volunteering
Sometimes it seemed to take a lot out of me, volunteering in my kindergartener's classroom once a week reading stories and giving art lessons. I'd even wonder if it was good for me to work with my son's class; maybe he'd start feeling upstaged all the time, the way I used to. (Last night at the Fair I walked past the karaoke stage and still had to look twice to make sure it wasn't my dad up there singing "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrows". I was born to a family of highly entertaining people and one can never be quite sure.)
Yet so many parents have commented to me this summer about how interested their children have become in art. There's no art program here at the grade school level save for what the teachers can incorporate into the curriculum themselves. (They do try.) Even if I finished my college education and became certified to teach, the chances are probably slim to nil the Board could hire an art teacher.
There's a need, though. Whether it's me or someone else doing the teaching (and there are many more qualified people than me), there is a need. That much I can see.
At the end of the last school year I ended up talking to parents who said their children took the art lessons very seriously and spent a lot of time at home on their drawing skills. This week I started thinking about the kids in the kindergarten class who entered something in the Fair's art exhibit. Some of the parents have even asked me if I'm going to be able to volunteer with the art lessons again this year.
...I will, if they let me. It's a different classroom, different grade, different circumstances. Part of me feels afraid to approach the teacher or the school with the request, and the rest of me is hoping against hope anyway that they'll let me do it again, this year.
Even if it was exhausting sometimes, I can see that it was well worth it.
Yet so many parents have commented to me this summer about how interested their children have become in art. There's no art program here at the grade school level save for what the teachers can incorporate into the curriculum themselves. (They do try.) Even if I finished my college education and became certified to teach, the chances are probably slim to nil the Board could hire an art teacher.
There's a need, though. Whether it's me or someone else doing the teaching (and there are many more qualified people than me), there is a need. That much I can see.
At the end of the last school year I ended up talking to parents who said their children took the art lessons very seriously and spent a lot of time at home on their drawing skills. This week I started thinking about the kids in the kindergarten class who entered something in the Fair's art exhibit. Some of the parents have even asked me if I'm going to be able to volunteer with the art lessons again this year.
...I will, if they let me. It's a different classroom, different grade, different circumstances. Part of me feels afraid to approach the teacher or the school with the request, and the rest of me is hoping against hope anyway that they'll let me do it again, this year.
Even if it was exhausting sometimes, I can see that it was well worth it.
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