Back to school.

All but one of the camps with which I interned were full day, which means that in addition to assisting student and teachers, I was also responsible for facilitating snack times and lunch. This meant walking the children outside or to the lunchroom. I was also responsible for behavior management and sometimes discipline. Best of all, it was part of my job to play with the children and keep them occupied.

The teachers were a great wealth of knowledge for me. Some of them were from MICA's MAT program, of which I am a part. Some of them taught in public schools, some of them don't, and some of them don't even work with children regularly. It was interesting to see how the teachers who work in public schools structured their lessons and how the teachers who don't did not place the same limitations. I learned some good tricks and tips and also how I do not want to be as a teacher. The great part was working with so many teachers let me see a variety of teaching styles. When else will that kind of experience happen?

I also helped to glaze work and load kilns with student work. I learned how to make minor repairs with glaze and how much glaze was needed. With loading kilns, I gained more experience stacking shelves and firing the kilns. I also learned to keep an eye out for work that may not be able to be fired, for example, if it is made too thick or if it is too tightly packed with newspaper. With children’s work, there are frequent kiln mishaps, but that experience informs my teaching and studio methods.

Part of my studio experience came from cleaning and minor maintenance. I was responsible for laying down compound and sweeping the room. I also ended up mopping some due to a leaky air conditioner. I also cleaned tools and refilled underglazes, and I was impressed with their organization systems for these items. Putting underglaze into condiment bottles helps control the amount of underglaze students use and makes dispensing much easier. Along this line, most teachers limited the number of colors students could use. This led to more cohesive looking projects, less waste, and less muddy colors in case they were mixed.

Working with children forced me to think about the ceramic studio on a much different level. With children, things are simple. In fact, I would generally say the simpler the better. Art is not about great concepts, it is about whatever idea strikes at the moment, and those ideas are wonderfully original and joyful. If you are lucky those ideas fit with your lesson plans. The studio challenge is maintaining the joy of art while meeting the technical requirements of clay.

Some of it is not that tough, you just have to repeat, “scratch and attach” endlessly. The harder parts are making wet slabs stand or keeping big sculptures hollow. I made newspaper balls to help cups and hollow creatures keep their shape, and also taught the students how to gently handle their clay because, as we found out earlier, there can be too much newspaper stuffed inside the sculpture. The challenges are simple fixes for 10 sculptures that need help now. In one instance, I created cardboard triangle supports to keep slabs straight up, looking like seated owls without slumping. Cardboard was a simple material, used on many occasions. I even used it last minute to make some looms for students to weave while others finished working.

Some challenges need to be addressed before building or by teaching techniques for building. I started to think about how to communicate information in ways student could understand. The kiln is what we call a super hot oven for cooking clay. The walls of clay must be as thick as your pinky. Anyone who has worked with children and clay knows the thickness of clay is a constant issue. Big sculptures often need hollowed, but for every big thick sculpture you get an animal with tiny ears and skinny legs. I learned to address this problem by showing the students to pinch the animal, legs, head, tail, and all, from one ball of clay. This avoided skinny legs made from coils rolled too thin or squashed too thin by students dutifully scratching and attaching.

Overall it was a good experience for me as a teacher and as an artist. As a teacher, I learned classroom management techniques and picked up a lot of project ideas. As an artist, I learned how to keep a community studio clean and organized. I also learned that ceramics does not have to be complicated. There are simple ways to build and add design. There are simple ways to support your sculpture. It is these simple tried-and-true ideas that can apply to anyone’s studio. After several years in art school, children’s approach to art is a breath of fresh air. I do not know if I can recapture that spontaneity or childlike charm, but I can certainly return to the simplicity of joy of making.