In the Art Room: A Journey to Discovering Your WHY, Part 1

Images from the paintings created by the teachers in my school after I lead then in a PD to discover their WHY. You can read all about that and see videos of the process here. 

If you decide to do a workshop like this in your school or educational setting, please know that this was created by me and I would greatly appreciate acknowledgement. I'd also love to hear from you! My email address is cassieart75@gmail.com. 

Yesterday I released three new podcast episodes that I hope you'll take a listen to and enjoy. In this blog post, I want to focus on one of those episodes, Ep. 8: Discovering Your WHY. 

Before you listen to this podcast, I want you to know...it's what I'm gonna call a "working podcast". What I mean by that is I want you to carve a mere 20 minutes out of your day, grab some paper and markers, flair pens, crayons, whatever and sit down with me. And think. And dig a little deep. And create. Here's a little more info:

What we're going to cover are three questions. I'll walk you thru them a little bit here...but listening to the podcast is really going to take in all of what I have to share. Each of these questions only requires four responses. I would encourage you to unplug, settle back, and answer from your heart. Not how you think I want you to respond, now how you think your favorite teacher on IG would answer but YOU.

Me lookin' like a crazy person while presenting. I'm just a lil passionate, that's all. 

I did this workshop recently in a two and a half hour session at Get Your Teach On. We spent a lot of time thinking and creating and walked out of that workshop with a strong sense of WHY we teach. Discovering this is empowering for you. It will give you a sense of purpose on those days when you need it the most. Not to mention sharing your WHY with your students allows them to know the importance you place on spending your days with them. They will learn their value in your classroom. 

I'm going to be sharing a portion of my workshop in this blog post. I won't be sharing my responses to the questions with you here but you can hear them in my podcast. 

FINAL THOUGHT: I would love (and share!) to see your responses and creations! Feel free to email me or, if you post to Instagram, tag me in your stories or posts. In doing so, I'll assume you are okay with me sharing your creations here or on my Instagram. Okay! Let's get started!

You can answer this question any way you like, whether that be literally or figuratively. All I want are four little words. Don't over think this. Your knee-jerk answer is what we're lookin' for.

Again, same thing. There is no right or wrong answer, just YOUR answer. What YOU want your students to spend time with you doing. What's important to YOU as their teacher. 

You got it? You got your four responses to the three questions? Great. Now let's prioritize those lists with some colorful pie charts. This is where all of those random art supplies you gathered up are going to come in handy. 

Look at your responses to the question of what do you want your students to LEARN. My kids have 30 minute art classes. It's impossible to pack in everything that I wish. So discovering my Top Four and prioritizing them really helped me. I'm hoping it will do the same for you. Here are the pie charts I created. 

You'll notice that sometimes I answered my questions literally and, other times, figuratively. I also decided to make mine colorful because I wanted to make them attractive enough to hang in my art room. 

Developing these pie charts really got my wheels turning about my WHY. 

And I hope it does the same for you.

I'm going to end the blog post here and hope that you'll take a listen to the podcast. I feel that I have so much more to say on this topic...so I'm going to say that this one "will be continued...". Until then, I'd love to share with you a my WHY along with that of many other teachers. You can take a look and, hopefully be inspired, right here.