About Me & My Ideologies

About Me

I consider myself a compassionate and generous person who is always open to change when presented with new information. I try and apply my flexibility to all areas of my life and maintain a healthy balance between school, work, and time for myself, which can be difficult as the demands of life continue to grow. I am a current student at the University of Akron pursuing a degree and teaching license in Art Education. I am currently employed by Painting with a Twist and I love the constant movement, steady flow of work, and flexibility this job provides. I am involved with many personal activities that feed into my passion of creating, such as sewing, crocheting, crafting, and drawing. I absolutely loved the creative freedom my Final Project for my Educational Technology provided, and I will continue to take courses towards my degree that make time for creative expression. Even though I love to create, I have chosen to walk down a different career path, a path that doesn't lead to having a career as an artist, and below I describe my opinions on why I have made this decision.

My Reasons Why

I believe our generation to be the generation of dreamers, we are so malleable that we can more quickly adapt to any situation presented. Even though we are the generation of dreamers, it is my experience that these dreams do not correlate to goals. Our generation has far simpler goals than those before us. I have seen these goals described: be able to buy a house; have a running car; be able to pay tuition; have some semblance of job security; have good health insurance; and one that seams nearly unattainable- graduate debt free.

In today's economy, art is not a viable career path for the majority of us, myself included. I know the first image that pops into my head when I think artist is- the starving artist. We've seen it throughout history, many artists not making it big until after they are dead. Sure that would be great for your children and their children, if you become famous. But becoming famous has probably the same odds as winning the lottery. But what about now? How do you make it in this world as an artist.

You could go to a fancy art school and follow your passions and get a degree in what you are good at, but a degree does not equal job security in this world today. The video Success in the New Economy was a real eye opener for me, and I recommend you take a look at it below, and see if your opinions on education change like mine did.

Success in the New Economy from Brian Y. Marsh on Vimeo.

I don't want to crush people's dreams, more than anything I want to help them attain those dreams. I would love nothing more than to be an artist for the rest of my life, and I will be, its just I am not going to make art my career. For me, in the economy, there is too much competition associated with being an artist. You compete for commissions, contracts, business, and sales. And from my experience the deadlines are unrealistic and unattainable. Personally I hate the stress associated with competition and deadlines, especially when it concerns something as personal as art, and that is also why I will not make art my career. But for those who love the competition, thrive on tight deadlines, and don't mind the potential job insecurity, I do recommend that you become an artist because you are hardy enough to maintain a career in the arts. I love creating, I love applying all of my skills and knowledge to everything I do, and because of this I consider myself an artist. So if I am this passionate about art, why am I becoming a teacher?

There are a few reasons I chose to follow the path of becoming a teacher. The demand for quality teachers is steadily increasing, and hasn't declined in a long time. There will always be a need for teachers, especially if the retention rates remain as they are currently. This article shows the demand for teachers, and this article explains why teachers quit their jobs. The majority of reasons why teachers quit their jobs is often the overwhelming amount of after hours work they do for their students, low wages compared to other professions, and the emotional toll that occurs because of the feeling of not being listened to. This needs to change, and I feel that if I focus on the balance in my life, teaching will be the career for me.

I specifically chose to specialize in teaching art, not because I want all my students to go out and become artists, but because I believe the major principles that learning art teaches you are necessary to be a well rounded, skilled, and out of the box thinker and problem solver in today's world. By taking an art course you learn to see the world around you differently, interpret visual information in an intuitive way, understand the message behind visual expressions, and learn a different way to discover solutions with creative problem solving. Of course I want my students to find joy in creating art and develop their skills as young artists, but these are the ideas and concepts that I need to teach my students. I need my students to be able to see art in anything they do.

Technology is a great way to gather data on student progress and give feedback in a controlled and documented way. The different tools and skills I have learned over the course of my Educational Technology course will greatly benefit me when I am teaching my students. I feel that I will be confidently able to incorporate digital media into my learning environment by projecting images and videos, incorporating social media to share creations with others, gathering immediate feedback with informal assessments through the use of students personal devices, record lessons in such a way that even if students are absent they won't miss out on the material, and have a better understanding of how creative commons applies to course material. As the teachers of the future, we must be proactive, learn as much as we can, and prepare for the 21st century learners.