#that i taught 6th grade language arts

[mythalism]

call me crazy but there is a difference between treating your adult players like they are new to the world and treating your adult players like they have the memory of a goldfish and the vocabulary of a 9 year old

[bugtransport]

sorry to bitch at my grown age but yeah re: last post i have so many issues with the way english ("language arts") is taught or at least was taught to me. and i can really only assume that it's gotten worse since then. like if i were to tell you that i, the guy who has Apparently made a name for himself [checks notes] yelling in public about how every single thing in kamen rider x ties back to jin keisuke's father whether they meant it to or not, very nearly failed pretty much every english class i had to take in school from 6th grade on because you could not pay me to waste my time analyzing a piece of writing that i didn't care about or find remotely compelling... would you believe me or do i need to crack into my old school district's dusty old site and retrieve my transcripts

[fishmech]

cursive wasn't an everyday art, it was just a way to write things. and frankly treating it as inherently more artful than other hands is a lil offensive lol. and like no, cursive DIDN'T celebrate personality and individual style? in schooling you were supposed to do just the opposite. my father and most of my grandparents could tell you of being hit in school because their hand wasn't closely attuned enough to whatever their particular school said was "correct" cursive (and none of those schools, across decades and locales, agreed with each other tbh). luckily my mom's school wasn't that harsh, nor was mine.

perhaps more importantly though, there are many different kinds of cursive hands that have been taught in different places at different times even in the same language. the kind of cursive i was taught in elemenatary school until the district halted it in 6th grade was a lot different than, for example, my great-grandmother's cursive or my grandfather's cursive on the other side of the family. i needed additional time to study the style both of those relatives used because they used different letterforms from me, and from each other! and these relatives were ones who were still born in the 20th century and who I actually met and knew in life!!

when i start getting into stuff from my much older relatives in the late 19th century, after they learned english even, the hands get very very difficult for me to read. my grandma who is still alive and met many of those people if only briefly while they were alive, who has been the family's center for tracking the genealogy and keeping the family trees - she also has trouble reading them. obviously half the issue is the hand being heavily influenced by styles used in other languages, but the other half is they're just plain archaic styles, thoroughly acceptable to use over a hundred years ago but if I had tried writing in that style during the grades where we still had to put up with cursive I'd have had grades knocked off for fucking up the lessons!

also there's literally nothing stopping people from still using cursive if they like to use cursive for their personal use. though frankly it kind of sucks for that and full on calligraphy looks a lot nicer and is more fun.

and you know, stating that it was removed to streamline things? it had also been introduced to streamline things, in a world with rather significant differences in what you were using to write. and it was ultimately like many other common hands, just a passing fad on the long historical trend.

On one hand I understand not teaching cursive in school anymore, because it actually is slower than regular handwriting and almost everything is typed on a keyboard now anyways.

On the other hand, so much of our (even recent!) history was written in cursive, and having a whole generation of kids who can't read letters written by their grandparents, momentos saved by their great-grandparents, or even photo albums from theur immediate family seems like a dangerously quick way to detach us from previous generations.

And on the third, related but slightly malformed hand, I feel bad that yet another form of small, everyday art that brings joy in the middle of mundane tasks, which celebrates personality and individual style and self-expression, is about to fade into obscurity because it wasn't efficient enough for today's world to put up with.

Like... if we continue to whittle away the small arts out of every day life, what's going to be left except stark, ruthless pragmatism?

Maybe writing a grocery list is less mundane when you get to feel elegant for a moment. Maybe you're a little more proud of what you write when you see it flow together like a painting

[danielleurbansblog]

Meet This Author: Fern Brady

Q: What gave you the inspiration for the Thyreins Galactic Wall Series?  Thyrein’s Galactic Wall was born in my 6th grade classroom. As part of the 6th grade curriculum, I taught world cultures along with my English Language Arts class. So, as we learned about geography and its connection to human development, we also created our own planets with their geography and their humans. As we…

[lyllith]

what class do you teach?

this upcoming year i will just be teaching 7th grade language arts!!!

last school year i taught...

