i had perhaps my easiest art teaching day in history today. by way of schedule changes and beginning of the year introductions, my job today was to read to two groups of kindergarteners and one sixth grade class. i read "the dot" by peter reynolds because whether you're 5 or 95, the message is powerful. and i realized how much energy i had and that not all read-a-louds are created equal. how many times, if we're tired, can we just go through the pages, reading the words. you can read or you can READ. but today i felt alive, still full of emotional energy, adding dramatic pauses of my own and lively question and answer sessions along the way. the sun's still out, days are warm, flu season hasn't hit yet and they're all on their best behavior, i get that. but what i'm hoping will last is the concept behind what we read. throughout the year when they're tempted to compare their work with someone else's, i can say "remember the dot", referring back to the common art language we established this week. this reminds me of when i was little and i'd ask my dad to tell me a story about when he was little. most nights he would read to me and then we'd do the "adventures of doug as a young boy" too, which meant in essence that i got two stories. i think he was onto my scheme, but if he was he didn't mind. even if he was tired from work, i could never tell. and even if i'd heard the same story 20 times, i loved it just the same. with all this reading and story telling going on, you might really enjoy "the reading promise" by alice ozma. written when she is in college, it is a reflection on the promise she and her dad, a school librarian, made to read to each other every night. what started as a 100 day goal when alice was in 3rd grade turned into much, much more than that; taking on several dimensions as family life grew and evolved. happy reading!
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