the classes I had been teaching were moved to synchronous learning through zoom or were indefinitely put on pause.
Fast forward to the Summer and the Fall I have lost track of the amount of time I have spent thinking about the following in regard to teaching online: lessons that were once taught in person, can they be translated to teaching online?, how can I demonstrate art skills or support a student or is having difficulty in this new virtual environment, how to teach to encourage student engagement and community building. I decided to explore some of these thoughts further with exploring: How are art teachers altering their lesson plans for online learning? For gathering data I have created a short 20 question survey that is broken down into two parts teaching from March-July 2020 and September 2020- present.
In my research I hope to discover the differences in planning, preparing and delivering art lessons in person versus online. I am curious if teachers have been altering their lesson plans, creating new lesson plans or doing something completely different. What it looks like to be teaching remotely at this time, how teachers are introducing art projects, sharing new artists, engaging students, and building community.
While the future of how we will be delivering art lessons is uncertain I am hoping to pull the information that I collect to create a resource to support art teachers in navigating through these times of uncertainty and to help build an ever stronger foundation for what’s to come next.
Image above: At home teaching space.