6th grade language arts

6th grade social studies

8th grade English 1

so this is a welcome break from the chaos of my first year!

[blue-eyed-bloodstains]

Look out of the nearest window. What do you see? Details, please. well it’s still dark out right now, sunrise isn’t for another hour but I see illuminated in the lampposts our driveway and the silhouettes of his Jeep in front of the house, and our neighbor’s house as well as the outline of her car parked next to hers and her front porch steps

When you think of the word “posh”, what springs to mind? British lol especially skits from Michael McIntyre (brit comedian)

When you have chocolate, do you eat it room temperature? yeah always

Or are you like me and stick the bar into the fridge first? nope only if it’s like chocolate ice cream from the grocery store

What’s the most shocking thing that’s happened in your part of town? umm no idea to be honest? ours is very small and quiet up along the backroads for the most part so anything shocking would be probably be in Reading or surrounding towns

Which brand are your headphones/earbuds? I have a pair of white Apple earphones and yes, with the chord attached 

Do you see planes fly over your house at all? all the time, our small airport is about 5-10 mins down the road so planes and occasional choppers flying overhead pretty low

Are there any constellations you recognize just by looking at them? yeah I always know Orion, I’ve never really gotten how to recognize others but we can see a lot of em here

Which room of your house/apartment do you spend the most time in? living room

Which insect do you find the most beautiful? butterflies, some fuzzy caterpillars too I love the patterns

Did you have crafts/woodwork at school growing up? I had shop once in 6th grade, loved it. I had art class in middle school 7th grade where one of my best girlfriends taught me how to draw basic anime characters and we did paper mache, made a clay pot, did some weaving...

If so, what was the best assignment you did for it? I loved it all, I love art and making things. especially when I learned how to do shading with drawings and oil pastels

Do you have a friend who likes to tell you everything? yeah

What was the last thing you got very excited about? not much lately, it’s been hell breaking loose lately You can go to any city in any country you want. Which city do you go to? London or somewhere in Italy

Do you like gardening? If so, what do you grow? I’ve never done any but I’d love to grow white roses and homegrown veggies and fruits

Do you enjoy puzzle games? If so, which one’s your favourite? yeah, I love crosswords mostly 

Is there a substance you avoid at all costs? If so, what is it and why? I mean I’ve never done any hard drugs and never really even wanted to so...I guess any substance where you’d have to shoot up. I hate needles, I’d never wanna get desperate enough to need to use them on myself constantly

What would you love to live next door to? a liquor store or bar

What gives you nostalgia? lots of things

What’s the best thing about fall? the colors 

What’s the worst thing about fall? certain dates that happen during...

Do you get cold easily? Or are you constantly hot? complete opposite. I’m constantly overheating due to an illness of mine so it’s very hard to deal every day especially with certain temperatures 

When you think of a classy drink, what comes to mind first? martini

Do you prefer eating out or cooking your own meals? eating out, I can’t cook 

Which language do you think is the most complicated to learn? every language has it’s difficulties so any of em

Is there a place that you might call your second home? his arms

How do you imagine your later life to look like? no fucking clue anymore...

What is a job you would never in a million years want to do? ask Mike Jobs lol there’s a show specifically to answer this 

Is there a piece of jewelry that you feel naked without? my engagement ring

Do you ever “go commando”? yeah sometimes

Do you ever try to make words out of number sequences you see? no

What’s the sweetest thing someone’s done for you? loved me...

Which wild animals are a common sight in your area? what isn’t, actually? lol we have a lot of wildlife and cattle around here given the farmlands...it’s PA, man. 

What’s the weirdest building in your city? the Pagoda given the design but it’s beautiful, especially at night with the red lights lit up 

How do you keep in touch with friends usually? texting/messaging

Do you get a lot of visitors? not a soul

Do you recognize friends’/family’s vehicles by sound? in the past one or two yeah, but right now my fiance’s Jeep. always.

