Reflections on State Art Education Conferences

In the last four weeks I've been fortunate to participate in three state art education conferences - Idaho, New Mexico, and Texas - and have been energized by the dedicated, hard-working art teachers I have met. They all shared commonalities of unbounded enthusiasm for teaching art and engaging their students, despite any number of obstacles they may face.


The first photo here shows me with the officers of the IAEA, Karen Fothergill, Jackie Nelson, Robin Gray, Estuardo Hiram-Miranda, and Keith Farnsworth.  Their conference was held at a wonderful charter school, Garden City Community School. 


The second photo shows me with participants, including Susan Gabbard (former NAEA president), gathered around Phyllis Roybal's laptop. We were watching videos of her very young students building snowmen and conducting experiments in a wet table full of snow in her classroom. Phyllis introduced us all the wonders of colored glue (using food coloring), among many other marvelous things.

The level of workshop offerings and the effort that went into their preparation was outstanding at all these conferences. If we could get newbie art teachers (new to association membership) to attend such conferences, I believe they would always want to come back! Look for articles from these great teachers in upcoming issues of SchoolArts!