ART TEACHER BIOGRAPHY
At five years old I won a coloring contest. Some stranger came to my kindergarten class with printouts of the Statue of Liberty and informed us we would be taking part in this contest. I then spent the next 30 minutes participating in my favorite pastime, making art. I recall lightly pressing my green crayon onto the page and carefully crafting my crayon strokes so that they stayed within the lines. I also pressed harder along the edges of the image to add dimension to the drawing. My goal was to make the most realistic image my five year old hands were capable of. On the other hand, my classmates were not limiting themselves by striving for realism. They made statues consisting only of scribbles and pink lady liberties with purple polka dots. They didn't concern themselves with the lines provided by the image. They were expressive and creative and exploratory; and yet, I won that contest. With that win, I received $50 and a lifetime love of art; however, looking back on the event, it seems a shame that my far more creative classmates weren’t awarded the same. If they had won, would they have been encouraged by this event to continue developing their creative talents?
Teaching creative thinking is difficult, but children are so full of ideas and have a wonderfully unique perspective when it comes to finding solutions. I realized I wanted to teach when I was working at an art summer camp and the campers would come to me with the most unheard of and out-there ideas. They wanted to make art that I couldn’t conceptualize and every time they presented their piece to me I was blown away by their ideas, abilities, and eagerness to learn. I remember teaching one of the 10 year old campers how to make gifs in photoshop and he spent the entire summer digitally drawing and animating a nearly 2 minute long gif. At this point, I had already been a practicing and studying artist and art historian. I had spent a summer in the south of France painting landscapes and frequented art museums in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. I had even made a children’s program for an exhibit at my University Gallery. And now, I wanted to use all those skills and concepts I accumulated to work with children and foster their talents.
Since 2022, I’ve been living abroad in Japan and it has been one of the most positive experiences of my life thus far. I’ve been working with the Japanese people of my community to teach students, ages 3-99, conversational English. It wasn’t until I arrived here that I was able to acknowledge how culturally different my country is from Japan. Through our communication and discussions surrounding our cultural differences, my students and I are constantly swapping knowledge and demonstrating empathy for one another’s experiences. An international environment would be the perfect place to teach art. Students would be arriving to my classroom with vastly different backgrounds and experiences and through art we can both study the experiences of those different to us, as well as use art to communicate the stories we hold personally. Each student has a story worth telling through their art. Each student has a story worth listening to. I want to build a classroom where students don't feel the need to color within the lines and make something perfectly presentable. I want them to express themselves, their stories and explore the creativity that’s been within them since before they even knew what “art” was.