I notice how my slight Aspergers effects my teaching. Sometimes I am very unaware of multiple things going on around me and I find it extremely hard to focus on more than one thing at a time. The best thing I can do is tell the students that if they need help, to come and get me. Meanwhile I go up to each student and ask what they are working on and see if they need help. This is why I tell students to come get me because if they are calling to me I may be so focused on one thing I cant even hear them.
Now it is probably their age, but when I try to command their attention when I am telling them to respect the materials or that they need to clean up more, I feel like I am not respected as much as I need to be. I have been getting better and better at commanding respect. The first day I starting teaching in the New Arts Camp, I was a disaster. I was nervous and the kids could see it. I had never done anything like that before. Now I have no problem yelling if I need to.
Having Aspergers means that I have this need to be liked because it is hard for me to relate and converse with people. So it was hard to "be mean" to the kids (by being mean, I am speaking of actually talking commanding respect by pointing out faults and improving on them)...I wanted to be nice all the time and not yell or tell them they couldn't do things. I see more and more that I have to say, "Don't do this, don't do that." constantly. I try to revert it into "Let's do this instead", but they really need to hear "don't do THIS" or they will do it constantly (i.e. throwing markers and pencils, flinging paint, etc.). I was really amazed at first that what kids think is ok to do, like throwing things at each other and emptying out a bottle of glitter on the ground. These kids are 12-14 years old, not 5 year olds.
So I have really learned a lot more this time around in ArtCore about how I need to react and what to expect of the kids. I'm sure the process of learning to teach is basically the same for everyone, but for a person with Aspergers, it is a process that takes much longer than normal.
In this blog, I will explore multiple art media, share my projects and observations on art and teaching multi-diplinary art. I have High-functioning Autism, or Asperger's Syndrome. I am an artist working in oil, video, and many other media.
