Educational Lineage

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“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” (Mandela, Nelson)

I have been an artist since the early age of seven. Art came naturally to me. My elementary school’s art teacher Mrs. McKinney was one of the first guiding lights on my path towards becoming a life-long artist and educator. She was followed by my middle school art teacher Mrs. Rodriguez who introduced me to film photography and the darkroom. My high school years were filled with hours and hours of artmaking and growth. I was surrounded by teachers whose entire purpose seemed to be about getting us into an art college and becoming professional artists. College was intense and beautiful. My professors were experts in their field and challenged us immensely. I learned the art of critical thinking and constructive responses to criticism. My college years also presented me with my first teaching experience—teaching art to kids of varying ages on Saturdays in the Bronx. There I was, 18 years old, in a classroom of children in grades K-12! Those were wonderful memorable times because we were there to make art and build friendships. My undergraduate years were followed by graduate school where I pursued a Master of Fine Arts in painting and had the opportunity to collaborate with students and professionals in a variety of disciplines.

All these educational experiences and positive interactions with teachers have laid the foundation for my pursuit of art education and a desire to make art education accessible and meaningful, especially for students who live in and come from disadvantaged communities. My call is to provide students with access to art, artists, art materials, and art spaces and equip them with tools and strategies to become successful artists, critical thinkers, and caring human beings.

M.T.H. Sadler, the translator of Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art writes, “Modern artists are beginning to realize their social duties. They are the spiritual teachers of the world, and for their teaching to have weight, it must be comprehensible.” (1977). I am quite driven by incorporating social justice principles in the classroom. Today, our students deal with a plethora of issues that surround them but often lack the tools needed to process these issues in relevant and meaningful ways. Through engagement with art, I want students to consider the importance of art in the world and the potential art has to heal, inspire, transform, and unveil a beauty that can only come from the acts of creating, analyzing, synthesizing, presenting, and responding. This is not so they can just meet the national standards that help shape our curricula, but because it can shape who they are in the future; and who they are in the future determines what life will be like for generations to come. M.S. Hanley, author of The Scope of Multicultural Education writes, “The arts tap into our need to understand and to create, to change the world in so many ways – intimate and social, tiny and enormous. The artist, whether wondering dabbler, serious student, or professional is engaged in perception, conceptualization, expression, and transformation of self, culture, and medium, all of which are at the core of making meaning of the world.” (2002).