I grew up in a family of educators. My parents are teachers, I have siblings who teach, aunts and uncles, grandparents and I even married a teacher! It makes sense that I have an invested interest in education. What has surprised me as I’ve pursued a career in education is how much I would be drawn to art education specifically. I graduated in Visual Art and started a business a few years after I graduated. I really enjoyed all the aspects of owning a business and sharing my talents with others. I created meaningful connections and got to play with my hands all day. It was good and important work. However, it wasn’t until I found myself as an art teacher that the true power of art revealed itself to me. Up to that point in my life I saw a more binary way of learning. There were the academic kids and the creative kids. I landed under the creative category, so in my mind I was inept at any subject that was under the “academic” setting. Of course that was a myth and as a teacher I am driven to dispel such myths for my students. In the 6 years that I have been teaching art I have seen time and time again students taking their creative energy from an art making activity and producing something I would have previously put in the “academic” category. Seeing a well functioning paper airplane or lego spaceship makes my art teacher heart beam with pride. I began teaching classes through my business and then a fire took hold of me. Seeing how artmaking, in all the varieties that it provides, actually fosters creativity and innovation in all fields of disciplines as well as giving students opportunities to process the world around them ignited a passion within me. I went back to school and received my Multiple Subject Teaching Credential and landed a job as an Elementary School Art Teacher. Because teaching art in the Elementary School tends to be part time I have also taught at galleries, art studios, community centers, private homes and churches. Whatever the venue, the location or the class I have seen the power artmaking has on the mind. Self-discovery, social collaboration, problem-solving skills and pure innovation are a few of the normal experiences I see within an art class. Because I see the power art has on an individual, I am driven to bring more visual and expressive ways of communicating to schools and communities. I believe that if we at all desire to foster innovation, collaboration and mental stability in our society, then we need more art. I am grateful to be in a career that brings that to the world.
