How do some of the most difficult moments in life also have the greatest moments of joy?
As a teacher covid has been extremely difficult. The isolation I felt living alone and being under lockdown was horrible. The difficulty of teaching students remotely was like learning a new job that no one had ever done before. There were times it felt like the students were draining all I had. Very quickly teachers went from being the heroes to being the villains of the Covid story.
I used my investigation to explore the different ways I felt like the villain and the hero. I used collage and explored media that represented positive or negative feelings. The crows are all black in the images where I’m being drained but the crow shows color in the image representing the positive feelings. I chose to represent the students as crows, after exploring the many different options. The idea that crows are intelligent and tricksters but they also will leave “gifts” for their chosen people represents how I see my students. The joys I have found as a teacher have been from the moments where a student has shown me how much I mean to them by giving me small trinkets, notes, or drawings
The sketchbook pages show my exploration while working on this project. The fence is made out of paper towel from a school bathroom. The fence represents the walls we put between ourselves and other people. I used different mediums on the paper towel to represent fences. I found that watercolor paints created the best solution.
Working on the colors of the text on the crows and what they would say. At first I wrote help, help, help because there are times that students overwhelm me with asking for help constantly. Then I realized that crows don’t say help, they caw. Writing caw, caw, caw perfectly represented the auditory sensation I was looking for.
