About Mr. Thobaben.
I have been an artist all of my life. My mother was the art teacher at a boarding school north of Philadelphia called The Perkiomen School. As I write this in the spring of 2016 I am finishing my 5th year teaching art myself at a public middle school in the Atlanta area. I am deeply grateful that I was raised at Perkiomen. It took many years for me to realize how much of who I am was forged in the art studio and the theater at Perkiomen. My father was the theater teacher there. Now that I am a teacher myself I think back on growing up there quite frequently. I sometimes wonder if growing up around teachers and creative people has prepared properly to operate in society at large. When you grow up watching musicals instead of baseball games It can be hard not to feel like an outsider sometimes. However I can say with some confidence that my background could not have equipped me better for being and at teacher. Now that I am teaching I can’t imagine doing anything else.
After high school I attended University of The Arts in Philadelphia where I earned my BFA in Illustration. I did some freelance design work after that but most made my living doing photography for the antiques market in Philadelphia. I don’t regret my illustration degree one bit. Unlike other fine arts degrees I got a wonderfully balanced training in drawing, painting, and digital processes. The appeal of commercial illustration illuded me though so I decided to follow the family tradition into teaching. I had lived in Philadelphia for several years at this point and I started volunteering for a small non-profit organization called Art Sphere Inc.(artsphere.org). My experiences working with Art Sphere turned my attention to the community and the public school system. Those experiences are a big part of what convinced me that I should try being a teacher.
I went back to school to earn my Masters at U-Arts. While earning my teaching degree I also met my wife Kristin Brown. (kristinbrownphoto.com) She is a teacher as well and has been teaching Photography and Graphic Design at independent schools. After we finished our degrees in art education we struggled for a year or so until Kristin was given the opportunity to work at a private day school in Atlanta. So we moved down south and I found my first major teaching position at North Clayton Middle School in College Park GA, which is just a few minutes south of the Atlanta city line. Since I started teaching in Clayton County I was also given the honor of serving as a lead teacher. As a lead teacher I was given the responsibility of helping to organize and observe middle school teachers all around the county. Being a lead teacher has been wonderful because I have been learning teaching methods from my peers as well as in my own classroom. I have also been working for a non-profit called Art’s Clayton (artsclayton.org). With Arts Clayton I help provide art and literacy based after school programming to the area’s elementary schools.
As I write this Kristin and I have notified our schools that will be leaving at the end of this school year so we can move back north. Our southern adventure was well worth it but we really want to get closer to our families again before we settle for good. Currently we are working hard at applying to jobs in the north east and keeping our fingers crossed.
-Peter Thobaben 2/20/16
This is me when I was in diapers watching one of my dad's plays. This is Kehs Hall. It is the fine arts building at Perkiomen.
I know this picture is terrible and blown out but I have always liked it. My mother's art studio was on the top floor and the theater was downstairs.
I have been doing a lot of writing for job applications lately. Since schools are always asking for my teaching philosophy and what not I thought I would start saving all of my hard work instead of letting it all disappear into the ether. So that is what you see below-pt 1/16
Describe the skills or attributes you believe are necessary to be an outstanding teacher.
When it comes to interpersonal skills it is important to possess a combination of indomitability and empathy. When spending all of one’s time with adolescents you will frequently encounter situations where you need to lay down the law and maintain strict control of your classroom. However, it is equally important that your students feel that you care about them. In order to create a positive and progressive environment in your classroom you have to establish a caring relationship with each student. They need to respect and trust you. Empathy is also very important when it comes to relations with coworkers. I understand that sometimes my colleagues feel passionately about things. I am very careful not to allow my passions to result in bringing negativity to work with me. I am constantly holding my students to this standard so I have to hold myself to it as well. I want my colleagues to be able to rely on me for an optimistic outlook on our shared experiences.
