/ Teaching Philosophy

Every person has at least one “thing” they excel at. That thing may be art, it may not. If we’re lucky, we discover this thing while we’re still in school and pursue it. If we’re not, we struggle to find this thing and sometimes it comes to us as a hobby later in life. If we’re very lucky, we’re able to take this “thing” we’re good at and make it our life’s work.

I once had a student who was no good at anything. He knew this because he was told so over and over, in a million different ways day after day until he was convinced that he was worth nothing. By the time this student entered my classroom he was combative and dejected. The other teachers warned me about him, told me to expect nothing of him and warned that if I did voice an expectation to him, his reaction would be aggressive. That day, I was two weeks into my long-term substitute job in an 8th grade English Language Arts classroom and beginning a unit on Shakespeare with my students. This unit required that the students act a play out loud, and as I assigned the parts, to my surprise the dejected student I had been warned about raised his hand. “What part would you like?” I asked, trying not to show my excitement at his display of participation; part of me worrying this was a rouse and his intent was sabotage. “Orsino” was his reply. The lead in the Twelfth Night: ironically a play about a person wearing a disguise to hide their true identity. I agreed; if worst came to worst, I could reassign the part if this student’s intent was disruption. The students began to read Act 1. The student who I was told to give up on was brilliant from his first line. He was a natural actor; he cheated his body toward the audience and emphasized his lines for dramatic effect without prompting. On “stage” he became a different person and I couldn’t believe my eyes. And he was a different person, he was doing that “thing” he was good at. That thing that everyone has inside of them, but we’re not always lucky enough to discover. On the last day of school, I told him what a gifted actor he was. I’ll never forget the look of disbelief on his face. He looked as if no one had ever said anything good about him; because they probably hadn’t in a long time. For the first time, I began to understand how life-changing it can be to find that one “thing” you’re good at: the thing that made this student come alive once again.

I’ve been lucky enough to devote my life to the “thing” I am good at: first as an art student, then as a working artist, and now as an art educator. The common denominator was always art, the thing I knew my life would be incomplete without. My ambition as an educator is to help my students find that thing they can’t do without: to give them the opportunity to turn into an artist of their own “thing;” to facilitate their journey of becoming something, whatever that “thing” may be.