The meaningful work of art workers: just what is it that you do?

You know your age is showing when people at the national convention begin the annual conversation with, "So, what are you going to do when you retire?" A few years earlier, the ice breaker was along the lines of, "Are you still working at Kutztown?" Longer ago, people would casually ask, "What is it you do?"

What type of work a person does for a living is one of the first questions we ask of someone. What a person is "into," meaning what is it that a person really enjoys doing, might be the second question. So, I teach for a living, but I'm "into" editing SchoolArts. People are often defined by the work they do but remembered for what they are into.

It starts when we are really quite young: "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" At an early age, we learn that it's important to be something--a farmer, a mechanic, an artist. For more years than I care to remember, but certainly into my high school years, I wanted to be a jockey. That's when I was under five feet tall and into riding. For a brief period after that, following a growth spurt, I aspired to be a pole vaulter. By the time I entered college, I wanted to be a biologist or a journalist. For sure, I had no aspiration to be an art teacher. We did not have art courses in my elementary and high school years.

It was not until I took an art history course as a humanities elective in college that I became interested in art. The course I took approached the teaching of art history from a studio base. Whenever we studied the art of a particular culture or era, we were expected to complete a studio project. This hands-on approach to academics appealed to me. That's when I decided to become a teacher of art. I wanted to be able to provide children with an opportunity I had never had.

My first teaching job was as an elementary art consultant in Park Ridge, Illinois. Hillary Rodham was one of my students that year, although I have absolutely no recollection of her. I do, however, remember my first day in the classroom. As an art consultant, my entry into the classroom was at the request of the classroom teacher. On my first day at one of the five buildings I covered, a sixth grade teacher approached me in the hallway and asked if I might be free to help her do a papier-mache lesson on prehistoric animals later in the day. I gulped, knowing that I had never worked with papier-mache, but said yes, I'd be in after lunch. I drove back to my office and leafed through the 1950s issues of SchoolArts on my shelves. To my amazement and relief, I found an article on papier-mache animals. It didn't warn me of the perils of using wheat paste with thirty kids, but it gave me the confidence to enter unfamiliar territory. SchoolArts saved my day and started me off on an incredible journey of teaching. Forty years later, I'm still at it. But I must admit, I still think about what I really want to be when I grow up!

With the selection of articles in this month's issue, we have tried to focus on art workers and career education. Unlike workers in other fields, art workers do not always follow prescribed paths of training, certification, licensing, or career development. Training in art is not a prerequisite to being a successful art worker. However, the skills one acquires through training in art are invaluable to the wide world of work in any field.