- Well, I feel like most people who become teachers become teachers because they had an impactful educator at some point in their career.

And thinking back, I originally had a lot of really inspirational music teachers, and I wanted to be a music teacher, because I had so many teachers that made me feel seen.

I mean like as a kid you kinda feel like, oh I'm just part of this mass in the school system, and like we're all treated the same.

But I had a lot of music teachers that made me kinda feel like a whole person, it made me really love music, and love the collaborative nature of being in a band.

So I really wanted to be a music teacher.

My senior year of high school I did a visual and performance arts program, so that kind of got me to dabble a little bit more in the visual arts too.

But when I got to college I was like, not a huge fan of playing clarinet six hours a day, kinda got bored with that, and a lost a little bit of the passion of like oh being in a band, and like what do these lyrics mean?

All these more of like scales, all right, learning of the triads and all this.

So then I kind of gravitated more towards the visual arts, and I never got bored with that.

So, I just really wanted to extend my passion for the arts, and I think all the positive educators I've ever come across, really oozed that passion, and really wanna kinda make that contagious, they wanna pass on that passion to everyone else.

So I think that's kind of what led me to wanting to be an art teacher.

- So I know you teach grades I think third through fifth, correct?

So, what brings you joy about teaching younger students?

- So first off, I think they're still malleable right?

They're still like pretty curious, they're still pretty imaginative, they're happy to be in school, for the most part.

(Jade laughs) They haven't gotten that like (Lisa groaning) "I'm over this," kind of attitude.

So I think that like the malleable attitudes, and like wanting to still create, and imagine, and play, I think that's really fun to be around every day.

It kinda keeps me inspired and excited, because they come in, they're like, "What are we gonna make?

"What are we gonna do?"

So I really feed off their energy as well.

And I've been trying to do more choice based learning.

- Oh okay, what's that?

- So.

Choice based learning is pretty much where you set up more of an open ended project, and say like, "Hey, however you wanna interpret this, "whatever materials you think would best hit this, "go for it."

And then we kind of personalize, like how every student's approaching it, and try and get them to fulfill their vision, as opposed to saying, "We're all making a snow man, "pick up the blue paint, we're all gonna paint this blue."

So I've been trying to do that a little bit more to kind of ya know, allow them a little bit more personal creativity, and allow them to explore their own vision and imagination more.

- Why do you think having access to art classes, to creative classes, is important within the school system?

- Number one, I start off every class every year with, I'm not looking to create artists in here, I'm not looking to create, I have 600 students, I'm not creating 600 artists every year okay.

I'm looking to create creative problem solvers and creative thinkers, because those are skill sets that can be utilized no matter what they do, where they go, whatever area they really wanna focus on.

So I think, especially allows for that creative problem solving, it allows for you to fail right.

We experiment with so many different subjects, and mediums, so you know you're not gonna be perfect in all of 'em, I'm certainly not perfect in all of 'em.

So it allows you to fail, and adapt.

And I rarely let them start over, 'cause I'm like all right ya know, Bob Ross, happy accident, what do we do now?

So, it really allows kids to kind of use a part of their brain that I don't think they necessarily use in the rest of the education system, where a lot of it is wrote learning, or wrote memorization, like, "You need to learn these dates, "you need to learn math 'cause that, "X equals Y or whatever."

And so I think having that open ended avenue is really important for kids, along with the emotional outlet, and kind of experimenting, and just being exposed to different cultures, and tactile.

I mean there's so many different aspects to art.

- And that kinda relates to your art club that I wanna talk a little bit about.

I know the audience is gonna love this.

So would you break down your art club that you did with the students in Gloversville?

- Yeah, so this has been pretty much in the works since last summer.

And it started, well my inspiration for it was I did a scavenger hunt with my son, where there were all these different animals hidden in all these different nature preserves.

And I just had a blast finding these natures with my son.

I mean he was like one, so he's just dangling off me, like whatever.

But I had a blast finding all these animals.

So I kinda wanted to bring that idea of the scavenger hunt somehow to Gloversville.

I wanted to create a community-wide event where my students were active in this project, and so was the community.

So I was holding a writing and illustration club, and we partnered up with the public library.

So it first started off with someone from the public library coming, and they did a presentation on the library, the resources they had, and the subject for their stories this year was monsters.

So they talked about, what is a monster?

Is it really just like something scary that hides in your closet?

Like what different attributes make a monster?

And they also brought a ton of different books with examples, and illustrations of monsters.

So then my fourth and fifth graders wrote their own stories about monsters, illustrated the monsters, and illustrated their stories.

And then I sent those illustrations up to the advanced sculpture students at the high school, and they actually sculpted the monsters out of clay.

- So cool.

- And painted and glazed them.

And then I took those sculptures and hid them around downtown Gloversville for a citywide scavenger hunt.

And then my students also did a public reading of all their stories with their illustrations behind them.

And I got prizes donated for people who participate in the scavenger hunt.

And I also partnered up with an outreach program, so they organized a middle school and high school monster hunt where they're actually like wandering around the city looking for it.

So it became this really like wonderful community project where all these different businesses, and people, and students were participating in this silly little idea I had last summer right, it just kinda blossomed.

And I just loved getting to all, like know all these different people and businesses that I've never communicated with.

And how this project has kind of tied all these things together.

- And what have you seen, how have the students reacted?

How have the kids reacted to such an amazing like I don't know, like art club initiative?

(Lisa laughs) - My student, well both sets of students, the high school students and my students, like adored it, they loved it.

From my students perspectives, they saw their imagination come to life, right, like they drew something and then some other artist some other place made it three dimensional, brought it to life.

And then it was put out into the community, which I think a lotta times, kids think their work in school just lives in those buildings, they don't think it has a life outside, or that anyone else cares about it outside.

So putting it into the community, and having all these other community members interact with it just put a whole new life to it.

So my kids have just been like, "This is amazing, "this is so cool."

And the high school just thought it was adorable, like, "Oh look at this cute little fuzzy monster.

"How can I turn it, or look at this horrifying monster, "how bloody can I make it?"

- Yeah, 'cause now they're like working on their sculpting and artistic skills to turn that 2D figure into a 3D figure.

- Exactly, so they came at it from a different perspective.

And my kiddos don't know yet, but the high schoolers are actually gonna gift the sculptures to the fourth and fifth graders.

- That's amazing.

- And we're gonna have like a little ceremony for them to like hand off the sculptures.

And the high schoolers are really excited to like meet their fourth and fifth grade counterparts, and to hand off the sculptures.

So it's been like a really beautiful relationship between like the big kids and little kids and.

- That's great, 'cause that's needed too ya know.

- [Lisa] Right.

- 'Cause they're eventually gonna be in high school themselves.

So do you plan to do another one of these coming up?

- I would love to, I think it kinda depends on how everything ya know settles after this one's done, and whether I'd reach out to different businesses, like whether the advanced sculpture or high school teacher has like a different idea for next year.

But I mean I'd definitely be open to something like this, or a different variety.

I was even thinking, maybe I could find professional artists to come in and like sculpt, or imagine whatever thing we do next year.

- Well you hear that folks?

(Lisa laughs) Hit us up if you need, if you wanna collaborate with her.

Well awesome, well thank you for joining us tonight, and just keep being awesome, and really supporting our youth within your artistic endeavors, thank you.

- Thank you.