On the professional front, by which I mean the work we do when the kids are not in the room, I believe most of the work we do as teachers boils down to organization and hard work. My methods of organizing materials around my classroom center on accessibility. I go through a lot of trouble to create my own shelving and surfaces for storing and presenting materials to my students. No art studio is ever going to fit all of my projects perfectly right off the bat. I do a lot of customization so that all the materials for my projects are collected together in some modular way that I can reuse again and again. You would find that my organizational skills extend to my grading and document management as well. My computer desktop has a place for everything and if you request a certain document of me I will be able to produce in minutes. Hard work is the final ingredient. Teachers are uniquely fortunate with the amount of vacation time that they receive. With this in mind, a lot should be expected of us while school is session. I am a teacher that strives to use up every minute of the school day with something productive. When that fails it is time for the grown ups to do some homework.
How would you address a wide range of skills and abilities in your classroom.
I design all of my lessons with differentiation in mind. The first issue to address in the art classroom is a prejudice that many students bring to class. Many of my students start out thinking that only students who are already talented in the arts are going to succeed. I go through a lot of trouble to disabuse them of this idea. I explain Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour theory to them in an effort to teach them that things like drawing and painting are learned skills that everyone is capable of. All of my lessons have very clearly defined objectives that my students need to accomplish to get the grade. These objectives are always designed with critical thinking and hard work in mind. I never grade my students on subjective artistic elements.
When it comes to the formats that I use to deliver my lessons I include as much variety as possible. Most of my projects begin with a multimedia presentation, but of course lecturing won’t work for the whole class. From there I redeliver through an online classroom portal. I am especially fond of Emodo.com. This enables me to provide my students with written instruction that they can refer to whenever they need. This is also where I provide my class with instructional video’s that I have authored myself and websites that I think may help them. All of my projects include aspects of language arts and art critique. It is very important to me that my students be able process at least part of the project in language. My writing assignments require them to do research, writing, and critique that helps to reinforce concepts that I have already delivered to them in a different way. One-on-one attention is a very important element of my teaching style. The one-on-one approach is the most difficult to administer to the entire class. At the very least I identify the students who are struggling and I make certain that they get some personal attention. Finally I include at least one group work session in all of my units. In some cases the whole project is group based but I always try to give them at least one chance to learn a concept from their peers instead of from me. At the end of each project all of my students have been offered small amounts of lecture, written instruction, opportunities for online research, writing exercises, group/peer based learning, and individual instruction from myself.
Please explain how your past personal and professional experience make you a quality candidate.
I come from a long tradition of teachers. Both of my parents were fine arts teachers at The Perkiomen School in Pennsburg PA, where I also attended high school. My grandmothers were both teachers as well. I worked as a freelance artist for several years after earning my BFA. I wanted to go into a career that would allow me to serve the community in some way so I decided to go back to school to earn my Masters in Art Education. In my graduate program I was introduced to all of the current trends in education and was also given a strong foundation in child psychology in the context of art education. I have been teaching for 6 years now. I have fit a wide variety of experiences into that time. In 2012 I was asked to serve as a lead visual arts teacher in Clayton County by our head of fine arts Monika Wiley. In this role one of my responsibilities has been to go around the county and do informal observations of our art teachers. This has been an amazing experience for me and I have transformed many of my observations into practice in my own classroom. As a lead teacher I was also invited to participate in two SLO (Student Learning Objectives) writing conferences in 2013 and 2014. These were hosted by the Georgia Department of Education. These conferences were intended to help generate standardized testing practices that could be used by school districts throughout the state. I think you will find that I have a very unique and specialized view of how to generate and use data in the art classroom. I have been very involved in extracurricular activities at my school. I have conducted an after school art club which has produced stop motion animated cartoons that we played over the school’s broadcasting system. This spring will be my last at North Clayton Middle School and I really want to go out with a bang. In an attempt to do this I have just started a 3D printing workshop. I will be helping a small group of students learn 3D modeling using TinkerCad and this will culminate in a trip to the Atlanta Museum of Design where they will get to see 3D printing up close and hopefully get some prints done themselves. This project is just beginning but I very optimistic and excited about it. I am never afraid to take on something new.