How to Teach a Driveway Art Class

When you teach grade-schoolers in your driveway how to think outside the box of what’s already scaffolded into their minds, how to pull expression from thin air, how to determine what’s really important to them (which adults struggle with indeed and often), the most crucial asset you will need as a driveway art instructor [and maybe you should write this down] is paper towels. Never forget the paper towels. You can skimp on the training. (Trust me, you can skimp.) You can renege on your promise to parents that clothing will not be marred during class. You can come poorly supplied with the wrong blue paint. But you can never forget to bring the paper towels. Otherwise, you’ll quit.

Here are the five things that will matter in your driveway art class:

Top 5 Things That Matter in a Driveway Art Class

1. An instructor

2. Students

3. Ideas (but frankly, this is optional)

4. Decent weather

5. Paper towels

Ping me if you are having trouble with this concept. We can talk after this lesson. So, moving on.

The main premise of a driveway art class is that it’s a vehicle for getting children out of their homes during disease-imposed isolation so that the parents can work, check news, relax, argue in the open, wash dishes, and breathe. The secondary premise is that it can provide positive engagement to shut-in kids whose socialization depends on this crucial stuff.

The first known driveway art class was in the United States during the 2020 Covid pandemic, held in the unassuming gravel driveway of a woman in Virginia. By the end of her run as a driveway instructor she had amassed four students from two families, all of whom were between the ages of 6 and 8. Four students is 400% more than no students, and much less than an in-school art class, but it kept her and her students busy, and helped bring arty, crafty, and cartoony brightness to a teeny corner of the world.

Here’s the how-to part of this article for those of you wanting to create your own driveway art class.

How-to Number One:

Download the state primary curriculum standards for art in your respective state if you don’t have art instruction training. Read through it. Find the parts which make any kind of sense to you. Design a lesson plan using none of it. Utilize your master’s degree in fine art instead, which will steer you generally toward the precept that you should work from the heart while keeping the whole of art history in the back of your mind as a pestering critic. This methodology for lesson construction will lead you down the road of success. Your students will be rapturously moving the gooey paint around their canvases with the same hypnosis that they would have employed in any other possible lesson plan under the sun regardless, just as long as you let them be.

Driveway Art Class Philosophy #1: Let them be.

How-to Number Two:

You will need supplies. Hopefully this is obvious, otherwise it’s possible that a different kind of driveway class would be better for you. [Driveway Philosophy? Driveway Debate?] At any rate, first you should rummage through all the stock you have on hand in your home which was acquired during prior engagements to include but not limited to: short-lived DIY card making stints, never-gotten-around-to stenciling projects, small-canvas art forays, memory album intentions, cartooning on paper before going digital, small business marketing projects, and all the past years’ holiday crafting extravaganzas. Then, head straight for Michaels (or similar) and dump a bunch of small containers of acrylic paint into your basket, marching up to the check-out with a fervent sense that you are going to make a big happy dent in some small folks’ lives. [Note: It is very possible this will happen.]

How-to Number Three:

Get pumped. By this I mean, get psyched. Give yourself the luxury of projecting into the future and notice how fun this will be, how many giggles will be somersaulting onto the worktable and then piling up on the driveway next to you, how much each member (adult and child) will gain from each other, how valuable this small time period will become as you look back on the smart things you decided to do in your life. Working with kids who are happy to be with you and who say things that are as intoxicatingly hilarious as the mountains are majestic—well, you get my drift. There are few things finer. Maybe only two.

How-to Number Four:

Invite the kids over and start the art! I’m skipping the part where you find students for your class, but if you offer a driveway class for free at the start of a pandemic, you will have the pick of the litter. On the first day of class get up early, have coffee or tea, get the portable table set up in the shade of the house, haul out all the supplies, placing just so. Make your classroom look pro. One thing you'll need to do is place a pillow on each chair seat if your students are quite short, by virtue of their age--so, do that. Then wait for them to lope over from across the street, or from their backdoor if your class is in their backyard. Wait for a bit, check your watch, sip more coffee, and then like birds migrating, you will hear them squawking in the distance before you see them.

