One of the words I hear most often from parents and students about my classes is “fun”!

When I taught on the high school level, we interspersed art activities with creative thinking exercises and art discussion. They also really enjoyed line quality exploration where they drew in different materials like sand or dirt. We went on a field trip to the grocery store to explore package design, which they loved, and I was deeply touched when another teacher told me one of my students - known to be “difficult” (but who was amazing in my class) - had never brought in a signed permission slip for anything else that she could remember.

With younger learners, I’m constantly engaging their imaginations, encouraging them in storytelling and gently pushing them further. In the course of a class I’ll sometimes find myself discussing things with them like, if your teeth were made of food, what would that be like? What foods would work well as teeth? Conversations like that can be randomly sparked by a student artwork or comment, and elicit much laughter!

My enthusiasm and creative energy come through in how much fun I have while teaching. Here are two videos highlighting moments from recent livestream webinar-style classes where you can see that in action.