Great meeting!

Caren Andrews and Jen Stuart hosted a great meeting of close to 30 art teachers from all over the bay area at San Francisco Friends School on Wednesday October 21st from 8:30-12.

Jen & Caren opened the meeting with the quaker practice of silent time, and then shared a little bit about their program. After a break to move cars the group took tours of the amazing historic building. We then generated small group discussion topics ranging from how to organize meetings to project sharing.

For the future: we would like to meet once or twice a year as an all bay area group in order to visit a variety of schools, make connections and spend a little time in self-generated topics. We will rotate this between weekends and school days in order to better serve more people traveling greater distances. We will meet whenever somebody volunteers to host and facilitate- anyone up for hosting the next meeting?

Regional or special interest groups can be called by anyone at anytime. The East Bay art teacher group is a great example of a group meeting to start collaborations, both with each other and the community, such as the homeless shelter BOSS in Berkeley. They have also talked about starting a website. This group will be meeting in November at Head Royce at 4 pm- location TBA. Please contact Nina Nathan if you are interested in joining them! nnathan@headroyce.org

Another example of this is if anyone wants to figure out how to teach animation, or talk about clay projects, or address issues particular to a specific age group. You don't have to be an expert to call a group together- just plan a date and put out the word!

We hope to work with (and take advantage of) CAIS for things like speakers or all-day workshops, as well as to disseminate announcements. Thank you Jeni Anderson (from Julia Morgan School) for working so hard to plan a professional day in January- look here for more details soon.

The blog will continue to serve, for now, as a place for EVERYONE to share ideas. If you have come to a meeting you will be invited to post, but anyone can request to post- just email Adra. Teachers are also encouraged to add links to galleries of student art in whatever form you have. A small group is also looking for other avenues for us all to communicate, led by Alice Engelmore & Adra Valentine. Just let either of them know if you have any expertise or ideas.