For me, doing research is key when planning lessons and art centers. Looking at my own artwork and photographs, different art making processes, online resources, through books and magazines, and researching various artists is the way I begin to plan my curriculum. Walking into a new school with all different learning abilities, my goal was to create lessons that kept all of the students engaged in the art making process. Learning to make projects that are more process based than final result based was a new challenge I had to over come for myself as a teacher. My students at Conroy needed to be engaged and just make, no matter what the outcome was. I found that centers worked very well in a majority of my classes, because each class was almost a one-to-one student to adult ratio. The way I planned my curriculum was designing weekly schedules, color-coded by class, teacher, and number of students. Some classes I saw multiple times a week and knowing the class size for each class allowed me to gather all the necessary materials each morning, because there was not even a minute between my classes, each day. Keeping a sequence order of lessons was important to me for the first few weeks to create a curriculum that built upon itself. After I completed multiple units, I ventured into creating lessons that would just keep my kids active, engaged, and open their eyes to new projects. Some projects I designed just for a few classes, but when other classes saw them, the whole school ended up doing a few of the projects. In order for everyone to know what was planned, I would have 3-4 weeks of schedules hanging up on the board, then behind it I had a blank weekly schedule I filled in after every class, that was filled in with what actually happened that class. Some day's we wouldn't get through even one thing I had planned while others we did extra stuff or totally veered off my planned schedule, because the students needs come first. Teaching at a all special needs school, each day is entirely different, and you might have stuff planned, but you have to examine your kids before you start teaching because you don't want to overwhelm them. The para-professionals and nurses that attend every class with their students were very helpful in letting me know how their kids were doing each day. Below are examples of my lesson plans, art center, mentor teacher's observations, co-op's observations, daily lesson plan schedules, photographs, etc.