The Joy of Teaching Art

During today's 1st grade class I had my students drawing pictures of their home and everyone that lives in it with them. They are doing this as preparation for their pop-up house, which they will begin on their next trip to the class.
This class has Jamari in it, which you may recall from a previous posting. When he finished drawing his home, a blue apartment building, I provided him with a new piece of paper to start the next step. Drawing people was frustrating him. He started over twice, and when I told him that what he was doing was great he accused me of "having to say that" because I am a teacher. This comment brought into perspective some of the wonders of being an art teacher. We do get to like everything that our students make because most of it is wonderful. Having so many students with such different styles is an amazing change of perspective. As a teacher of visual arts, I get to see the wide diversity of "right solutions" to so many different topics. For example, I had one student in my first grade class that drew his apartment with the ground level having a whole floor of doors, like the hallway of his apartment building. While visually his solution was not realistic, it should complex thought and perspective.