It’s who I am. It’s what I do

I painted a lot of pictures and became a fairly accepted commissioned painter in the ‘70s. I taught music for several years. I taught painting for quite a while. I liked teaching and thought of myself as a teacher. I eventually found myself hurled into the classroom. While I did have a lot of communication training, I did not have a degree in teaching and when the clean up of education began several decades ago, I did not have the credentials for the classroom. I did not have the proper training either, though I don’t think I realized that at the time.
My first education effort was for Journalism. I liked to write, felt comfortable writing. I enjoyed photography. I knew advertising. I didn’t like advertising, but I knew it. I wanted to do scientific reporting. That’s a real cool idea in journalism class. This is Arkansas. Eventually, I ended up back in an advertising position.
One day at the encouragement of my husband, I went back to college to get my teaching degree. It was a good comfortable feeling to be back in an academic setting. After one semester, I was on scholarship. I loved the challenge and the interaction college provided, made lasting friendships and explored every artistic avenue I could.
I got my hands in clay, learned to think in three dimensions, studied the history and development of world art and discovered things about color my mind had totally missed. I learned to communicate ideas while managing behaviors and time. I loved it. I analyzed each professor’s approach to teaching, irregardless of subject, mentally grading and categorizing their efforts and effectiveness. It was a time of growth and discovery like none I’d ever known. I graduated suma cum laude.
Shortly before graduation, two friends and I sat in a museum and dreamed about starting an art school. We each had strong points and media favorites and felt we were unrivalled in talent and creativity. We would have a store and sell the “good stuff” as well as marketing our student’s work and our own. It was a fun discussion. We went our separate ways.
For the first several years of my teaching career, I was totally in love with teaching. Not discipline! I never liked that part. But teaching was so exciting, so energizing. I gave everything I had. They took everything I gave. I can tell some funny stories from that period. Thinking of it still energizes me. I worked with student council, Academic Olympics, and Odyssey of the Mind. I had a huge art club and we tried just about everything an art club could think of. We painted and built and carved and printed and decorated our way through each year. Homecoming, Prom, Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Spring, Winter, Fall: everything was an opportunity to explore and create art. In class, I drew connections between art and science, math, literature, daily living – just about everything.
I was teaching several miles from home. My daughter was growing up – without me. My husband and I were growing apart. I had a very bad automobile accident that deeply wounded me physically and emotionally. I began to experience tension with my principal. It was time for a change.
The year I left that first teaching position for one close to home I also left high school for elementary. I moved my aging parents close so I could watch and help. My eldest daughter went through a devastating divorce and another daughter began a downward spiral that broke my heart and eventually her own.
I was not an elementary teacher. My principals loved me. My kids loved me. The classroom teachers tolerated me well and some even befriended me. The news media used my teaching for a feature on integrating immigrants into the system and dealing with diversity. But I was not an elementary teacher. I only recently realized that deep in my knowing part I don’t know what elementary art really looks like. I know the principles and required skills and have some cool books, but when I see elementary art, I feel unsure. I have no clue what it should be.
The district moved me into secondary after two years. It was a sweet but difficult school. The difference between the haves and the have nots was so evident. We had about every problem the legislature couldn’t fix: physical and mental challenges, low test scores, poverty, neglect, drug abuse, physical abuse, aggressive, resistive behavior. You name it and if it is a problem, it was there. We had a strong leadership in the administration and good hard working teachers who tried and tried and tried. We had an enormous turnover of certified staff.
After four years, I began to submit to a very defeated realization that all my efforts were helping little and destroying much. I was a good teacher. Yet nothing was working. As an art teacher, my subject and needs were low priority. My already pitiful budget was hacked and hacked again. It was time to change. At my husband’s encouragement, I handed in my resignation at the end of my fourth year. I would try to establish my own teaching/producing studio.
This is my third year and I’m beginning to finally experience some stable growth. I currently have 5 private students and 8 classes in art. I currently have no piano students, but have some waiting in the wings. My students pass the word and constantly remind me that I am a great teacher. It comes from retired ladies and homeschooled teens and single fathers and private schooled students who can’t manage to schedule art classes. It comes from business women and professionals and stay at home moms and business men who have always wanted to learn to draw, paint or do pottery but really weren’t sure if they could.
There are times when I miss that stable paycheck that comes whether the students are sick or absent and I miss the paid personal days and insurance. I miss the interaction with other professionals. I miss getting up and dressing up and clicking my heels off to a diverse classroom. I miss teaching art history.
But then I enter my studio and become an artist. I open the door and become a teacher of people who want to learn badly enough they will pay this verbose aging teacher who walked away from her certificate and security. I face hungry minds and longing hearts who put up with my social blunders and crowded studio and bury themselves with me in this wonder called art for a couple of hours each week. And I pray for kindness and integrity and clarity and energy. I give thanks for my past and my present and hope I never forget any part of it.
It’s who I am. It’s what I do.