Which Disney villain is your favourite? Scar

On a regular day, what do you usually do at 3 o'clock in the afternoon? if I’m not dozing, usually watching tv and scrolling on my phone

What’s something new you’ve just recently learned? not sure

Which possession would you not want to inherit from a relative? their reputation.

What is something you would never dare to do in public? anything that draws attention to me

Would you/ did you have a hen night/bachelorette party? haven’t gotten there yet, still haven’t been able to even plan the wedding...somewhere down the line maybe

Has anyone taken you on holiday somewhere? If so, where? yeah, my fiance to VA back in 2016 to where he was stationed while in the Navy and back in 2021 to LA I got to go on a work trip with him finally since I never can otherwise

Have you taken somebody on holiday? If so, where did you taken them? no I don’t have the money

Who do you see as an iconic star? too many to list

Have you ever been to a vineyard? yeah

Are there any swans around where you live? I haven’t seen any but who knows, possibly

Does anyone in your inner circle struggle with addiction? try my entire family, including myself

Has anyone told you lately that you have a nice smile? nope and I never believe it or see it when they do

How did you spend your last birthday? was just three weeks ago and spent it here alone...DoorDashed myself a nice steak dinner from Outback, that’s it..

[quartz-the-cosmic-manta]

ooo story time!

I went to a (private) catholic school for elementary and middle school. for kindergarten to 4th grade we had the normal specials as a class (art, music, pe, library/media, and computer), and a different special for each day of the week. after 5th grade, the media special was replaced with a language for each grade:

5th grade: ASL

6th grade: Greek & Latin roots (counting that as a language[s?])

7th grade: Italian

8th grade: Chinese

there was one teacher who taught the 5th-7th grade languages (I guess because she was able to. Greek & Latin and Italian were removed after the teacher got a better job.), and there was a chinese lady who taught Chinese.

my grade/class was the reason why that school stopped teaching Chinese.

*for non americans, that’s what you attend between the ages ~11-14 btw

[mormoncoverup]

My middle school Language Arts teacher saved my life

Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life. Ms. Alan* enters our lives Our school district had 6th, 7th and 8th grade in the middle school I attended. my sister’s Stefanie* and Courtney* both attended the middle school before I did. Courtney had the gifted-class teacher, Ms. Alan*. Ms. Alan taught language arts and reading to the middle school “gifted kids”. Ms. Alan…

[sagau-my-beloved]

You + Me

= Writers who bs their essays with high grades because we have better presentation than anyone else /j

Honestly though!!!

Language arts has always been my favorite subject since like middle school, I've only ever taken one non honors english class from 6th-12th grade and it wasn't even of my own free will, it was cause my guidance counselor screwed up and I decided to just go with it

I have a funny story, and basically it's that in my 11th grade ap English class, which was taught by a teacher who had never even taught an honors english class before, I actually got referenced by name because I was apparently the first person that had ever used a semi colon correctly, without being told to, on a writing assignment in her class

And then for the rest of that year whenever there was a semi colon used in some example work everybody would look at me, and then the people who sat close to me would ask "Is that yours?" and it never was 💀

But honestly I never had to try in any of those classes because it always at least looked like I knew what I was talking about

Sadly for college I only had to take one semester of a language arts class in order to get the last Gen Ed credit I needed, so no more of that

That one class was pretty cool though, the professor was pretty young and for the final all we had to do was compile the work that we did for that semester in a Zine, I drew a really cool skeleton on the front of mine in white pen, it was awesome 👌

[donnasweett]

“YA should be taught in schools” crowd what do you have to say about my 6th grade language arts teacher banning the clique book series from our reading log because they weren’t “real literature” i really wanna know i’m curious to get the temperature of the room

[uncleasad]

We had home ec as a 6-week elective in middle school. I think I probably ended up in it all 3 years. In 6th grade, we weren’t allowed to cook. In one of the other years, we made potato skins one week, and I think cookies the other year? I think we did sewing all 3 years; I have a drawstring sorta-bag as physical proof of one year (and maybe we made pillows another year?). I have no idea what we did the rest of the weeks. Honestly, I remember almost nothing of it; I still can’t sew, and I certainly didn’t learn anything about cooking besides following those two recipes (the cookies were disgusting). It was a disappointment. 6 weeks of my life each year, and I got nada. At least with the foreign language electives, I can still count to 10 in German and Spanish!

