a taste of having a "big girl job"

This is a bit different than my other posts, but just as fun :)

All my life, especially the last 4 or 5 years, I've never really felt my "age".  When you're younger it's looked upon as being immature and probably somewhat irritating to some, but as your years start to add up it can actually be a blessing in disguise.  I would bet that a lot of you who don't know already, based purely on a random picture of myself, would not be able to guess my correct age.  My poor sister, who's almost 4 years younger, gets asked frequently if she's the older one haha (I'm thinkin' it's because of the wedding ring, sis ;p )  And no, I'm not telling you how old I am! LOL

Anyway, I still feel like a kid a lot of the time and "Grown up" jobs are somewhat intimidating.  I bet a lot of the reason I love drawing and storytelling is a part of that.

Yesterday, I went with a friend (a grown up! haha) to a school she teaches an Arts program with.  It's pretty cool actually, they have different quarters in the school year and teach art, music, and drama to each class for 45 mins at a time.  Well, the director of the program let me tag along with a teacher to see what the job was like and if I would want to submit my resume' for a position in the fall.  I was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the day, I'm not gonna lie.  See, I don't have issues really with talking in front of kids or hanging out with them and I have plenty of experience in all of those subjects, but I've never had to be the disciplinary.  There's definitely a distinction between being the "fun helper" and the "Teacher".

She picked me up in the morning and we set off talking about what the day was going to be like.  Turns out, my friend has no clue about teaching beginning drawing, the subject of the rest of the school year.  Soooo very cleverly (I was swindled! LOL) the tables turn and I'M teaching the classes!!

In all my work experience, and maybe it's just my luck, the first day of a new job has never had the regular training for rookies.  Somehow, the person who's supposed to train me never shows up, or quits, or they can't find anyone... blah blah blah. I always end up getting thrown into it and flying by the seat of my pants.  So, for this situation, it was old hat :) She gave me the worksheets, went over a bit with the order of them and said "Do what you do!"  And let me tell you.... I did what I did!! 

It was so much fun! First, I had a mini discussion on what an illustrator was and did.  I showed them examples of illustrations they see every day and wouldn't think about, for example: classroom posters, the t-shirts they had on, sandwich baggies, pencil designs, their binders etc. I also had brought my portfolio along to show them what I did and explained my process what the exact same way I was going to teach them that day.  Then we got down and dirty with learning how to look for simple shapes to help yourself draw (lots of rectangles and triangles!) and then how to make them look 3 dimensional.
All the kids had fun and didn't really have any that acted out or misbehaved (those that had some issues, were dealt with by my friend haha).  But it was a very interesting experience on teaching and keeping the kids engaged with what you're doing.  It was surprising to me how many kids are soo hard on themselves :( if they cant do something right away, they give up. Maybe its the generation, maybe its the parents, i dunno... but it was sad.

All in all, it was a good time :) I learned a lot just by observing and who knows... maybe I'll be doing it for reals in the fall!