We kick off this year in conversation with Alex McKean, an art teacher from St. Johns County. As you’ll hear her explain, even pre-kindergarten art class is not immune from the culture wars certain politicians are waging on public education.Nonetheless, she has a hopeful vision for the future and works to make sure her art classroom is a place where all students have fun while learning new skills and gain confidence in themselves.

Episode 19 Show Notes:

Guest

Show Resources

Transcript

GuestAlex McKean, Art teacher, St. Johns County

ResourcesArts Curriculum – St. Johns County School District (stjohns.k12.fl.us)Visual Arts Resources (fldoe.org)Arts in Education - Division of Arts and Culture - Florida Department of State (myflorida.com)Arts Education Matters: We Know, We Measured It (Opinion) (edweek.org)The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal StudiesNew evidence of the benefits of arts education (brookings.edu)

TranscriptAndrew Spar, FEA President: Hi, this is FEA president Andrew Spar. To stay on top of all the latest news and issues impacting our public schools, be sure to follow FEA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For more information on this podcast, visit feaweb.org/podcast  Sharon Nesvig: You're listening to Educating from the Heart. Thank you for joining our lively conversations with teachers, support professionals, parents, and students, as they share issues that matter most in our public schools. Here are your hosts, Tina Dunbar and Luke Flynt.  Tina Dunbar: Welcome back to another new season of Educating from the Heart. I'm Tina, here with my cohost, Luke. And we’re kicking off the start of a brand-new school year, as close to 3 million Florida students head back to their classrooms. And I bet you can relate to this, Luke. This is an exciting and busy time of the year for parents, students, and for teachers too.Luke Flynt: You are absolutely right, Tina. As a teacher, there was nothing more exciting to me than the start of a new school year. the first day of school was one of my favorite days of the entire calendar year. It was actually my favorite time of the entire calendar year. There was just no other time where you have that sense of joy and hope and optimism of what a new year can bring. I also really looked forward to the start of a new school year as a student.In particular, I looked forward to my band class with Mr. Sammons. He did such a great job of creating a sense of community, a sense of camaraderie that we all wanted to be back together at the start of a new school year.Tina: That sounds like a really wonderful experience, you know, as a parent, it's all about preparing your child for school and completing all the paperwork at the beginning of the school year. And with the recent changes to the law, I anticipate parents will face numerous permission slips this year to allow use of a Band-Aid to lunch selections, even nicknames a student may share with their classmates.Times have really changed, Luke, but my best memories date back to when I was a student. Back to school was filled with so much anticipation. You wanted to check out the new students, the changes in the school building, and the teachers leading your classes. My art teacher Marilyn Price still stands out. She taught me to spend time in reflection and how to process events in the world around me. You know, back then teachers were free to openly talk with their students and answer questions that made you think and expand your curiosity.I truly believe her influence helped me to excel in school. You know, these days, Luke, we really downplay the importance of art and music to student learning and achievement. They weren't afraid to answer questions. I truly believe that sense of freedom and security helped her to help me excel in school.Luke: Oh, it absolutely does. Again, speaking as a former teacher, many of the best lessons that I ever taught came from students’ natural curiosity. And if I had said, “No, I'm sorry. We have to stick to this script or to this page. I can't answer your question.” Just the number of learning opportunities my students would've missed out on are countless. When you talk about the importance of building relationships with students, right? We know that students don't learn from people that they don't like.It is so vitally important that we have that relationship building. And that is, you know, one of the things that all this legislation is intentionally trying to harm, the relationship between the student and the teacher.Tina: And that's why we sat down with an art teacher from St. John's County named Alex McKean. We spoke with her over the summer about her experience over the past school year and her hopes for this upcoming year in light of some of the new restrictions educators are facing.Luke: And, you know, Tina, I don't think it's just a coincidence that when you and I look back on our schooling, we fondly remember an art teacher. Just like Ms. Price that you mentioned and Mr. Salmons for me, Alex really tries to make sure that her students learn art, of course, but not just art. That art is a vehicle for her students to better understand themselves, better understand the world and their role in it.Alex McKean, Art Teacher, St. Johns County: Hi, I'm Alex McKean. I'm from St. Augustine, Florida. I teach elementary school art. I've been doing that for one year. Before that, I taught four years of high school art. This next year will be my sixth year, but I went from high school to elementary, which is a big difference. So, I really feel like this past year was my first year all over again.Tina: You're starting all over again. Wow.  Alex: Yes. I mean worth it. I love them, but definitely… I teach pre-K pre-pre-K through fifth grade. They call them PPEs. I don't know why, but, three-year-olds-Luke: I think I have a good idea.Alex: Three-year-olds to twelve-year-olds. And I used to teach 14 to 19 year olds. And just developmentally the difference is exponential, and they put these three-year-olds and four-year-olds together in this classroom, and they can't do the same things. So, really I spent this year trying to figure out what they can do, because I didn't know. I was like, okay: you can't read, you don't know your shapes, you can't spell your name, you don't really know what a line is. Trying to explain what a line is, is harder than it sounds. Because it's just one of those things that you forget how you learned it. So how do you teach that? How do you teach what a color is?Tina: Well, I would think it would be particularly more difficult now to teach a three year old because, if my math is correct, their first year of life was during 2020.Alex: Yep. So they're very different children,Tina: Right? Because they were not exposed to a lot of things that normal child would be exposed to just going out.Alex: Yeah.Tina: Just experiencing the world. It’s gonna make it difficult.Alex: It, it was challenging. And even for the rest of the grades, like second graders. They hadn't really had a real school year before. So, like getting in line, you know, you can't mute them in real life. So, like getting used to those routines of school that you just sort of assume they know inherently, but that's not how that works. You know, behaviors aren't always kids acting out it's them not knowing how to, I don't want to say behave, but like how to do it the right way. And so you have to teach them how you want them to be. Because otherwise they're not being bad. They just don't know how to be.Tina: It's interesting you mentioned that because one of the things you hear from many teachers is behavior is a real problem across the board, and you approach it from, it's not that they're being bad, they just, you need to set the expectations.Alex: You need to teach them how to be good.Tina: No matter what age then.Alex: Exactly. And you know, at the end of the day, they're children, and we are teachers and we are there to teach them, whether it's art, whether it's how to tie their shoes, you know, whether it's what a cloud is. You know, you're there to teach them not only about your subject matter but about life. And I know that's a bit of a sticky situation in today's day and age, but, you know, that's our job is to prepare them for the world. And that's all we try to do, that and love them.Tina: Do you feel today's sticky situation gets in the way of what you need to do?Alex: I, I do. Um, and I hate to say that, because I love teaching so much, but I do feel that a lot of the issues with teaching now are because we feel these pressures from society. It's not even society. It's people that don't know our profession. We're the teachers. We went to college for this, we know what we're doing in our classroom, and we want to do what's best for kids. And so, they don't understand how these laws and these different regulations and rules affect or how they are going to be enacted in the classroom.Like they look all well and good on paper, but the actual ramifications of them. don't work in the classroom. It shouldn't be all about politics. You know, you shouldn't be making these decisions about an entire profession based on a feeling or something you heard from your cousin's friend.Tina: Do you feel the state has overreached into curriculum?Alex: Yes. I mean, it's so crazy because teachers read these things and we're like, who told them this was a good idea? No teacher told them this was a good idea, for a fact. No one in the classroom was like, yeah, yeah, yeah that's, that's what we should do. Because we know that's not going to be positive in practice. It's just not. And it hasn't been,Luke: So, I could very clearly imagine,