Welcome!

Grade 4 Chalk Pastels on paper.  Finished yesterday. I know, right? Awesome. These are ten-year-olds, people.  Look at those light sources!

            Hello!  I am Joanna Elliott, K-4 Art teacher at RES. I also teach the Project Explore Program at Burlington's Flynn Elementary School, and in the summers I teach programming at Burlington City Arts. And I'll tell you what. I love my job.

       Right now I am rocking a paperclip necklace that a first grader gave me this morning.  ABC pattern, and it perfectly matched what I was already wearing. But wait, there's more; this lovely also gave me a photo she took of Van Gogh's Starry Night from a museum trip she just took to NYC.  When she was a Kindergartener we did a great lesson on this painting, and she remembered.  Love it.

Handmade paperclip necklace!

As if that weren't a cool enough way to start my day, a third grader marched in about 4 minutes after the doors to the school were unlocked with a sketchbook and a stack of drawings that she had to show me immediately.  And two of them were made this morning.   While she was already awake and creating artwork in her bedroom, I was probably fighting my hair and wondering what to pack for my lunch.  My students are astonishing.  Welcome to my new blog!