I also had the Industrial Arts elective at least 2 of the 3 years. Somewhere I still have the peace sign ☮️ we made out of plywood the one year. We also leaned drafting.

In high school, I know we had a wood shop and an auto shop (I think they were removed in a renovation after I graduated, though). I believe there was a home ec classroom on that “vocational” hall, too; I don’t know what sort of classes they taught, though. (I was on that hall only 2 semesters, for the “business applications” software courses.)

Honestly, I learned more about cooking going camping with Scouts than I did in school. And everything else from my mom, who was a home ec major in college. (And she was a home ec major in college because her mother—a math and chemistry major in college—was the youngest daughter in the family and got married not knowing anything about cooking, and she was determined her daughters would not repeat this error. There’s a lot I’d like to deconstruct there, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll stop here 😂)

keep seeing posts saying kids should learn to cook at school...I assumed home ec was compulsory everywhere

feel free to put in the tags how much specifically. we did cooking classes between ages 12 and 14, and learnt a range of stuff from basic meals, cooking skills like chopping veggies, baking, etc

[alittlelife]

The Average Fourth Grader Is a Better Poet Than You (and Me Too) by Hannah Gamble. Published March 5th, 2013

While in graduate school at the University of Houston, I supplemented my income by working as a writer in residence for Writers in the Schools (WITS). I was with WITS for three years, during which I visited third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms, and worked with groups of students visiting the Menil museum of art, the Houston Historical Society, and the Houston Arboretum.

When first hired by WITS, I expected that working to explain some of my favorite poems to fourth graders would result in me becoming a better teacher of poetry. What I wasn't expecting was that (thanks to having my brain blown apart on a weekly basis as I browsed my students' folders of barely legible poems) I would become a better poet.

Here are some lines written by students in grades 3rd-6th:

"The life of my heart is crimson.”

[Writing about a family member's recent death:]

"My brother went down/ to the river and put dirt on.” "Peace be a song, silver pool of sadness” "Away went a dull winter wind that rocked harshly, and bent you said, 'Father, father'.”

[Writing about a terminal illness:]

"I am feeling burdened and I taste milk…… I mumble, ‘Please, please run away.’ But it lives where I live.” "The owls of midnight hoot like me shutting the door to nothing.”

[Writing about life as a movie:]

"The choir enters, and the director screams 'Sing with more terror!!!'”

"I have provisions. Binary muffins. It's an in/out/in/out kind of universe. We cannot help you, this is a universe factory. A sound of rolling symbols. Disappearing rocks, screams of lizards. Sanity must prevail. Save vs. Do Not."

"I, the star god, take bones from the underworlds of past times to create mankind.”

These young writers are addressing subjects that still obsess poets fifty years older: sadness, death, love, responsibility, aging, family, loneliness, and refuge…and they are addressing these subjects in language that is new, and thus has the power to emotionally effect a well-seasoned (/jaded) reader. The average fourth grader is able to do this because she hasn't been alive long enough to know how to do it (and by “it” I mean talk about the world) any other way.

Story time: When I was a child I believed that one day I might be allowed to cross into an alternate dimension by walking through a quilt hanging on my living room wall. As I got older I stopped believing that this was a possibility—not because I grew to believe that the universe was not an extremely strange place where incomprehensible things could happen on a daily basis, but because I passed year after year after year not being able to enter the spirit realm through a wallhanging.

Anecdote that I hope you'll find relevant: When Jean Piaget began studying the intellectual processes of children, he was not doing so because he had any special interest in children. Piaget was interested, rather, in the intellectual processes of (adult) humans and was seeking a control group. [His first thought was that the best control group would be comprised of martians but, as he did not have access to martians, he decided to use children since children possessed what is farthest from human consciousness.]

