Art Supervisors

Art supervisors and consultants, trained and experienced in art and art education, are valuable instructional resources for central office administrators, principals, teachers, and the community. Supervisors are a district's organizing, motivating force for coherent, conceptually-based art programs. They coordinate rigorous and stimulating programs to ensure that all students learn the concepts and skills of the Art TEKS. The primary responsibilities of art supervisors and consultants include:

• Defining the components of effective, comprehensive art programs
• Providing ongoing leadership in planning, implementing, and evaluating quality K-12 art programs
• Organizing professional development opportunities for art teachers and specialists
• Guiding schools in effective art instruction (e.g., ensuring that adequate time is allotted for instruction; suggesting quality resources to support instruction in the TEKS; communicating why the use of duplicate pictures, step-by-step directions, copying, tracing, molds, and patterns do not provide quality art education)
• Encouraging balanced programs that include knowledge and skills in two- and three-dimensional art and in realistic, abstract, and nonobjective forms
• Communicating standards for the safe use of art facilities, classrooms, tools, and materials
• Facilitating efficient ordering of art supplies and equipment (e.g., bulk purchasing)
• Coordinating school art programs and community activities
• Attending professional meetings to keep informed of current practices in art education.

Districts with exemplary art programs depend on highly skilled consultants and supervisors to assist and guide them. Consultants and supervisors are an invaluable part of each district's art program, but full-time leadership is critical for districts with several schools. To ensure meaningful assistance and strong, comprehensive instruction in art, supervisors and consultants should have certification and teaching experience in art.

Art Teachers

As important as art consultants and supervisors are in the development of quality, district-wide programs, art teachers are the single most influential factor determining student achievement. On a daily basis, teachers communicate art content that challenges all students to explore and to learn. Teachers convey the excitement of making art, sharing examples from the earliest cave drawings to contemporary artwork developed with the use of computers or other technological tools.

Quality teaching connects the making of art and the study of art history to rigorous skills of critical thinking and problem solving. Careful planning and sequential teaching of art content and processes lay the groundwork for student insights into thinking, learning, communicating, and preparing for the future.

Working to ensure that all teachers have competency in their subject areas, the state requires beginning art teachers to have academic preparation in the TEKS. A school's hiring decisions directly affect the artistic lives of their students. A prospective teacher's background, education, and training in art and art education should be thoughtfully considered in a school's hiring process.

Elementary art teachers have a special responsibility--to establish the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students will build on throughout, and beyond, their years of formal education. Certified elementary art specialists should have concentrated study in art and art education.

Art teachers in grades 6-12 should have training, knowledge, and facility in sensory perception, multiple art media and processes, pedagogy, art history, and critique. The number of art teachers per building should be sufficient to develop each student's potential for creative and critical thinking in art and to ensure that all students have opportunities to develop art content knowledge and skills.