My Mission

As an art educator I will conduct myself with a positive attitude to motivate students to explore in a safe environment. I will teach the whole child and help them experience and view art and design.  I believe that to communicate visually is within every human being. My goal is to foster and encourage curiosity, creative thinking, artistic growth, and visual learning in the classroom and beyond. To challenge my students to take creative risks and allow them space to adjust if these risks are not successful. I will teach my students to persist. 

For a society to succeed, it must strive to make art education and creative thinking a top priority. Art is far more than decorative – it allows us to learn about the world and about ourselves through the use of visual language.” 

– Daniel Pink, “A Whole New Mind 

My Vision

My vision is to help students to develop their imagination.  Help them to explore aesthetic awareness and visual communication through Project based learning.  My goal is to continually inspire creative and original thought, wil teaching students to be aware, compassionate, creative and kind.

I believe through Art students can…

• Develop creative thinking.
• Be creative and kind Individuals
• Aspire to lessen ignorance and embrace others ideas and cultures
• Listen, observe and critique with kindness
• Provide a means of communication and self-expression through design.
• Strengthen self confidence.
• Heighten aesthetic awareness and sensitivity.
• Enhances the ability to visualize.
• Provides problem-solving/decision-making opportunities.
• Develops strong work habits and a sense of responsibility.
• Build Collaboration skills
• Believe in imagination and the places it can take us
• All students can succeed 
• Generates joy and happiness

References:

Pink, Daniel H. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006. Print.

Teachers are always driven to teach for the kids. I know that is what motivated me to become a teacher. I love my students, even the ones that test my patience.  It’s shocking to me that there has been so little research on the importance of student-teacher relationships impacting the professional and personal lives of teachers. The teachers I work with are invested in their students’ education and that kind of investment can surely take a toll on your wellness, especially when the students test you daily. 

With the pandemic, testing requirements, Student behavior issues growing and teacher/sub shortages, and so many other responsibilities put on the shoulders of teachers it is no wonder that the majority of American Teachers feel stressed out. “Sixty-one percent of the teachers said their work was always or often stressful. Over half agreed that they didn’t feel the same enthusiasm as when they started teaching. They reported experiencing poor health and being bullied at work — by superiors, colleagues, students, or parents — at rates far higher than are reported for other professions. And the vast majority said they are sleep-deprived.(Mahken 2017)”

Most research has focused on mainly stress, lack of support from administration and staff, workload, classroom management and burnout. But a recent study in the Educational Psychology Review has found that “Research into teaching stress indicates that problem behaviors do not necessarily lead to stress. For instance, different teachers have been found to report substantially different levels of stress in relation to similarly disruptive children, which emphasizes its highly individualized and depends on the two individuals (Spilt, J.L., Koomen, H.M.Y. & Thijs, J.T., 2011). Which means it’s important to understand how the teacher perceives the  teachers’ perceptions of student behavior and relationships.  How a teacher handles and reacts to specific behavior can surely impact the level of stress it creates. 

I consider myself lucky to be one of the few to have received the support they needed to make it.   “ A recent study by the Learning Policy Institute shows that if a teacher receives mentoring, collaboration, and extra resources, and is part of a strong teacher network, first-year turnover is cut by more than half. Unfortunately, just 3% of beginning teachers receive such comprehensive support.(Mulvahill, E. 2019) ”  Early on in my career I had several mentors who taught me to always keep my wellness as a priority. Which has always helped me to keep school and life well balanced.   But over the years I have noticed that some people struggle to balance it out  and they quickly burn out. Although nothing in these readings mentions itI believe that your personality should also factor into your teaching success. I am grateful that I have not experienced many of the reasons why people choose to leave and I can relate more to the reasons why teachers stay.

From my own experience, the mentoring and collaboration I received during my alternate route program helped to minimize the stress and create a good foundation for a long-term teaching career.  My mentor and the entire staff helped to keep me motivated, solve problems, and allowed me to brainstorm ideas and issues when they occurred.  Even to this day, I find that the staff I work with keeps me grounded, is happy to listen when I need to talk, and always gives me solid advice. Although statistics show  “The emotional stress teachers are dealing with seems to be at an all-time high. In fact, a national survey shows that 58 percent of classroom teachers describe their mental health as “not good. (Mulvahill, E., 2019)”  I can only remember a few times that I felt high emotional stress in my first year of teaching. I was hired to teach digital art in 2003 two days before school started.  With no teaching background, I was hired to pursue an alternate route certificate. I’ll be honest, I threw up the night before the first day.  It was stressful and at the beginning of that year, my mental health was not great.  But with the support of fellow teachers, I persisted and now I am in my 19th year of teaching. I was given solid advice from the veteran, some of which I continue to pass on to new teachers today. If I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t change a thing.