So let's look at what happens to our young writers as they age [I took these lines from poems written by middle-school/ high school students (Italics, mine)]:

Snacking on this and that my friends and I keep the party going even when it is over”

"Whispers of a secret crush being unraveled”

"I’m trapped in this hole that I can’t break through”

"Barack Obama in the White House. I can feel the inspiration Can you feel it?”

"Now I feel secure with my head held high.

Sad times. By middle school/high school, the average student has learned how normal people talk. The resulting language is underwhelming and predictable—the safe regurgitations of a thoroughly socialized consciousness.

While the average older student's poems are heavy with allegiance to a limited view of reality, the average younger writer's vision of the world is nimble and surprising—bizarre, yet true.

Last year I spent every Saturday tutoring an extremely undersocialized kid in vocab. When I taught her the word blandishments (“to flatter, coax, sweet-talk, appeal to”) she wrote this sentence: “The blandishments of the sugar flowers made the cake so much more inviting.”

The sentence is interesting because the student understood that a blandishment is something that attracts favorable attention without fully realizing that people almost always use the word to refer to a human action.

The poet’s job is to forget how people do it.

[luvdsc]

what’s something you want to do once covid dies down and you can go out again?

ohhh omg I have so many things I want to do, honey bee !!!! 💓

traveling & visiting art museums — I love love love traveling, and my family takes summer trips to visit two different countries every year, except for last year because of covid. Every trip, I beg my parents and sister to let me go to the art museums there, and that’s my favorite part of traveling (besides the yummy food we try) !!!! I’ve gotten to see so many of my favorite artists’ paintings and art that I vividly remember being taught about in my elementary school days during art class. I buy postcards from every museum, and they’re now all hung up in my room 💞

seeing my friends in person — I had to cancel my spring break trip to chicago and nyc that I wanted to go to so badly to revisit the art museums and see my friends there ): I also had an Asia trip planned with my friends for post grad that I really wanted to go on 🤧 I went on a lot of weekend trips to the city with my friends that I desperately miss now too ): I also just really miss seeing them everyday and having weekly brunches and daily boba runs aaaaa I miss college 😔 I wanna go to Disneyland and art museums with my friends and take hot pics at the club with them again shidkdndd for now, I’ve been writing letters back and forth with my friends, so that’s been really fun tho! I pinned up a few of their letters on my cork board in my room :’)

volunteering — I miss this so much 😭 I loved being able to meet new people and talk with them. I volunteered with my mom from 6th to 8th grade at a local soup kitchen weekly and wrapped presents for kids at a non profit with my family every year, and then I volunteered in hospital patient services weekly in all four years of hs and I got to talk to patients and play the piano for them! 💘 it was really nice to talk to vietnamese patients especially and converse in my native language 💕 in college, I volunteered at another soup kitchen weekly. I also did a year long volunteering fellowship my junior year and worked 25 hours a week for a non profit trade school where I helped adults create resumes and prepare for interviews! I also got to plan two career fairs for them, and I’m still friends with some of the (now graduated) students there, and it makes me so happy when they tell me that they still have the same job from the interviews we were practicing for and are doing well there 🥺 the last time I ever volunteered was a beach clean up with my firm a year ago, and I miss it now 😭

[ri-ahhh]

wait what I’m shook lmao was it hard to become a kindergarten teacher?

Haha I think it varies state to state on what they require but I live in Texas and it wasn’t really hard at all, just time consuming. I did alternative certification online but you do have to have a 4 year degree or maybe some equivalent amount of experience /education to get into it. My degree is in speech-language pathology and audiology and I have a specialization in child development w that, and I taught preschool for years during college so I had a lot of background knowledge about kids going into it without majoring in education.

You have to pass a state certification test depending on the grades you want to teach too, so mine was over all core subjects (math/language arts/science/social studies/music/PE), early childhood-6th grade. You couldn’t pay me enough to teach middle school and above so Idk what the tests are for those groups.

