All our lives are touched by the visual arts, and if prehistoric art offers any insights into the human condition, it is the enduring centrality of art in understanding and appreciating the world around us and our place in it. Through art, we assert our creativity, develop and hone technical skills, and express ourselves by sharing our stories and worldview. Art plays a critical role in helping children develop their motor skills, and, through art, they too make sense of their surroundings and stamp authority on their experiences. I teach because I profoundly believe in the education of art and I enjoy working with young people, who never fail to impress me with their abilities to think laterally and to create intuitively.
As an art educator, I am acutely aware of the potential magnitude of my role in shaping my students’ formative experiences as artists and creatives. I wish to be a positive influence for my students, which is why I am dedicated to ensuring that each student has frequent and multiple entry points for enjoying the art-making process. One of my overarching goals is for students to be at ease with taking creative risks and making mistakes so that they can more skillfully manipulate materials and more fully express their creative voices. I do my best to serve as an inspirational springboard for my students, and I take great pride in them and their work.
Primary
In primary art, I seek to make the art-making process fun, relevant, and engaging for students. I design projects and lessons that will develop technical skill, utilize art vocabulary, and make connections to what they are currently learning in other subjects. When they are learning about Ancient Egypt, they are working with form, shape, and texture in the studio as they sculpt and glaze a ceramic canopic jar. When they are learning about India with their class teachers, they are considering line, colour, and pattern as they layer and blend oil pastel in paintings of the Indian peafowl.
Through a range of diverse, engaging, cross-curricular lessons, I provide my students with many opportunities to experiment with a wide range of tools, mediums, and creative approaches. They work in two and three dimensions: drawing, painting, cutting, pasting, sculpting, printing, weaving, stitching, and posing for photographs with their work. They often apply several different techniques in the same work, resulting in work with higher production value, which they can feel satisfaction and pride in having produced.
Secondary
For secondary art students, particularly those in exam classes and those with ambitions of higher education and employment in the arts, my principal objectives include developing students’ technical skills, promoting research skills, and cultivating critical awareness in the art-making process. Emphasizing an in-depth and holistic approach to the creative process, I encourage my students to produce their artwork drawing from multiple perspectives and skill sets:
as scientists– through keen observation, recording, and experimentation;
as mathematicians– with heightened awareness of spatial relationships, form, and geometry, and the ability to translate between 2D and 3D worlds;
as historians– from a cultural perspective with the artist as avid cultural consumer, and of art reflecting social conditions particular to a group of people, time and place;
as linguists– through the language of felt experience, and communication of ideas and meaning through symbols;
and, finally, the physical demands of balance, coordination, strength, and stamina.
I work with my students in a dialogue of idea development to support them in creating strong, interesting, informed, and personal work, thereby achieving outstanding results.