Fishers HS Visit

OH MY GOODNESS. Seriously the coolest observation I've had yet. FYI, this journal is going to be a little shorter than usual because I brought my laptop with me to take notes during down time so it didn't feel awkward and I typed up a storm! I highly recommend bringing a laptop to observations when searching for a mentor, it's great for remembering important details that you like. My notes for today can be accessed HERE. Anyways, the school is incredibly beautiful. Lots of school pride and sense of community when walking down the halls. Ms. Osborne said in the ten or so years since they initially built the high school they've added on four times! So there's a lot of new facilities, a lot of which the art department gets to use. The part that really excited me was the fact that these art classrooms were built to be art rooms. Every detail that makes teaching art easier (large windows for natural lighting, large drawing tables, lots of storage, display room, etc) had been innovatively incorporated into the design of the room. It makes a huge difference to be teaching in a room that you know was made for your subject as opposed to being given a spare classroom like most schools. I go on and on about these rooms in my notes, so I will leave it at that. They were BEAUTIFUL. Then you've got the staff of the art department who are all friends and just in a great demeanor when teaching. You can tell their students love being in their classrooms. I visited with Ms. Osborne's ceramics 1, sculpture, and AP art history classes and then Ms. Ontiveros' 2D art and AP art classes. Both of them were so welcoming and interacted with me a lot. This was definitely the most enjoyable observation I've been to. I felt like a fit right in because all 5 are relatively young females. Ms. Ontiveros is actually an IU grad from 5 years back so she and I got to talk about the differences in the education program since she's been there. I did explain the CoT program a bit and they both thought it was cool so I think at least one of them would be willing to take me on as a mentor. I'm definitely going to schedule another visit. It's exactly the type of school and community I dream of working in. I loved it! Next Friday I have a visit at Greenwood HS so we'll see how that goes, but I'm pretty set on Fisher now!

Great day!