[devondespresso]

adding 3-6 because those answers seem to vary

3 i had a different one for every subject, but most teachers also did the honors version of their classes too (there was cp aka normal class and then honors which would be the same subject but slightly harder. it was basically just splitting kids up into 'normal' and 'smart' for various subjects. it was dependent on how you did in that class last year and if your teacher recommended it for you, so you could be in honors English and then cp Science.)

4 every class had its own room, usually it would be organized as the teacher's room specifically, so they'd have their desk and decorations all over the walls and itd be Mrs./Mr. _'s room, and any classes they taught would be held in that room (in middle school it was almost always consistent and just honors and cp versions of their subjects). kids basically bounced around the school going to x's room for y class. schools *tried* to keep students from having to walk a lot between classes so 6th grade classes would all be in one spot, 7th in the next, and same for 8th, but that only accounted for core 4 required classes (math, science, history, english) and any electives were all scattered in their own sections so often times students were going across the school. though it was required, gym was considered an elective an was also quite the walk.

5. completely different people every class. odds were decent that you'd end up with people you knew or have at least one friend, but it was inconsistent. they never tried to keep certain groups of kids together unless there was a special ed class. every year you'd just hope you and your friend shared classes.

6. in all us public school (private/religious schools are the exception i think) every kid has to take 4 core classes (math, science, history, and english) (english got called different names like "language arts" or "english language arts" in elementary school but its the same shit) and usually gym (or PE as in physical education) was required at least in one year if not all 3. some schools required other classes like a foreign language but I didn't have that until highschool.y school let you pick 3 other electives and we had a lot of options. art, band, chorus, and theater are all like common basics (tho my middle school didn't have theater). i also think the area influenced some of the electives, like my middle school had a big agriculture education class because southeastern usa and we actually got the funding for it to do archery as a unit in class. we also had gtt (gateway to technology) that was basically stem and engineering. basically you either had lots of electives to choose from or like just a couple.

odds are theres plenty of ny middle schools with public websites. they would detail classes they offer, how many teachers teach certain subjects, even clubs the school has (probably can't find school maps anymore because y'know safety risk) and probably an explanation of their specific systems for classes and stuff for new students (usually called "rising 6th graders", rising just meaning kids going into that grade next year or when school starts back after summer break)

you could probably just Google "schools in (_ area), (_ state)", then search specific schools websites

generally tho i think the us sees middle school as just highschool but the kids are more immature and miserable cause they're 10-13, so something simple where kids change classes, have a handful of electives (and have a warriors bond with a certain teacher), and only see their friends in certain classes.

hope this helps 💞

Hi, I need a kind hearted american to explain middle school to me so I can use it for a fanfiction, bc my foreign ass with a different educational system knows nothing lmao. In this context I need to know about middle school in a big city, New York style, big city.

Things I'm specifically confused about:

From what age to what age do you go to middle school?

What is before middle school?

Do you have the same teacher or different ones for each subject?

Do you have to move rooms between classes?

Are you with the same people or different ones in each class?

Do you get to chose some classes or is everyone doing the same?

Thank you so much <3

[drgamenstein]

Why I stopped  Drawing.

So I’m struggling right now to re-learn how to draw. I used to draw all the time when I was in High school, but then a teacher kind of crushed my desire to do anything creative ever again. This is that story.

When I was a Junior (16 years old), I was cleaning up my required credits to graduate, basically just taking the easy classes I didn’t care about, but was needed to graduate. One of these classes was foreign languages, which I needed two semesters of. I chose Spanish since, growing up in the south, high school Spanish is a joke. Chances are high you either know it through friends or learned it at a much younger age, and for the most part I was right. I passed every test, completed all my homework and class assignments during class and was able to fuck around and do what I wanted after that. It was basically a free period.

Thing is, apparently my teacher didn’t like that I was breezing through his class. That or he just hated me in general, probably both. By junior year, I had a reputation for being hard to control. I wasn’t a bad kid, I just didn’t care much. I spent a lot of time keeping to myself, drawing or napping, and still completed all my work. My Biology teacher once made a joke that I learned through osmosis, because even though I slept through his class, I remembered the lessons and passed. I also used this trick in English, I would listen to audiobooks at home when I went to bed and leave it on loop all night, then when I woke up I could remember the book because my dreams were influenced by it. Turns out Dexter’s Lab was spot on in terms of easy learning, I don’t know.

