Pip: Art With Korb is back, and this week the studio is juggling photography editing, Photoshop portraits, pottery wheels, and a Brewers championship — which is either the best possible week to be an art teacher or the most chaotic.
Mara: fjkorb brings us deep into Week 11 — grades, conventions, clay, and digital work all converging at once. Let's start with what's happening across every grade level right now.
Week 11: Grades, Clay, and a Championship
Pip: Week 11 lands at an interesting crossroads — a statewide convention just wrapped, grades are in, and three grade levels are all mid-project in very different directions. The question is what's actually moving forward and what's still being figured out.
Mara: The convention sets the tone right away. The post describes it as offering "NO OTHER WAY to get as much relatable professional development than to be around other art teachers and share the knowledge and wisdom with one another" — covering everything from digital photography to glazing techniques to shaping behavior with intentional words.
Pip: That last one is doing a lot of work. The idea of modifying Studio Habits through spreadsheets and conversation with kids is the kind of thing that sounds simple until you're actually in the room on Monday.
Mara: And Monday is exactly when it gets tested. Sixth graders are wrapping up their Camp Snap photography unit — final edit sessions, narrowing down to thirty images, and learning file maintenance alongside composition. The unit covered close-ups, point of view, and elements of art before heading toward clay.
Pip: Thirty images sounds manageable until you remember these are sixth graders navigating Apple Photos for the first time, and the post notes some are easily sidetracked by everything else the software can do.
Mara: Seventh graders are into Photoshop — the Visual Biography unit, where students build layered digital portraits using their own silhouettes, passions, and photographs. Layer masks, non-destructive editing, tracing and importing. The post calls it "a high end artwork with some high end computer skills."
Pip: And eighth graders are at the pottery wheel, which is where the post gets genuinely specific about difficulty — centering first, then opening, then pulling, elbows down the whole time. The rubric now covers height, width, trimming, and wall thickness, and the post notes even the teacher doesn't always score a four.
Mara: Running alongside the wheel work is a slab-built architecture piece — students' homes or another meaningful structure. Soft clay, self-directed problem solving, and the constant threat of it drying out. The post closes with a reminder that being an art teacher means staying active as an artist yourself.
Pip: Go Brewers, apparently. The championship gets exactly the energy it deserves — all caps, one line, full commitment.
Mara: Convention takeaways, three concurrent projects, and a ceramics rubric that even the teacher finds humbling — it's a full week.
Pip: Next time, we'll see whether the clay survived the weekend. Keep making the work.
