Bold and Bright

A few weeks back I was lucky enough to attend the Wisconsin Art Education Association's fall conference. It's always one of the highlights of my year! I love getting to see all my art teachin' friends and going to awesome sessions on art. Before the conference even started, a couple of my paintings were exhibited in the membership show! 

This is Jen Dahl and I at the membership show. Jen is the president of the Wisconsin Art Education Association and was also my elementary cooperating teacher. Before working with Jen, I was pretty set on being a high school teacher. Her influence changed my mind and I decided I wanted to teach elementary instead!

These three ladies are all art teachers from Eau Claire. Kathy Bareis (on the far right) was my middle school cooperating teacher. I worked with her for a couple years before eventually being her student teacher. While teaching middle school with her, I also had the chance to experience and become certified in Adaptive Art.

This year, I presented for the first time! I co-presented with my friend, Tasha Newton, on using Mystery Skype in our classrooms. Over the last year, our classes have skyped each other and played art related games against each other. We started a Facebook page for anyone who is looking for a Skype connection! Check it out and join here! I also presented on using contemporary artist in the elementary classroom! Contemporary art is a passion of mine and I have begun to really focus on it with my curriculum. I am also presenting on this topic at the National Art Ed conference this spring so this was good practice for me! If you would like my resources for the session, email me and let me know!

This is Tasha and I presenting our session on Mystery Art Skype.

 I also met a couple art teacher heroes of mine at the conference! The AMAZING Cassie Stephens flew all the way from Nashville to be our keynote speaker. For anyone who follows my blog regularly, you know how much I LOVE Cassie's projects. I use a lot of her stuff with kindergarten. I also got to meet Nic Hahn (Mini Matisse) who is all a titan in the art blogging world. Nic's as cool and humble as she is an amazing art teacher!

I FINALLY got to meet Nic Hahn (Mini Matisse)!

And I got to meet Cassie Stephens! We're on a first name basis. No big deal...

Last but not least, my amazingly talented girlfriend was award the Best Beginning Art Educator Award!