Anyway, this guy was a hard ass, he also worked as the school’s basketball coach, but taught Spanish in the mornings. Now because this was first period, and I had just woken up and was full of coffee, I didn’t sleep in this class, ever. I was actually probably my most attentive during this time. The teacher was a hands off kind of teacher, he would basically tell us which part of the book to study, give us a work sheet, our homework, and then tell us to group up, and learn the material. Because I was more socially reclusive then than I am now, I never paired up, instead I studied, finished the worksheet, and the homework right there. All in all it took about twenty minutes, leaving forty to do what I wanted.

The first sign of trouble, was when I was just reading one day, he asked me if I was done. I told him yes, and that I had even finished the homework too. When I proved myself, he yelled at me that homework was meant to be done at home, and that if I have free time I should work on other school work, not goof off. The next day the same thing, when I told him I had no other assignments and I had even finished his homework again to make sure I had no extra work, he told me to join a group and see if they needed help. The next day again, I was drawing this time, and he yelled at me that I wasn’t helping, when I retorted that nobody needed or wanted my help, he got more mad, asked the class to raise their hands if they needed my help and nobody did. He told me that his class wasn’t for free time, and that I needed to keep working while I was in there. Now I was in Art class at the time, so drawing did count as working in my mind, but this being a sports man, he didn’t agree, so the next day when I was drawing again, he came to my desk and told me to pull out all my drawings I had on me.

It’s also important to note here that because I had puppies I was carrying my entire portfolio with me. Everything I had drawn since 6th grade, all tucked away in my backpack to keep the dogs from tearing them up. This was SIX YEARS worth of work I had cultivated and added to. This mother fucker took all of it, looked at some of the earliest work I had done, and said I should try to find something I had talent in instead of wasting my time at something that bad. Then he confiscated it all and told me I could have it all back if I passed his final and didn’t draw or read during his class. Fuck it, fine I thought, so for the next month I just did my work, and sat quietly, when other students refused my help. at the end of the term, Spanish was one of two finals I had gotten a full 100% on, the other being English/literature. When I demanded my portfolio back, this piece of shit told me he had used it as kindling when his kids asked him to make a fire at home. When I asked him if he was serious he didn’t answer, and instead told me that it didn’t matter what he did, I was never going to make a living of my art if I had no talent, that he’d done me a favor getting rid of it, and that I needed to focus on a real career and stop goofing off with worthless hobbies.

I’ll be 26 this month, meaning that it will have been almost ten years since this all happened, and I quit drawing altogether. The idea of losing so much time and effort, and being called worthless by a teacher really stuck with me. I know that the way schools work, any extra-curriculars  not sports related are considered not worth any time, and that’s the schools fault not mine, but still. Losing so much is a huge blow no matter what. I never drew again during school. I spent the rest of Junior and senior year worried that the same thing would happen again, so I didn’t bother, and by the time I got to college and started working I didn’t have enough time to do it anymore.

So yeah, that’s the full story. Fuck I lost a lot that day, I remember one of the paintings in that folder had been adopted by a local museum for a year to showcase local artists, and had just been returned to me that year. So yeah, that’s why I want to overcome that shit, and get back into drawing regularly. If I can, I want to start doing it for a couple hours every night. If anyone reading this has any suggestions for classes, tips or tricks I can find or use, I would be very grateful. I used to only do traditional artwork, with graphite or paint, but lately I’ve been using Spray paints, and Digital art, since even though the tablet cost a lot, the cost in supplies overall is much lower. I don’t remember if I already showed off my paintings in a previous post, but for digital art I’m using Clip Studio Paint, and it’s all new to me, so yeah, any help would be appreciated if offered, but mainly this was a story I needed to get off my chest and put out there so I can move on without it weighing me down. If I could give any advice to anyone around that age, going through some shit, it would be this. Nothing that makes you happy, is a waste of time or effort.