A Sneak Peak into Miss Lasto's Teaching Philosophy:

• She strives to create lessons that are multifaceted, student-centered, & flexible.

• She believes her students are makers who impact the world. It is their creativity that provides them agency.

• She hopes to ignite little fires in her students daily; to help them set goals, find their passions, and strive to reach them both.

• She understands that her students are a small, yet integral, part of how culture is made. 

• She highlights that each child is a distinct artist as well as an individual learner with their own unique learning style. 

• She acknowledges that we all come from unique backgrounds, have had different experiences, and with that maintain a different outlook on life. 

• She encourages looking, listening, and learning from one another! She believes that only good things can come from group collaboration and understanding. Therefore, her art classroom/studio space will be filled with the sounds of conversation and occasional bustling around the room. 

• She concludes that while it is important to develop art specific skills, this learning should occur in service to larger ideas. Skill development should not overpower the learning of broader life lessons or the opportunity for personal growth.

• She perceives that students' daily effort and attitude in the classroom weigh as much, in terms of success, as the final artworks they create. Process matters greatly and hard work is not always synonymous with final outcome. 

• She regards self-assessment as a major part of her students' learning journey. By providing the students with questions, topics, prompts, and cues, they will be better suited to critique their practice and well adjusted to the ideas of self-expression and understanding.