Teachers: Leave the Bristol Board Behind, Embrace Clay!

Teachers are considered a special breed of individual because they selflessly touch the lives of so many children. "Special", but only in a notional sense, because a teacher's pay isn't too special and neither, many times, is their working environment. One perk has been that they enjoy those long Easter, Christmas and summer vacations that others in the workforce just don't get. But those were the good old days, that's now a thing of the past. This summer, licensed teachers must continue their own education through a required 48 hours of training within the traditional vacation period. But one revolutionary art course is making it seem more meaningful than just another professional requirement. I found primary and secondary school teachers making mandatory credit hours a creative adventure at the center for art education:
Indira Craig, Reporting
We caught them on their very first day, but these teachers were already displaying talents they never knew they had. Most of them are completely new to ceramics and working with molding clay does take some getting used to. For Jose Mai who teaches art to both Saint Martins DePorres and the Lake Independence women's Group, it was mystifying at first, but made sense soon enough:
Jose Mai, Teacher "I felt lost this morning when I came here because at school they say I'm good at art, but I say I wonder how good I am. Until I came here and I'm trying something new and everybody is having fun."
But more than having fun, the real purpose of this course is to import to the teachers skills that can be taken into their classrooms. That's the motivation for Ruth Pipersburg since teaching art effectively can only come through continued learning:
Ruth Pipersburg, Teacher, YEA "I've been teaching art for 10 years and there is another part to it which is the art and Iwaa interested in doing it because I'm always a person who believe that if you teach you should always develop yourself as you go along."
Indira Craig
"How will you be able to utilize what you learn here today in the classroom setting?"
Jose Mai
"Well as a motivation because many times children believe that things is better when you purchase them ready-made without trying to practice doing something. So this is like a proof of what we can do."
Ruth Pipersburg
"One of the things I find out is that it takes a lot of patience, and at youth enhancement it's a good thing to have to use to help the girls them as they come into us with different types of problem. This is a good way to get them to work out some of their stress, so it's good."
And while there is no denying the holistic benefits of art and the discipline it encourages - it could be argued that the course is overly-ambitious. For most of these teachers what they learn in this specialised and fully outfitted art center could prove inapplicable in their resource strapped teaching environments. Coordinator and instructor Damian Perdomo disagrees sharply:
Damian Perdomo, Instructor "Actually it's one of the most realistic workshops because all they're really learning is first how to process clay, how to get it to its workable state and then the actual construction techniques are all handmade. Especially in the country of Belize clay is very, very available. The colour does not really matter they learn how to test the clay to see if its good for the classroom - you're just digging it out of the ground and cleaning it up and that is of no cost, just a time investment. The most important tools that you actually need are your hands beside just some basic tools from a tool kit.
The arts and craft movement has pretty much been stagnant. You know, the Bristol boards, the scissors, the Scotch tape the Elmer's glue - so the clay is just talking it up a level. to the three dimensional world."
And as the medium progresses from construction paper to ceramics, the skills of young art students should evolve and mature correspondingly - and so that in the future, it will usher in a new, more mature mode of art expression.
Teachers also receive instruction in drawing and painting. It started on july first and will end on the 12th.