I am an art educator at Violet Avenue Elementary School and Netherwood Elementary School. As an artist, my background in various media allows me to provide students with meaningful, relevant, and engaging art educational experiences. My lessons incorporate traditional arts proficiencies into culturally relevant projects while fostering student development of creative thinking and artmaking strategies. While each lesson imparts aesthetic knowledge such as the formal elements of art, I find it essential to teach more than just technical ability. 

I promote a growth mindset through the artistic process, which includes taking risks and learning from mistakes, adapting to difficult situations, using resources wisely, and looking closely at everything they see. I provide opportunities for experimentation and exploration of art materials and concepts so that students can work through frustrations in low-stakes situations, and encourage reflective thinking so that students identify their processes. Through this, my students not only develop artmaking techniques in the classroom but also social-emotional competencies and problem-solving skills, which they take into their daily lives. 

In addition to cultivating students’ artistic and personal dispositions, I introduce students to diverse examples of historical and contemporary artwork to promote their visual literacy skills. I facilitate art observation and discussion for students by presenting them with engaging artwork and open-ended inquiry. These activities serve as scaffolded brainstorming exercises for art projects as students learn to understand artistic context and begin to generate their own ideas inspired by other artists.