EPS Visual Art Teacher 2005-2024
Education: GRowing up with artist parents in an arts-rich environment, AA-Olympic College, BA-University of Washington with a focus on Graphic design, MIT-Western Washington University
Welcome to my PDP Portfolio site. My main PDP goal is about organization for efficient function. It encompasses both physical and digital elements. It has centered around organizing my many folders and files both physical and digital that span 19 years of teaching visual art so that I have a clear system and can find things for lesson planning, and to fine tune my organizing of supplies, and categories in the art room and art office for efficient flow. I tend to be a pack rat which can lead to searching for things. The main component of my PDP was to take on the daunting challenge of my massive collection of digital media. I already have a fairly good system of bins with folders for my physical lesson plans and sample art. With my designated goal of organizing digital media determined, I carved out time to pursue it. I have been able to weed out thousands of duplicates, and images/files that I do not need. My PDP facilitator, Melissa Hayes has been an enormous help to me from getting started to staying the course. Her talented and supernatural ability to see the big picture and the tiny details, and to advise me as to how to organize my material is appreciated beyond measure. I chose my team for their abilities to organize and manage schedules, work with numbers and data, and teach complex procedures and processes. Thank you to Melissa Hayes, Sarah Peeden, An Nuon, and Michael Graybeal, who witnessed my process and dilemmas, showed appreciation for what I do, and helped guide me and provide feedback toward my goal of developing a clear and efficient system for my digital material. Only I can work on the physical aspects of the art room of editing, categorizing, and maintaining, which I have been doing for 19 years, but it is forever ongoing just like housework. In my intense PDP focus on organization, I have a renewed energy for tackling it yet again to fine tune and improve it.
I have worked on organizational systems for years with the biggest realization that my system needs to be theme-based. But even with that knowledge I have struggled. I’m not finished by any means, but I am closer, and Melissa has provided invaluable feedback on how to think about my curriculum, and how I might narrow the main categories of my theme-based folders. I still have too many categories. This process and the hours spent looking through material has been an informative inventory and has provided me with a clear direction. I can see the light in the distance. I have hope. Now I just need to keep at it. Melissa has also helped me wrestle my material into the PDP format and language and get it into WordPress. I could not have done it without her help and guidance. She is a great facilitator, and I very much needed a dedicated facilitator with a strong work ethic. Thank you Melissa!
This is an appreciation moment for Jonathan Briggs. I owe Jonathan so much in so many ways. We started the same year. I could not have done my job without him. He is my tech guru. He grounds me with knowledge and kindness when I am spinning out. He shows me new cool things and guides me toward solutions when I am trying to do something I don’t know how to do. He made me use Gimp my first year of teaching instead of getting Photoshop, but understood my desire to be teaching an industry standard software program to prepare our students for the professional world. He got an Adobe license the next year for me to use in the computer lab, and set it up so students in my classes purchased Photoshop and Premiere Elements. Ultimately, he then orchestrated what we now have access to through Adobe. Everyone, faculty and students, have access to the Adobe Creative Cloud. This is AMAZING. Please watch my two interviews of Oliver C in the video section to see the value of students having access to Adobe software.
This photo is a recent example of how he helps me. I wanted to know if PowerPoint has the live video capability that Keynote does. I could not figure it out. He took the time to look it up right on the spot and we were able to see that yes, PowerPoint has the live video feature and it is called Cameo. So we did a screen shot to capture the moment. Thank you Jonathan for 19 years of tremendous help and support.
A Card from a Student that Illustrates Why I love Teaching Art
Below is a card I just received this week, 05-09-24 from a quiet 8th grade student who left it on my desk. He did not enter my classes as a dedicated art student, but I could see his creative thinking and skill levels develop. I could see that he cared about his work. He started asking specific questions and took time with his projects. I receive wonderful cards from students and this one really moved me. What this student describes and what he learned from my teaching is beyond measure. Possibly his folks encouraged him to write cards, and the fact that he followed through is something he will carry forward. The buy-in from students in my classes is what charges my engines. It is so fun to be in a room full of students making things and learning skills and being excited about it. I’m always thrilled to hear students tell me that they have an artwork hanging on their walls years after making it.
A Look Back to My Years at EPS
Eastside Prep has given the Fine & Performing Arts a respected home in the curriculum. New to teaching, I was hired on the merits of my portfolio, and my first interview with Terry Macaluso and Wendy Lawrence. Except for my first year when I had an art colleague, I was the visual art teacher from my second year up to year nine. Now, culminating my 19th year, I have two visual art colleagues. Our department has grown in the scope of what we can offer our students, and I am grateful to have two wonderful visual art colleagues to interact and teach with. I can easily reflect on having had the privilege to teach visual art for grades 5th -12th for 19 years going on twenty. I had and still have the autonomy and respect from my administrators to design my own curriculum where I continue to present a wide variety of art forms from mixed media, drawing & painting, filmmaking, and an art tech class I designed for 5th and 6th graders. This class was crafted for students learn multiple software programs to create and manipulate digital images and use graphic design skills with text and imagery in a creative artistic manner. I continue to love teaching both middle and upper school because I get a full spectrum experience of the different ages and skill ranges which inform my teaching of the novice, intermediate and expert levels of our art students. I continually grow as a teacher, artist, and person.
I bring an arts-rich background to my teaching. I grew up with artistic parents who met in art school and who lived their lives and made their livelihood with their arts education embedded in their every moment. They lived, worked and breathed the arts. My brother and I grew up in their art-rich world, witnessed them making a living in the arts and in teaching the arts, and we have been involved in and making a living in the arts our entire lives. They were also elegant hoarding packrats and my brother and I have inherited these same tendencies of continually acquiring too much stuff with the challenges of organizing it. Artists need stuff–tools and materials. It is this backdrop and my arts education that I have brought to EPS.
