Independent Study Contract: Fill & Download for Free

My degree is in Art Education. When I graduated the education in the state was in a back to basics phase so many schools had dropped their class offerings and were laying off art teachers. I went the business route even though I really wanted to be teaching art.Well after building my career first in sales then in operations management, the fortune 500 I was working for sold our division and our local office was closed. I decided it was time for me to get back to art. I worked to reinstate my certification and started teaching as a sub. The first school I was called to teach at had absolutely no parking. I got to the classes and the students were doing no art. Apparently the teacher had been ill for some time and the kids were allowed to use the class time as an additional study hall. I left school that day to find a 50.00 parking ticket waiting for me as I had parked in a 2 hour parking zone-the only street parking in the area. I made 75.00 for the day so take out the taxes and it cost me money to work there.When I had the opportunity to do a long term sub for a maternity leave in a rural district I grabbed the opportunity. I was a substitute teacher covering for one of the two art teachers in the school. Let me tell you folks, being a substitute teacher is tough, being a substitute art teacher is worse.The kids could not have been more rude and disrespectful. It was explained to me that these kids had been through a lot of change having lost their much loved art teacher to retirement a few years earlier. Now with the replacement going out on maternity leave, the students were not happy. There were some who were accomplished and talented artists. Several of the students were spending 6 of the 8 class hours in the art room under the guise of “independent study” and accomplished nothing. There were no contracts or independent study agreements and two weeks after I came into the class semester grades were due. I asked the independent study kids to hand in their work for grading. One student gave me a single sheet of doodles. Another gave me 2 very quickly painted watercolors, yet another had spent an entire semester doing a collage of killing and war photos and he was painting a gun in the foreground. It actually was good and stirred emotions.I contacted the teacher I was covering for and asked her what her expectation was for grading. She got snotty with me and said if I had not given them direction I could not downgrade them. They got D’s if they gave me anything. For those who gave me nothing, they got F’s.While I was teaching the Art 1 students they were heckling from the side. Well after a few days of this I gave them the option, you can keep coming as long as you are working on art but if you do not want to work on art then you are not welcome in the room. It went over like a lead balloon. The kid who was putting in his time on the military collage, who was waiting for his graduation to head to basic training, threatened to shoot me not once but at least 50 times—in a single day. I feared for my life and seriously wonder if he did make it through basic training.The only working student threw the same bowl over and over. It was perfect but he would leave his wheel at the end of the class just as it was after throwing the bowls. No clean up. He quit the class when I asked him to clean up after himself and had them put their projects aside for one class to do an impromptu figure sculpture.One of their little tricks was to wait until 10 minutes into class and ask for a slip to go to the bathroom to return 5 minutes before the class was over. The classes were not even an hour long. So I made a deal with them that they could take bathroom breaks in the first and last 5 minutes of class. Well there is always one who has to challenge things. When I told him he could wait a half hour he walked out of class. He was put on detention and refused to show up. It doubled. Pretty soon I got a call from his parent as he was on the wrestling team and this was to be his ticket to a scholarship. The father was angry with me because his son was suspended from participating in the matches until he put in his detention. I shared with the dad that the students were well aware of my rules. At this point the dad shared with me that he was instructing his son to piss on the floor the next time he had a need to pee.It got better, but the disrespect and heckling continued. I told one student to go back to study hall and he ended up next door in the classroom of the other art teacher and now stood at the kiln room door which joined our rooms to heckle. When I shared why I had asked him to go back to study hall the teacher made sure he stayed out of the classroom.I taught Drawing and Painting in the same room as the ceramics class. The floors were a mess. Because of the clay on the floor when they got wet it was downright dangerous. Any common work areas were left a mess. So I went about assigning clean up groups and spoke with the custodians about cleaning the floors on a regular basis. I was told they don’t clean the ceramics room. So I asked for a bucket and mop and spent Christmas break cleaning and repouring the recovery plaster and fixing the equipment in the room. It took all of those 2 weeks.I had a watercolor class starting when the students returned and the only paints I had in the supplies were the kindergarten type trays and the brushes were acrylic paint brushes. I went to the principal and asked if there was a budget for supplies available and he said there was none remaining and there was nothing he could do. So I took my substitute teachers salary and headed to the local university art supply store and begged them for a teachers discount so I could get paint tubes and watercolor brushes for the kids to use.I arranged for a local watercolor artist to come in and talk to the students about her work and to share some of her techniques with them. I wanted them to see that they could make a living with their talent. The independent students began to comment about how I had to bring in a ringer to teach for me. Suffice it to say watercolor is my art emphasis.It was so discouraging.A few weeks into the second semester I asked the independent study students to hand in what they were working on along with a contract for their independent study. I had one student who was extremely talented. He could paint or draw whatever was in front of him. He just did not want to push him self to do the work. I shared with him that he had to push himself because no one else was going to. I made it a point of telling him how talented I thought he was but also shared it was a shame no one would see the work he was not doing! The result was immediate. His work improved and the volume was ten times in two weeks what he had handed in for the previous semester.I had the ceramics students making plaster casts of their hands and feet. They were enjoying it, even the hecklers got into it! There was some really creative pieces being generated.The permanent teacher returned from her leave a month before the semester ended. It was so hard to leave but I knew I had helped those kids to grow in that short time.Months passed and I was walking into the local pizza parlor to pick up a pizza for dinner and I hear “Mrs. Joyce, Mrs. Joyce…Guess what?….” One of the girls who had been working on some ceramic tiles had mounted three of them on a wood base her father, a carpenter, had helped her with. She had submitted the work to the state student art show and it had been selected by a state senator to be displayed in her office in Washington DC. How cool was that! It made it all worth while!

If you want an excellent (albeit lengthy) answer to this question, pick up a copy of Scott Turow’s One-L and read it from cover to cover.There’s an old adage about law school:The first year, they scare you to death.The second year, they work you to death.The third year, they bore you to death.The first year of law school is terrifying. You’ve spent the first sixteen years of your academic life acing every class without breaking a sweat. Then suddenly you find yourself competing against 400 other students who are every bit as smart as you are. You try to read the first assignment for your Contracts class, and you don’t understand a word of it.Here is an actual sentence from the first reading assignment I had in law school: “The defendant’s second contention is that, even assuming the trial justice was in essence predicating defendant’s liability upon a quasi-contractual theory, his decision is still unsupported by competent evidence and is clearly erroneous.”It went downhill from there. I was certain that I had been stricken with a sudden case of illiteracy.The good news about your first year of law school is that it gets better. There is a rapid learning curve. You learn what funky words like “quasi-contractual” mean.The second year of law school is busy, busy, busy. In addition to a full course load, you are involved in extracurricular activities like moot court and law journals. The primary job search takes place during your second year of law school as well.The third year of law school is more relaxed. You’ve settled into the routine. You know what you’re doing. You spend less time in the library and more time on the softball field. To keep yourself interested in your studies, you involve yourself in things that require more self-directed activity, such as independent study, seminars, and extracurricular activities like being on the managing board of your journal. (Or you can just spend more time on the softball field, if that is your preference.)

If you’re an identified gifted student they are required under the law to provide you with advanced classes. They can and should be able to provide you with online or independent study contract. If the high school is close they can arrange for a class there.