A Labor of Love

When I first graduated from college, I knew that I didn't want to be an art teacher although I had an art and elementary education degree.

I was drawn to the inner city. It could have been because I spent the first ten years of my life living in Detroit or the small town that I attended college in resembled a mini D. Whatever the case, I found myself back in the place I grew up in. I taught at a performing arts charter school located at Six and a Half Mile and Nevada. Not the safest neighborhood but one where I felt at home.

I didn't teach art.

Instead, I opted for second grade. I was a first year teacher. I don't care where you teach. Your first year is hard. From learning what works, how to communicate with families, figuring out discipline, and trying to just stay afloat. I had great mentors, asked a lot of questions, and just loved my students. The school I was at embraced creativity, and I found that many of my students had the same struggles I had as a student. So I did what worked for me in school. I started to incorporate A LOT of art into what I taught.

As the years went on and the districts changed, one thing remained constant: my love for art inspired lessons. There were quilts and digital stories and drawings and book projects and birds and a published children's book about plastic pollution. But I want to make one thing clear.

I didn't teach art.

So 21 years in, I traded my gen ed classroom position for a creative arts position. I teach STEAM and have a little more of an art emphasis than most.

Today, between my son's soccer games, I found myself cutting out kindergartners because they won't cut themselves. I have about 200 of them to do. I'm not even a quarter of the way through. It's tedious. But so worth it. They are part of a mixed media project. As I stare at the faces looking back at me, I am brought back to last week when the students were coloring their sky. It was a simple concept. Rub the background with your paperless crayon or crayons. When I first showed them how to do it, there was an eerie silence in the air followed my so many "Ohhhhhhs." It was as if I was a magician performing a magic trick. The skies were anything but blue filled with an array of colors then splattered with balloons. Ones the students will hold onto.

Next week, they will create skylines. Because, you know, life wouldn't be as exciting if you weren't holding onto a bunch of balloons in the sky high above the world below. Helping students see the potential they didn't think they had. Helping them see that anything is possible when you take it one step at a time.

This is magic to me because now, 22 years after I received my art degree, I finally teach art.

A kindergartner waiting to be attached to her bundle of balloons.