Trying to reach the untouchable kid

 There are some kids who just do not want to do anything. They would rather crumple up paper or doodle... The doodling I am not opposed to if other things are completed.  But wasting paper arrrrgh!

I try to find ways to take this "time wasting" and make it into something productive.Being a substitute teacher means an entire day of mostly just putting kids back in line and dealing with behavior issues. Some days it has little to do with making art or teaching. I try to reach those kids that have already decided they don't want to be reached. The kids that gave up on trying... It is a real challenge especially when subbing. Kids know they may never see you again, you can't always call their parents and you most times you can't write them up bad behavior because you do not have referral forms. With longer sub jobs I do call parents and do write up. Short term I  leave detailed noted for teachers to address issues I figure they have more leverage then me.

So anyways today, these kids were just crumpling up paper and throwing in the garbage trying to make baskets. I took one of them off the floor. I took an oil pastel did a texture rubbing of it and then used the folds to direct my art. Of of the kids said that it reminded her of a seed pod.(she had just been working on her science homework...so I guess that was the connection). It was a study hall I did not manage to get them to try it but at least I gave myself an outlet and inspired conversations with middle schools kids that briefly that were not about dating other middle school kids. I used a few more of these crumpled sheets of paper through out the day and used oil pastel rubbing the peeks of the folded paper with oil pastel kids would talk to me about what I was doing and ask the questions art subs often get asked like: "What are you doing?""Are you a real artist or are you a real art teacher?"