My First Teaching Experience

Story and photos by Marcel Gallion.

FNN Alumni Bureau: AUGUST 1, 2014. For the past few weeks, I’ve been teaching my very own art class. The kids are about to go to the 5th grade and they’re really cool. Every class I host I feel like I’m letting the kids have fun and use their imagination. Although, I feel like I’m doing right, in a sense the process is going slowly. At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to actually reach out to the kids, or have them reach out to me;  but I guess I’m doing something right because they actually look forward to the class and ask me about the next project even after class. The art projects were based on weely themes for their summer program. There was a different theme each week. The first week's theme was “It’s A Jungle Out There”. I had the students draw their favorite animal and design its habitat as if they were that animal. Even though it was my first week and I was nervous, the kids found it fun, although, hard because they hadn’t gone on their upcoming safari trip to be inspired by what animal to choose. They had a pretty hard time choosing an animal off the top of their head, because they didn’t really know what kind of habitat the animals lived in. In the end, there were no problems and they had fun.

For the next week, the theme was “Money Matters” and I’d thought it would be fun if they designed their own money. Of course the kids loved the idea of money and although they first had problems with the idea of imagining their own money and having it actually turn out like money, they found their way and thought it was really fun.

For the final week the theme was “Jamaica” and if I say so myself, it was the most fun of all. The kids loved the idea of making carnival masks with feathers, glitter and everything. They even had fun taking pictures with the masks.

Overall, this teaching experience was really fun. I got the chance to see a class through a teachers eyes, and lucky for me it went smoothly.

Marcel Gallion is a rising 11th grader in the FNN Summer Program at Chamberlain Academy.