Jan. 29, 2007 - Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.
Who and What: A short introduction
Hello to all homeschool enthusiasts! My name is Iza Aleckson and together with my husband Luke, I have created a small business developing arts curriculum under the name "Tuning Fork Educational Media." Our purpose is to create an outstanding visual art curriculum intended for junior high through high school aged homeschool and private school students. We are getting very close to publishing the first book in a series of educational art curricula entitled "Art Elements". I am so excited to share the progress being made as we draw closer to this goal, but for now let me share with you the why and how of this exciting endeavor.
The How and the Why: A personal story
When I think back, I see now how I was being prepared for this role ever since I was a child. From K-12th grade I attended a very small Christian school. Being in a small private school can be very similar to what I imagine the homeschool experience to be. We had one teacher that taught all of our classes as well as multiple grade levels. When I reached junior high I was introduced to the PACE system of learning. For those of you not familiar with this, it is where the school subjects are broken down into chapters or "paces" and each student works independently on their own work. This system of education also allowed for more classes to be put together into one space. In my case, we had 7th-12th grade in one room. What makes my story even more like homeschooling is the fact that when I was in 9th grade my mom became the teacher or "supervisor," and stayed as such until I was graduated.
I feel its important to share this background with you because it plays such an important role in my current occupation. Just as in homeschooling, our school faced a number of difficulties when trying to teach art as a class. First off, being such a small school means you have very little budget and art books can get very expensive. More often than not we would end up spending "art class" in high school with a mom that would volunteer her time to teach us how to sketch. By this I mean no criticism of the volunteer. In fact, it is exactly this kind of giving heart that makes me so passionate about what we're doing now. But the fact of the matter is, compared with the attention my other subjects received, art class was severely lacking in formal structure and real substance.
Along with budget issues were other concerns directly related to Christianity and art as a serious subject. Even if there was a strong art curriculum available at a very low cost, they were still lacking as far has having a Christian viewpoint. I also watched as my mom (the supervisor of 6 grades) struggled to teach such a wide variety of classes. As far as art went there was also the basic reality of just not having the time to devote to developing her own art class.
Through the next years, after I had graduated high school, I watched my friends and family struggle with these same issues over and over again. It had long been my desire to affect some change in the system but--although I was studying art in college--I felt that writing such an intensive curriculum was still out of my reach. Again and again I am reminded of the biblical idea of the weak being made strong. It was through my weakness that God decided to work!
In my second year of college I met and later married my husband Luke, who just happened to also be studying art. In 2004 we moved to Chicago IL where he had been accepted into one of the top graduate programs for sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Our first year there was spent sharing an apartment with a roommate who just happened to have her degree in, what else, ART! It was during this time through various miraculous means that the desires of my heart began to blossom into physical ideas and slowly started to come into full fruition.
Where and When: The ubiquitous cliffhanger questions
Whew...that was a long one. Thanks for letting me share with you the beginnings of what I consider one of the passions of my heart.
Well, that is the general foundation of our project and I look forward to going into some of the details (such as where and when) of the curriculum next time.
-Iza
