5 Productive Ways for Art Educators to Spend Their School Break
As Art Educators, we rely on feeling nourished and creative in order to best serve our students. Try these simple tips when planning how to spend your next break from school.
Hit the gym - Visit the gym, or use your home or a local park! Staying active will keep you feeling refreshed and healthy, and, if you have kids, they will love being active and moving around, too. If home workouts are more convenient, I highly recommend Yoga With Adriene.
Hit the Studio - Spend some time in your studio, even if you only get as far as organizing a storage shelf or collecting reference material for your next project. Or, maybe you are ready to jump in and work on a bigger project. You could even do some studio work related to the art you are making with your students..
Read a book or take an Online Course - Consider reading something totally unrelated to art or teaching! I love to pick up books about science, spirituality, and occasionally fiction as a way to get some distance from the fields I am steeped in year round.
Are you super busy with little kids? Choose children’s books that you also might enjoy, so that you look forward to reading with them. I have been pleasantly surprised by how meaningful and insightful children’s books can be. Paul Chan’s The Shadow and Her Wanda, and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry come to mind.
Have you taken any courses on Coursera? This is one of my favorite ways to learn during breaks from school, and I even wrote a blog post about it! Some of my favorites include Art & Activity: Interactive Strategies for Engaging with Art and Modern Art & Ideas. (these are affiliate links , and I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases made through these links).
You might also like my Online Course, 2D Design and Abstraction!
Connect with friends - Grab a cup of coffee, take a walk, or video chat with a friend. This is a good time to reconnect, since you are likely feeling less pressure from work.
Look at art in person - Go to a museum or gallery. Bring a sketchbook or an app on your phone and make note of anything you see that sparks interest, or that you might want to learn more about.
If you have kids, bring clipboards, sketching paper and some pencils so they can draw or write about what they see (check with the museum or gallery first to make sure this is okay). Can’t make it to the museum? Try these Google Arts and Culture games!
(Bonus) Relax at home and enjoy not having anywhere to be :)
How do you recharge and reset during school breaks? Comment below to let our community know!