How-to Number Five:

This is the juicy part, the real meat of this how-to. Now you will begin instructing your class. If you notice, your students will invariably look up at you like you are a god or a boss or one possessing all the knowledge. This will startle you because you are none of those things, but you’ll go with it because there is no time to reveal your true identity (which is a simple adult lady who wants a temporary replacement for her empty nest, who wants to do her part during a pandemic, who knows making art is an elixir for the troubles of life, who adores kids). So, straighten yourself out, and begin to explain the first lesson in a cheerful, adoring voice. Try not to laugh when your students genuinely answer your curious questions with their typical priceless hilarity. Your students think they are being serious! Treat them as such.

Driveway Art Class Philosophy #2: The students are being serious, so roll over in a giggle fit only with yourself, invisibly.

How-to Number Six:

The most important benefits of a driveway art class will accumulate over time, so pay attention and gather these up before they slip away unnoticed. These are the golden moments that will happen in your driveway (or backyard) which you will want to take note of so that you can write an article like this, or gift them to the children’s parents in conversation, or keep them in your personal history of a life happily lived. These moments will also fortify your belief that preciousness lives in each of us even if it’s hard to find. When you are exposed to so much raw innocence at a driveway art class, you realize this earnest sincerity is a feature of our wiring and not something we outgrow, though it can become grown over. The children will help you to love adults so much more, including yourself.

Here are some moments that might be collected in your driveway if you look for them:

· After enough instruction has cycled through, one day a student might ask to lead the class on his own. He might want to teach everyone (you, his mom, his brother) how to draw (step by step) the superhero Venom, complete with the creepy teeth and the horrifyingly nasty long tongue. Ick. But collect this moment if it comes. You’ll have a record of a small person stepping into an educator’s role perhaps for the first time in his life. It might mean that you inspired him to share his passion with the world.

· One day after painting rocks for a bit alongside your students on a beautiful spring day, you would be wise to listen closely to the little girl sitting across from you. She will look at the rock you’re painting, shaking her head in a pained disbelief, and exclaim with a slow, deep, almost tortured sigh, “That rock is so beautiful it makes my eyes hurt.” And she will mean this, so you will offer her another Rice Crispy treat which she will accept as always, and you will file that moment away for eternity.

· Then one day the youngest of your students will have a particularly emotionally intelligent interaction with his older brother by explaining with honesty and vulnerability how it might feel to be in his situation. With a frank honesty that sometimes happens in a driveway art class, the older brother will acknowledge that he sees his little brother’s point of view. If you had only been focusing on cleaning up the gigantic paint mess with the paper towels, then you’d have missed an example of the full repertoire of magical children.

· Finally, when your prolific cartoonist student asks you to help him find a French name for one of his characters, you’ll scroll on your phone down the long list of French male baby names online, naming them out loud one by one. Claude? Jacques? Chevalier? Henri? To each one, your student will shake his head no, until finally you say ‘Remy’. Then you settle on Remy, which so names a cartoon fellow with long bendy arms, an oval head, and distinctly delineated lips. Because Remy had to be French (for some unknown reason to you but for a highly specific reason to your student) he needed an authentically French name. Your student is filled with mirth now and will smile that beautiful smile he makes, with its collection of half adult and half baby teeth. From now on there will be much talk of this Remy. You grab this morsel of an interaction with your student and lock it into your box labelled ‘I Love People’.

These exact moments you might encounter in your driveway art class, or you won’t. But you’ll have your own miraculous moments, guaranteed. If you watch for them, you will have them to keep or share, and your life will be changed.

Driveway Art Class Philosophy #3: Pay attention and your life will be changed. Guaranteed.

To wind this lesson down, you can see that starting a driveway art class is quite doable and will generate benefits that can be enjoyed not only by the students, but the teacher and parents.

Call me with any questions when you finally start your own driveway class. If you never end up doing it, no worries. You can return the supplies you bought or donate them. You’ll eventually go through the paper towels.

But in my professional opinion, you would make a great teacher, especially when you pay attention and teach from the heart. We all would.