References:

Mulvahill, E. (2019, June 14). Why teachers quit [Multimedia file]. We Are Teachers. https://www.weareteachers.com/why-teachers-quit/

Spilt, J.L., Koomen, H.M.Y. & Thijs, J.T. Teacher Wellbeing: The Importance of Teacher–Student Relationships. Educ Psychol Rev 23, 457–477 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-011-9170-y

Mahken, Kevin, 61% of Teachers Stressed Out, 58% Say Mental Health Is Not Good in New National Survey https://www.the74million.org/61-of-teachers-stressed-out-58-say-mental-health-is-not-good-in-new-national-survey/

A Professional learning community or PLC is a According to “a professional learning community is an inclusive group of people, motivated by a shared learning vision, who support and work with each other, finding ways, inside and outside their immediate community, to enquire on their practice and together learn new and better approaches that will enhance all pupils’ learning.” (Antinluoma, 2018)

Over my years as a teacher I have experienced two different PLC experiences. Colorado was one of my favorite learning community experiences. “The academy model at Castle View High School is designed to support the three R’s: Relationships, Relevance and Rigor. Each of the four academies — Biotechnology and Health Sciences; Leadership, Global Studies and Communication; Science, Technology, Engineering and Math; Visual and Performing Arts; are designed to provide smaller learning communities where students can develop significant relationships with teachers assigned to that academy. In essence, our academy model reduces a typical high school of 2200 students into one of roughly 400 to 450 students, “A place where everyone knows your name.”(The Academies Explained, 2021)” I was a part of the Visual and Performing arts academy, which was taught by a close unit of teachers who had shared office space within the center of the learning pod. All the students’ classes were within this pod. It created such an incredible “ school Culture” for learning.  “School culture describes the character of the school and functions of the organization, and it consists of the norms, values and social interaction in the organization. Culture builds a sense of cohesion within schools and provides a sense of identity; it promotes achievement orientation, helps shape standards and patterns of behaviour, creates distinct ways of doing things, and determines direction for future growth (Antinluoma, 2018)” The teachers within each Academy would meet weekly and discuss cross curricular activities, students success/failures and how we could improve their learnings. It was simply incredible how it created such a powerful collaborative environment with every child’s best interest at the center of everything we did.  “Positive school culture is conducive to professional satisfaction, effectiveness, morale, and creates an environment that maximizes student learning and fosters collegiality and collaboration (Antinluoma, 2018).” On top of the teacher learning communities the academy based model created a community of students within the building that had like interests.  It allowed the teachers to teach content aligned with those interested and it created such an emended amount of rigor, relevance and relationships in the classroom.  There was consistent progress and growth every week for both the students and the teachers.

My environment in NJ is not as diverse or exciting.  Throughout the year the four art teachers meet during Professional development days throughout the year during Professional development days.  Most times we discuss community events and or arts shows, new courses we would like to offer and or creating stronger pathways within our art program. The biggest struggle to make our PLC successful is time and common goals.  “Positive school culture is conducive to professional satisfaction, effectiveness, morale, and creates an environment that maximizes student learning and fosters collegiality and collaboration (Antinluoma, 2018).”  our struggles with our PLC and that outside the PD days, we do not as a group have a common prep like the other departments so we can not consistently collaborate to make progress, We do not all teach the same course, some teach photography, others graphics design, others fine art and the fourth ceramics and arts and crafts.  So although we all teach art there is not much collaboration for projects , course content discussions and even student discussions.  This creates a struggle within me, I think the fact that I have seen it done differently and better is what causes my frustration in NJ.  I would like to find a way to make this a more productive and collaborative experience. A way we can help students and make a difference more often in the classroom.

Resources:

Antinluoma, M., Ilomäki, L., Lahti-Nuuttila, P., & Toom, A. (2018). Schools as professional learning communities. Journal of Education and Learning, 7(5), 76–91. https://doi.org/10.5539/jel.v7n5p76

The Academies Explained. (2021) https://dcsdcvhs.ss14.sharpschool.com/cms/One.aspx?portalId=11439592&pageId=11809967

How can we affect social change within OCHS? My definition of Social change is the inevitable evolution of human interaction and relationships and how they impact cultural and social norms.  It occurs over time but has impacts and consequences on the society as a whole. Social change is not just a wave of ideas that we ride and evolve,  It is a movement which we have the power to cultivate and impact change with. 

Graphic design has the power to be a catalyst for social change and can help communicate the goals and ideas of change. To show my students how to amplify their voice we design and develop posters for change. I show the student real world campaigns at https://amplifier.org/campaigns/. “The project is based off of “Amplifier’s mission is to extend the reach and impact of art that addresses social issues. Part of the way they do that is by producing and distributing posters at protests and rallies across the nation.” The students pick a cause they are passionate about and research the topic, then develop Three poster designs that will communicate the message of the cause and improve the impact of social change.  I feel that it is important to teach students how to stand up for the things they believe in. Socially students struggle in this generation with conflict resolution. They are too quick to reach for the keyboard and lash out on socials.  They need to see there is a better way to effectively communicate.

This type of thinking will provide students the opportunity to transform themselves into socially aware citizens that will have the power and understanding to effect social change through design. Walden University’s vision is not quite aligned with my goals. I am working with social change on a smaller scale in hope that it will have a ripple effect and create citizens that will make a larger impact on the world. I am just hoping to spark an interest in the power of design, I tell them you never know where life may take you, most don’t feel like they will need the design skills. I like to show them the real world impact that a small poster can have.  The power that design can have to communicate is powerful. Word and design matter. 

My goal for the future is to collaborate with staff and administration to create murals within our building. Our building is very bland and I would love for our students to make more murals throughout the building. I would like to make a goal to produce at least 1 mural every 2-3 years for the school.  To make this happen I would like to create a Student based committee to collaborate ideas and locations for the art installations.  We would then present the ideas and costs to the administration and school board for approval. I hope that these murals will help to develop a stronger school culture within OCHS. 

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REFERENCES

Walden University. (n.d.). Social change. https://www.waldenu.edu/about/social-change

Walden University. (n.d). 5 things that everyone should know about social change. 

https://www.waldenu.edu/about/social-change/resource/five-things-that-everyone-should -know-about-social-change
Amplifier. (n.d). About. https://amplifier.org/about/