New School Year and Drawing Materials Exploration

Welcome new Byam families, and welcome back to all others!! I hope you all had a fun and relaxing summer! I spent some of the summer months working with the Massachusetts Department of Education on curriculum framework revisions. Our current art curriculum standards, which outline what students should know and be able to do at each grade level, are from 1999, so were overdue for an update! In 2014, a revised version of the National Core Art Standards were released, so along with other art educators and education professionals from around the state, I worked on updating our state standards to reflect the updated national standards. It was a lot of work and wonderful to meet and collaborate with other educators from around Massachusetts. My art curriculum will continue to be mostly based on the current standards this year, but we are excited to have the new framework finished and released in the coming year.

We kicked off the new school year last week at Byam, and things are off to a great start. The first couple of weeks are all about getting used to rules and routines and refreshing ourselves on what it means to be an artist in the Byam art room. Students are starting off the year exploring drawing materials, "getting their feet wet" by trying some drawing tools they may have used last year as well as trying some new ones (like charcoal!)

It has been really nice to see Byam students again after summer break, and I look forward to an exciting year in art!




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