Professional Development and In-service… It has been awesome!

I was a little worried about some of the professional development (PD) sessions coming up for the start of the school year. Sometimes you just never know if the PD sessions are relevant to art teachers – as our last NAEA Monthly Mentor and colleague, Leslie Gates spoke of in her July blog.  I can say without a doubt that I have thoroughly enjoyed my PD sessions and teacher in-service this past week.

Monday, the art teachers took a tour and a hike to see the fabulous new museum for American art being built in the NW Arkansas region - Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (www.crystalbridges.org).  This is going to be an amazing resource for our community and abroad – not only for artists and art educators, but also for science, math, history, and language arts educators and classes. The education department is planning great things!  In the photo below, you will see an image of the building in progress. They are about 30% done with the construction. We cannot wait for this amazing museum to be utilized by so many in our region and abroad!  I encourage you to visit the website to see the progress of the structure and to learn more. 

 Crystal Bridges construction - August 10, 2009

Tuesday, I presented my session presentations and others from this year’s past NAEA conference in Minneapolis, MN.  I also shared a multitude of materials and resources I collected for our art department in Fayetteville.  What was so great about this in-service was that many of us art folk shared ideas with each other about things that worked and did not work in our art classrooms.  I also felt like I got to know so many of our art teachers in our department so much better, too.  A big thank you to our art department for all that you do and share with so many!

Then on Wednesday and Thursday, we had a speaker, Jeff Burgard, talk about Gateway to Mastery (http://www.jjburgard.com/). This was something some teachers were doing, other teachers were not, and many of us that had just joined the team a little over a year ago weren’t really sure what Gateway to Mastery meant.  Well, I do not even know where to begin about the fantastic ideas and thoughts spinning in my head with the ideas from these sessions, so I think I will chew on those ideas some more and come back in my next blog and write about the ideas Jeff Burgard gave to all of the teachers.

I am very excited for this upcoming school year – it did not take too long to make up with my first love – art education! I hope that my other love of art making can forgive me for its neglect while I get ready for the school year.

Are you looking forward to a new school year? What are your professional development sessions like?

~ Nikki F. Kalcevic