Teacher, teacher!

Nohut the tabby cat lives with friend and ex-neighbour-colleague Alex and family, so is my house companion, educational advisor and muse while I am staying here. At fifteen years of age, she is well acquainted with the life of an Arts teacher, and is always ready, willing and able to offer candid and useful advice.

Today's pic shows her contemplating pythagorus' theorem and the properties of isosceles triangles as, via Zoom, I tutored my nephew this evening in the geometry unit of his pre-sixth form on line foundation A level maths course.  I am having to dig up stuff that's been hiding in my head for half a century .... but I am also a light-fingered Googler so we're doing ok, so far. Oh and thank you, You Tube. 

This intellectual episode came at the end of an afternoon spent unconscious on the bed, recovering from a morning of summer school Art class when the activity was "landscapes".  The age range of my group is 12-15, making both classroom management and facilitating good learning targets for all participants quite a challenge. (Those familiar with this age range will understand the difficulties.)  In the summer heat and holiday mood, the younger ones, understandably, can’t concentrate for long without frequent teacher intervention - very  different from the 15 -19 age group that I am accustomed to - and we all have been struggling a bit with this.  So, hoping for a peaceful time in the studio painting what we'd seen, I started our morning by taking all of them for a long walk on campus around the plateau and through the woods, taking photos of various scenes to paint once back in the studio. The idea of course was to tire them out sufficiently to have a productive  (quiet) painting session of attentive children and the opportunity to focus on the more serious artists in the group of which there are several.  Of course, I didn't think about the fact that it would tire me out too.