My passion for art has comprised most of my life, and now my passion lies with art education and STAR WARS. I am a proud graduate of Big Foot High School and I attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I received my Bachelor's degree in Art. I was inspired to become an art teacher in part because of the art teachers I had in high school (Mark Hanson and Claudia Ericson) and from the continuing support from my friend Paul Boland who is also my colleague. As a new educator, I want to help my students find their passions and to give each student the support they need to pursue them. I want to find what motivates them to create, and harness that motivation to release their true potential, while providing them with a valuable and enriching environment to work in. I want to encourage curiosity in my students as well as teach them that they don’t have to afraid of taking risks in their work, or to make mistakes.

I find that art education is important towards allowing students to express themselves and to find their true identities. I bring professional art experience to my classroom in the form of practical knowledge and skills through years of practice in different mediums, but I still have a readiness to learn new methods or mediums. I believe that being open minded to new methods leaves me flexible to ever evolving curriculum in the arts. As a teacher, I willing to grow both personally and professionally, because I never want my lessons to feel stale. When planning my lessons, I try to balance out independent work with guided direction while incorporating discussion time and times of self-reflection/critiques. 

Through my experiences as a Special Ed. teacher at the high school level, I have learned that every student has their own individualistic learning styles and that I must be able to adapt to ever changing situations when it comes to how I instruct my students. Working in Special Ed. has taught me how to better understand the needs of individual students because each student has unique personalities, skills, and tendencies. I believe cultivating learning relationships with my students to be important because it goes a long way to show the students that I’m respectful and responsive to their needs. I also found that collaboration between teachers, staff, and administration to be pivotal towards creating a solid support system for myself as well as bringing together ideas and methods of teaching that will help every student succeed.