In Cool Springs
Call or Text 615 678 6745

Overview

Start Here

Foundational Art

& Cartooning – Schoolyear

Summer Art

Camps

Workshops

Weekend Focus

Art Buffet

Day Classses

Firstlight Info

Everything Else

Firstlight Art Academy

JOIN A CLASS TODAY!

Summer Art

Camps

Workshops

Weekend Focus

Call Us

Overview

Start Here

Foundational

(And Cartoon Art)

Schoolyear Program

Art Buffet

Day Classes

Information

Everything Else

Text Us

Employee Information & Application

About us & the Summer program

At Firstlight Art, we have two summer camp programs. There are themed morning camps that are weekly, Mon-Fri each, and there is a daily camp in the afternoons that is every weekday. These are scheduled for every week for 9 weeks starting June 2 and ending Aug 1.

Note: Training sessions for teachers and assistants, and studio preparation sessions will be scheduled during week of Tuesday through Friday, May 27-30.

Morning camps run for one week at a time, with students attending from 9 am to 12 noon. Each camp meets Monday through Friday. There are no camps on Saturdays.

Workers need to commit for a full weeks at a time. There are 4 different morning camps every week, each with one teacher and one assistant. Each camp uses one studio room.

Camps have a limit of 8-12 students depending on age and room size.

There are several morning camp age groups:
6-8
9-12
11-16

Themes include:
Art Monsters
Art Jungle
ArtoSaurs
Art Castle
Artchanted
Toons
Animation
and more.

We also have the afternoon Summer Art Buffet every week from 1:30-3:45 each weekday. We usually schedule workers for each full week for the Buffet as well.

There are two Art Buffet age groups:
Ages 6 – 8 – back studio
Ages 9-19 – front studio (often with overflow in side studio)

Students who are signed up for both a morning camp and the afternoon Art Buffet stay for sack lunch from noon until 1:30, when the Art Buffet starts. We have picnic tables outside and tv cartoons and games inside. The age groups eat in a couple of shifts outside.

July 4th, has morning camps but no afternoon Art Buffet.

Assistants and teachers arrive at 8 or 8:30 (depending on camp) to get ready, and morning assistants stay to help manage students during lunchtime and for afternoon preparations. Assistants and teachers leave at either 1, 1:30, or 4 pm depending on schedules (we need fewer assistants in the afternoons).

Assistant pay is $14/hour. We require a questionnaire, and an interview to begin. Then prospective assistants will be asked to work in a trial session as a paid assistant, for one or two afternoons during the school year to assess capability.

What we’re looking for

1. Kindness and patience.
2. Strong focus on others: what teachers and students need – before, during, and after class.
3. Ability to instruct clearly.
4. Respect for others.
5. self-confidence.

Firstlight is not like grade school or high school, where everyone is required to attend. Students are here because they want to come, and because their parents paid for them to attend.

We want everyone to leave feeling great about their camp or class, and having some artwork and projects to take home that they’re really proud of. We want parents to think they got way more than they expected. Happy kids. Happy parents.

And happy art teachers and assistants, too. This is work, but it’s very fun and rewarding!

Employee Forms

We need two government forms and a bank deposit for or canceled check, for you to begin work. Here are links to download the all three forms as PDFs. We usually only need the first page of these forms.

I9 form

W4 form

Make sure you fill in the ss number and sign the forms.

Direct Deposit form

Make sure to fill in the account and routing numbers, and sign the Deposit form.

Your bank may also have a direct deposit authorization form – or they can print out a blank check for you. Don’t sign the check, just write VOID across it, nice and big.

Bring these to the studio, preferably in an envelope with your full name on it. Thank you.

Questionnairre

These questions are designed to discover your natural tendencies and understanding of managing young children. Just answer as best as you can, because there may not be one best answer. Writing more is better than less. Thank you!

Emergency Contact

Questionnairre

List the date(s) you can't work. If you don't know, just say so and estimate how many days you may be unavailable, and the most likely week or month.
(Art classrooms for children ages 5 to 12)
=

Health Request Form

Only submit if you ARE requesting masks for your class.

If you need your art class to help you attend by continuing to mask, please fill out this form and use the Submit button at the bottom. Thank you! (We will keep this information confidential, but cannot guarantee that children will not share, or may already have shared with friends).

