As a teacher I bring a well-rounded connoisseurship of the many traditions of art making and an interest in the ever-expanding contemporary art practices. I work to find a balance between tradition and innovation, historical study, craftsmanship, and post-modern context. I am excited by the diversity of global historical approaches to art making. Today’s art students deserve and require as broad and inclusive a context as their teachers can provide.

By combining the philosophies of progressivism and essentialism, I hope to create an art classroom community that is, in the words of Bell Hooks, “an exciting place and never boring.” I am inspired by Hooks’ book Teaching to Transgress, in which she states: “ If boredom should prevail, then pedagogical strategies should intervene, alter, and even disrupt the atmosphere”. A high school ceramics teacher has taken me under her wing this past year, and I have seen first hand how excitement in the classroom can be cultivated by having flexible agendas that allow for a spontaneous shift in direction. I saw that same excitement be transformed into a confidence that coexisted with a student’s performance outside of the classroom in the form of prosocial academic engagement. I possess a natural inclination to relate to and acknowledge the presence of the students that I work with at Loara High School.

In my future classroom, as in my studio practice, there would be an emphasis on cultivating an ever-expanding awareness of the language of visual form. I believe in the necessity of a deep and broad knowledge of art history; I am also driven by a desire to update and reinterpret traditions for our contemporary culture. My goal is to empower students with the tools, vocabulary, and love of the world of art so that they might pursue whatever they are most interested in doing. I have come to believe that diversity is one of the most important and useful aspects of the educational process: it is through the encountering of differing positions, assumptions, motivations and beliefs that students can begin to find their own direction.