Teaching Statement

     As an artist and an educator it is my belief that an art education is both valuable and informative in and out of the art field. Some of my aims in teaching are to encourage students to think and problem solve creatively and promote exploration and curiosity. Another one of my aims is personal and emotional expression, which leads to social and emotional growth. My curriculum is set up like a hedge maze in a fog where the students must navigate through in order to find themselves and their own artistic voice. Here the maze represents the problems they must solve creatively, the fog is a representation of their developing knowledge and prize is their own artistic voice and personal practice.

     It is then my responsibility to challenge and support my students with three main goals as they maneuver through this figurative maze. The first is to help students think critically and creatively in order to develop their cognitive skills. My aim here is to clear the fog and foster the means necessary for creative problem solving both in the student’s art and in their lives outside of the classroom. The second goal is the exploration of the various methods of art making in the pursuit of their own artistic voice. It is my intent to have the students use this exploration to find meaning and connection with the mediums and methods they are exploring, such as woodworking, glasswork, painting, etc. The third goal of my teaching practice is to allow the student to examine and pursue their own artwork and to develop their own practice. Doing so has the ability to foster self awareness, leadership skills, goal setting, and confidence in their own abilities and their own work. This is also capable of bleeding into their lives outside of art, which is their figurative prize.

     My classroom is a place of challenge and support. My style of teaching is a combination of positive encouragement into personal explorations and technical instruction to pursue their own work. This combination will ensure my students have the tools needed to grow professionally. Sensory explorations of mediums, such as a blind tactile exploration of clay, will be used to promote curiosity and further exploration of various materials. Multiple discussions of the materials, methods of their use and personal relations towards them are implemented throughout the curriculum to challenge students understanding and misconceptions of materials. These challenging discussions will add to the critical thinking needed to conduct objective observations and critique. I intend to use these methods interchangeably. Other stimuli, such as readings and artist research, will be used to further engage these discussions and encourage critical analyses of the topic and material.  It is my belief that doing so will allow the students to grow emotionally and socially through their artwork. This allows each student the opportunity to discover the prize at the center of the hedge maze.

     As a new teacher, it is clear that I have a certain amount of learning to do in order to achieve my aims and goals. For starters, I need more time in classrooms to teach and really form how my practice can affect each student. It’s obvious that no teacher is the best teacher that they can be at the beginning of their careers, but it is my intention to try to be and become better each year. It is my hope that I can influence as many students as I can to do the same as I intend to and be the best that they can be. Even if I am not someone’s favorite teacher or a name that they will always remember as a great influence, I hope that I am able to provide them some understanding of themselves and a further developed ability to think critically. Although cultivating amazing artists is always an art teacher’s goal, I am more interested in fostering young minds into self aware and self confident critical thinkers with a subject that I am passionate about.