What is 7+8?

9 Art Myths Totally Busted

Here’s My New Book, Free!

It’s free for the Firstlight community. Just tap to download a PDF version.

I’ve shared some good insights in my book, and I hope it will help everyone understand the weird and wonderful world of art a little better. If you’re an artist, want to be an artist, or have an artist in your life, I wrote this for you.

Let me know what you think about it, and/or check it out on Kindle and leave a review.

Thanks for reading!

How To Remove Acrylic Paint

We often get asked for information. Here’s a great chart Dennas made to help you understand how to deal with paint when it’s not where you wanted.

If you have asked to cancel your art course…

You’ve been sent a link to this page because you’ve requested cancellation. Our policies, which require agreement before registration, are always posted on our site, and some are also at the bottom of this page. They begin with the explanation that our course tuition is a full purchase for the school year, or the remainder of it, and the monthly payments towards this purchase are a free payment plan to help pay over time. We aren’t a month to month program, but the payment plans can make it seem like we are.

Please read more about cancellation before continuing on to our cancellation form, (provided that it is before our cutoff date of Feb 20 – we can’t accept cancellations at the end of the term). We work hard to create a robust long-term program and this is stated all through our site and in the registration process. Please do not schedule new activities and then try to cancel the art course to accomodate them.

If you have any questions at all, or want a scholarship application, please call Mr. Dennas: 615-202-6426 or email. Thank you so much!

Here are exerpts from our Questions and Answers page:

“What if I want to quit the art course sometime during the school year?”

A yearly educational course like ours, and for most educational courses, is a one-time purchase for the school year, but since we offer a monthly payment plan, it can seem like we are going month to month. The payment plan is a convenience for our families so you don’t have to pay the course fee all at once. Cancelling a class is actually returning part of the course you purchased and asking for your money back for the rest of the year. We do have an option for doing this with our 30-day cancellation policy. Please continue if you are considering cancelling.

Cancelling with a 30-day notice is largely reserved for insurmountable reasons, such as moving, dissatisfaction with our teaching, or health issues. Otherwise, it is very important for the Class, the Student, and for Firstlight, that registrations are completed as purchased. Signing up for other activities later on in the year, or feeling busy, is not what our cancellation policy is designed for. Financial considerations can usually be handled with our scholarships, which we take applications for at any time during the year.

Issues For The Class 

Students in a class develop community. Taking students out mid-year is a loss to that community, and some students take it hard when a friend disappears. It can cause other students to become discouraged and not enjoy their class. Other students often ask about their friends when they’ve only missed one week. Other class considerations are that if a class is small, we can fall under our break-even point with just one cancellation. If the class is full, we probably have turned away other students who wanted in the class.

Issues For The Student

Our courses are designed to give a strong foundation to every art student. The curriculum has been crafted and revised for years to ensure that once you get through the 2 years of Foundations lessons, you can stand on your own and pursue art at home with a degree of confidence. While It does help to continue with our advanced lessons (if you are serious about pursuing art), for the casual artist, Foundations is a complete course. If you quit even for a month or two and then come back, you will have a significant gap in that course. Key lessons are intermingled with the more fun-oriented lessons, so that students won’t be overwhelmed, and will enjoy “doing what I want” in addition to learning valuable insights. Since we have a two-year cycle, that means taking any break, such as cancelling mid-year and planning to return in the fall, means the missing pieces won’t be available for two years down the road. This makes it more difficult for a student to advance to the next level, since they don’t have certain skills or insights. That said, we have made it work when needed!

Issues For The School

Our main enrollment season is in the late Summer and early Fall. Cancelling your art course mid-year is like returning a partially used product that most likely can never be resold to another student. We try hard to make the courses and supplies as affordable as possible, and we have tight margins as a result. In short, to stay in business we need the courses that have been sold, to be paid for, and offering the interest-free payment plan shouldn’t negate the idea that the entire year has been purchased.

We do offer a 30-day cancelation before our cutoff date in February. If you have something big come up unexpectedly that requires you to cancel your enrollement, please use our 30-day advance notice CANCELATION REQUEST FORM. Because we don’t sign up students later in the year, we have a cut-off date of February 20 for all cancelations. Please read the policy excerpts in the green toggle bar directly below if you want to review them.

