Teaching Philosophy
From a young age the visual arts were the language through which I communicated; drawing, painting, and photography became the dialect of my native tongue. There is a comfort, a feeling of complete content, I find in visual expression. Although I have not always labeled myself as an artist, internally I struggled with the need for creative production. During my freshman year university experience I quickly realized this innate drive to be creative and chose to switch my course of study from Veterinary Medicine to Art Education. I needed to nurture my artistic eye and satiate my appetite to be creative. Since changing majors I excelled academically and artistically flourished finding my path to becoming an art educator. In this arena not only did I inspire the creative growth of young people but I was also inspired by their work and visions. The teaching environment was the constant source of co-inspiration I longed for.
As a visual arts educator my interests lie in the marriage of traditional practices with contemporary cultural manifestations. Pedagogically, I consider myself a teacher who continually looks to the art world for inspiration and believe in supporting the work of local community artists. In a similar vein, I believe that student work should also be celebrated and displayed as often as possible, thereby, reinforcing threads of confidence and personal pride through creative production. In my classroom I challenge students to deconstruct contemporary ideas for scrutiny and subsequently reconstruct these preconceived notions using their found insight. I encourage using the visual arts, be it drawing, painting, ceramics, and beyond, to become a dialect through which my students confidently speak to the world beyond the four walls of the classroom crossing borders both theoretically and physically.
As a visual arts educator my interests lie in the marriage of traditional practices with contemporary cultural manifestations. Pedagogically, I consider myself a teacher who continually looks to the art world for inspiration and believe in supporting the work of local community artists. In a similar vein, I believe that student work should also be celebrated and displayed as often as possible, thereby, reinforcing threads of confidence and personal pride through creative production. In my classroom I challenge students to deconstruct contemporary ideas for scrutiny and subsequently reconstruct these preconceived notions using their found insight. I encourage using the visual arts, be it drawing, painting, ceramics, and beyond, to become a dialect through which my students confidently speak to the world beyond the four walls of the classroom crossing borders both theoretically and physically.