Wellington as a demographic makes me nervous and slightly unsafe. They are easily the most conservative school in the district and although you wouldn’t know that much by interacting with the students, we saw proof of parents’ ideology on Friday when we had a total of 8 students in the classroom not pulled out of school in protest of Trans Visibility Day. As a queer person who has changed their name and appears androgynous in their day-to-day, this fills me with profound sadness and fear. I wish we lived in a world where identity wasn’t political and people respected and treated each other as equals even if they don’t understand the other person. But I digress. I will step off my soap box and talk about my experience teaching this week.

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I had SUCH a fun time teaching this week. I couldn’t ask for a better group of students. When I introduced project TerraForm on Wednesday everyone was engaged and interested, some asked questions during the intro presentation, and when they went to work it was nearly silent the whole time. They all worked so diligently and created such wonderful designs. It was so silent that Ms. Mills allowed them free seating 15 minutes before she had promised them. It was so great getting to talk with students and hear about their design plans and what they were thinking. They were so willing to talk to us too. Couldn’t ask for a better time.

 

On Friday, we had less than half the students present when we introduced Tinkercad to everyone and even though there was an air of uneasiness and sadness, we took the chance to connect with the 8 students who were present, we were making jokes and telling funny stories. I learned about the lives and interests of a few students and they taught me more about Tinkercad in a half hour than I learned playing around with it in three hours over break. It felt like a breath of fresh air on an otherwise sad and disappointing day. I was smiling and laughing with them the whole time and class flew by. They worked so fast and so hard too, and two students were able to finish. It was by far the highlight of my week and it gives me hope for teaching in the future.

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I named this journal “fun” because of the inherent importance of fun in the classroom. We seem to only allow students to have room for regular fun in the classroom from preschool to about 2nd grade. As if having a good time is something you are supposed to grow out of as you grow up. That maturity and fun cannot coexist. By doing that we do our students a great disservice. As they become teenagers they equate fun with misbehavior and rebellion. The only ones having fun are the ones doing everything they can to get a rise out of the adults. The “good” students must suffer both with the lack of fun and the punishments brought on by the fun they didn’t even partake in. This breeds a resentment of fun born from the jealousy they don’t want to admit. Those teenagers quickly become adults with the same mindset. Thus, socially and culturally fun = misbehavior, and misbehavior is childlike.

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STUDENTS WANT TO HAVE FUN. Everybody wants to have fun. Without it, what’s left? The miserable monotony of the everyday? The constant reminder that the adults in charge don’t care if you die in a school shooting tomorrow? The looming knowledge that the Earth very well may not be survivable in your lifetime? We act like we don’t know why kids have all these mental health problems when this is all we feed them and we expect them to turn around and not let it affect their academics or else.

It is important that students know what is happening in the world they live in, as awful as it is. By shielding them we are only harming them more. We should absolutely be teaching them to stand up for themselves and be activists for the causes they believe in. As art teachers, we do have the responsibility to teach art activism and socially conscious art practice. It all has a place in the curriculum and with students. That being said, if all we do is continue to berate them with unsolvable problems that were created before they were even born and expect them to solve them because they're their inheritance; without giving them just one second to breathe and have fun and be kids and teenagers, we are setting them up to fail. We are raising burnouts who will grow up and not care about anything anymore.

We must allow and foster students’ fun. Like our future depends on it.