If you are considering cancelling, please give us a call and we’ll do everything we can to help you finish your course in a way that works for you. Thank you!

“Why do I need to pay for 30 days after I cancel?”

There are two reasons.

1) We are looking for committed artists, not a place for kids to just hang out. Since we can’t keep our doors open without full classes for the school year courses, we need for families to consider the decision carefully. Without a 30-day policy, and especially with our easy interest free monthly payment plan, it’s easy for someone to begin the year treating it as a month-to-month class, which it’s not. We’d hate for a person to only try us out for a month without that consideration, and then casually quit, taking a space in the class that other, more committed artists would have liked to have. Once courses are 1 or 2 months into the school year, many people will have looked elsewhere for after-school activities, and our courses may have empty spaces the rest of the year.

2) It can take time for another student to change their schedule and fill a vacant spot.

The good news is that you are encouraged to stay in the class for those 30 days and make more art!

From our policies - Tap to open
Just FYI, here are all the excerpts about cancellations from the policies you agreed to when you signed up.

9. If you can’t finish your course – We need 30 days advance notice on or before our cancelation cut-off date of February 20th using our CANCELATION REQUEST FORM. We understand when things happen unexpectedly. We just ask you to TALK to us if something big comes up. Please call Dennas at 615-202-6426. Please read our Frequently Asked Questions (Q & A) also on this page, for more information, and look at our detailed cancelation explanation at the bottom of this page in the colored area. Appropriate reasons for cancelling a course after you purchased it and have used it for several months are thing such as moving out of the middle TN area or family health problems. Changing your class/schedule or applying for a scholarship can solve most any other problems that arise.

Whatever you do, please don’t attempt to make any changes in your class by speaking to one of us in person, especially when classes are going or ending, or starting, or about to start, or well, any other time. Let us make it clear; all verbal communication will be forgotten immediately by visual people like us. (“who was that I just spoke with?! didn’t they have a purple shirt?) Only by using the cancelation request form can a tuition be refunded or payments stopped. And only before our cut off date. (ok, if something really freaky happens, call. We are pretty understanding folks).

Here is our cancelation policy explained in extra loving detail.

Firstlight Arts Academy loves art students and we want to keep ’em happy. If you or your child is unhappy for any reason, please let us know as soon as you can so that we can address the issue. We like to be encouraging and proactive. Please know that talking to us about anything will be as good an experience as we can make it!

Most schools are a tight business financially, and we struggle to make the ends meet every single year. We simply cannot operate successfully without full classes all year long. We are a school-year supplemental program, with most of our activity squeezed into a 2-hour window each day. Students usually sign up for these type of courses at the beginning of the school year, and it’s harder to fill empty spaces in the middle of the year. We also do most of our advertising during the sign-up season at the beginning of the school year.

That’s why we ask for a commitment from our families. It’s a promise that you will do your best to complete the courses purchased, and give us a chance to work with you. In turn, we promise that we will do our best to make the art course as fabulous as we can in every way. We can’t refund a course when people just want to try something new that came up. Then we have an empty seat that someone else could have used.

There are other reasons beyond just keeping us going, however, that makes sticking to your commitment a great idea.

  • Each class is a wonderful little social group, and we hate to see it disturbed during the year.
  • The curriculum is designed to be taken for the full year, so quitting gives you an incomplete art course.
  • We may have given away a month of tuition to someone who referred you as a yearly sign-up.
  • The most important reason: Artists can have ups and downs, and it is good for them to see that they can get past a few “learners” and find a “keeper” by sticking with it past the mood of the moment. This can actually be critical to the enjoyment of art for the rest of your life. We have lots of stories…

That said, we understand when things come up unexpectedly. If you have to quit for some unforeseen issue, or if you feel that the program has not fulfilled our description of it, then there is a 30 day cancelation policy. To request a cancelation and refund, you MUST use our cancelation form before February 20th. Please contact our founder and director, Dennas to discuss your situation.

If you are having financial trouble and that is affecting your decision, then please talk to us to see if we can work something out together. There are several scholarship options available to you.

Thank you!