What teachers can do to help.
Please remember that teachers are here to help. If you have a problem or need help with something serious, and a teacher doesn't give it the proper attention, please talk to another teacher, administrator or counselor. We also have hotlines and numbers you can call if the matter is too personal to share with us. Hang in there, it gets better!
On the first day of class in January, a student walked in and said he was going to fail my class because he was terrible at art and he hated it. He just needed the credit to graduate. I made an extra effort to teach him the tricks of the trade from the first minute on. By the end of the second week, he went from someone who hated art to someone who drew in his sketchbook for fun in class as well as outside of class. He had quite a few pages of free drawings he did just to practice expressing himself as well as the things we discussed such as composition, unity and consistent finishing techniques. He even drew in the car on the way to and from school. This was one of my biggest triumphs as a teacher this year.
One day, when I was home sick with the stomach flu, I got the call that he had passed away. It really hurt me that I couldn’t be there the next day, during his 3rd hour class, to help my students through the day. I could just imagine them sitting there with that empty chair in front of the door.
The day that I missed was rough. I got an email from the counselors that one of my students didn’t want to talk to any of them or the grief counselors, but demanded to talk to me because she said I was the only teacher who understood her. My “senior daughter” took it really rough too. Did my art club know about this? Who would be there for them that day? There I was, full of angst yet rendered useless with a virus.
A while before all this, a student painted a picture that was kind of rustic looking, but lacked something. With limited color it read, “IT GETS BETTER.” After letting it sit for a while, she decided to liven it up a little with some colored chalk and small words of some of the things that can go wrong in life. It turned out to be prophetic, and when I got back to school I dug it out and hung it up on my wall, without consulting the artist, to help us get through the day. The inspirational colors made it jump out and it was just what my room needed, as several students heeded my invitation to skip class and come down to the art room to be with friends and deal with the tragedy whenever they felt overwhelmed that day. (I also rummaged through 3rd hour’s drawer and noticed that the student had left a drawing in there for me the last time he was in school, proving he had listened to the art making advice I gave him).
Later that day, I saw some teary eyes enter my room in the middle of my 4th period and I proudly directed that student’s attention to the wall and watched her face light up. I’ll never forget that teary smile. It wasn’t just the perfect painting for the moment and the situation; it was her painting.
