But with a teenage son, I have insider knowledge of the scope and shortcomings of the information flow at home. The process really reaffirmed for me that reaching out to parents does make a difference. Much of the classroom dynamics were already in place, but certification certainly increased their validity. The process gave me a lot of fresh ideas to benefit students, but those ideas often collided with the rigidity of structure and scheduling. I see art as the great integrator, but I soon came to realize that I'd have to launch my ideas in a microcosm that I could control.
Many good ideas start small anyway.
So I had the guts to go it alone. With funding from a Bight Ideas grant, I organized an interdisciplinary and voluntary class that meets once a week after school. The object is to integrate art with another subject area. It's a very benchmark driven form of independent study, and I mainly function as the encourager for eleven students. Their final artwork must be presented with a research paper.