I wrote for my Canvas bio that, . . .I believe that art inspires and enriches our lives. It transcends languages and prejudices. It is an international language. It opens and expands our minds to the world around us and teaches us to see and to engage.
I strive to dispel the myth that only artistic people can authentically learn art skills. It is a matter of providing the tools, some tips, and time. At EPS, in every art class each year, it is rewarding to witness students expanding their creative thinking and art skills through the process of simply creating artwork. It is in the process of doing where magic occurs. The hand-eye coordination and fine-motor skills, which are developed by using the art materials and tools in specific ways, translates into refined visual problem solving that can be applied across disciplines.
Years later this still holds true and drives me to stay in the process, and to teach skills which develop confidence in my students.
My artistic mind and way of operating and thinking can sometimes feel isolating in a world of STEM, and am encouraged by the hard work of the NAEA (National Art education Association) and the new STEAM that incorporate the arts. My strong background in the arts and my love of technology have helped me find a place in EPS. Aside from teaching visual art skills, I can also sprinkle in miscellaneous life skills such as communication and value skills. I stress in each class in many ways that we all have value as people in all our diversity, that we all start out making art as kids, and we have the ability to develop our creative thinking skills in our own unique ways by making art.
I love teaching Middle School because it is a great training ground for operating in Upper School and EPS believes in the integrity of our youngest students and provides them with high-quality, critical thinking opportunities in all of the disciplines. For example, at one point EPS had all 5th and 6th graders get school computers. It was a huge shift to provide the training and structure needed to guide them in using computers for their learning.
An example of how EPS listened to my viewpoint and then took action was when I reflected in faculty meetings and discussions with tech and admin that we needed to provide computers that could run Photoshop and Premiere for my art students. I believe that we should be using industry-standard software starting in the 5th grade. Paul Hagen and I and others worked hard to propose that EPS embraces the 21st century with Digital Media programs. It happened! My Art Meets Tech and Digital Storytelling classes use the professional programs. It is truly amazing that EPS and tech negotiated with Adobe so every EPS community member has access to the full Adobe Creative Suite. The challenge is to get everyone skilled in using the programs. My classes offer a good starting point. I believe that having these skills expands options for communicating content in visually-compelling ways complete with audio.
I also love teaching upper school visual art classes. Learning, applying, and practicing art skills further embed the concept that each student can continue to grow their art skills to enhance their visual communication abilities in the adult world. Their art skills have the potential for personal enrichment as well as income earning potential. Having skills to make cool looking and sounding things builds confidence.
Students house great passion and hope eternal. I also know how that passion and hope eternal can be stifled and not supported, but at their age, I believe that it can be rekindled, redirected, and fostered toward a greater good. The arts are a wonderful means to do that. EPS hires great fine and performing arts faculty so that students are exposed to centered, vital adults who respect them, like them, and want to be a part of their world.
My curriculum is designed for everyone to enter my classes with acceptance for who they are and for what their background art skills are. I strive to help anyone who lacks confidence, is afraid of, or has disdain of drawing, and can voice their opinions such as when saying “I can’t draw a straight line.” I use step-by-step lessons to take the mystery out of drawing which makes it easier to get started and to understand the building blocks of how to draw things around us, so the drawings look realistic. Developing drawing skill is an important base for success in painting and digital painting.
My curriculum is comprised of building blocks in tools, media, and art concepts. For example:
• What the different type of pencils and papers are.
• Different ways to hold a pencil for different effects.
• What the basic art concepts are such as shape, line, value, texture, space, etc.
A sample is: we draw different types of lines from thick to thin, curving, and organic. A rectangle is a flat shape with 4 straight line segments connected by corners which are angles. A circle is one continuous connected curving line. Adding dark to light value shading in specific places with a light source makes a flat shape look 3 dimensional. I show them that Art is magic and that they are magicians.
As an eternal advocate for the arts, I believe that all the fine and performing arts enhance the learning process. Students are exposed to and explore different ways of thinking and seeing things. They can also help build the personal necessary human skills of speaking, moving in their bodies, conveying ideas, and engaging with others. The fine and performing arts are interactive and lend themselves to enhancing other disciplines.
My experiences of teaching visual art means that I am immersed in art conversations, thought processes, and activities on a daily basis. The art room studio is my happy place. It is a place to join with others in the exercise of creative thinking and art making. It is a self-sustaining energy/idea generating system for me. I generate energy when I look at and research art. Or literally anything because ideas come from everything. I bring my energy to the art class and students bring their energy. We mix our energies and give and take ideas, through a call and response, show me, I do-we do-you do on-going process. My job is to create a safe place to explore, to encourage, and push for excellence in the presentation of their work. This method and many levels of engagement is greatly enriching to me and continually recharges my engines. Teaching art means that I am always seeking out ideas, researching, and discovering inspiration in the world around me. It means that I seek out the company of other creative people to share with and learn from so I can bring back inspired ideas to my students. It also means interacting daily with students, getting to know them in a unique, natural, evolving way so the relationships are genuine. I learn from them. It is quite a special experience.
I strive to promote the arts in my interactions with colleagues, staff, and admin. I am devoted to the cause of promoting, learning, and investigating through an art-rich lens. EPS has provided me with the space and support in this pursuit. I have grown immensely as an artist and teacher of my craft, and I am forever grateful for the respect and opportunities that EPS has given me. Thank you.