I’m used to waking to the sound of my alarm that sits beside my bed. But it took me the first couple of class periods to acclimate to the warning bells that rang shrilly through the halls during each four minute passing period.
Two weeks ago I spent my teaching hours not at Grand View University with my college art students, but with six classes of high school students ranging from freshmen art ingenues to senior studio stars.
I had been invited to visit Humboldt High School in northeast Iowa to give a presentation about my work as an illustrator and lead a variety of workshops centered around how artists come up with ideas.
My main advice for those students? Tap into your inner child. We all have one, after all. The 14 to 18-year-olds I worked with for two days may have been (at least in years) a little closer to that innate sense of creativity and playfulness, but age aside, it’s a practice we can all benefit from with a little hard work. I know firsthand given the daily stresses of making it to class on time to paying bills, it’s hard for adults and soon-to-be-adults alike to recapture that sense of infinite possibilities and unencumbered playfulness that mark our childhood years.
But as with anything we wish to do well, it simply takes practice. Like a muscle you must strengthen, tapping into your inner child requires that you continually reflect over past experiences. It’s where my best ideas for stories and illustrations often stem from. From Saturday morning visits to the zoo, to pumpkin carving the night before Halloween, or selling kool aid on a hot summer day from our corner yard as a kid. Time travel like this takes patience. And the further we step away from those experiences, the more difficult it can be to remind ourselves of what it felt like to be a kid.
“What makes an effective teacher as well as an artist I’ve come to learn, is the ability to live in the present but also to appreciate the past and every step that brought you to where you are today.”
Stepping into Mrs. Hellman’s classroom took me back to, if not my childhood, then at least my adolescence. Within that cluttered yet creative space I was reminded of not only why I have come to love teaching, but the steps that led me there. From Mrs. Grimes’s AP Studio Art class my own senior year of high school all the way back to my earliest crayon scribbles.
I’ve always felt an innate connection to art. Both through the physical practice of holding a paintbrush in my hand to the final polished painting. Within the past couple of years though that connection has expanded. My love of art making extends beyond my own studio practice. It’s what links me to both my students at Grand View University as well as a talented group of high schoolers on the cusp of their own artistic journeys. What makes an effective teacher as well as an artist I’ve come to learn, is the ability to live in the present but also to appreciate the past and every step that brought you to where you are today. It’s a balance between waking to the morning alarm that calls you to your daily adult duties as well as listening to that inner voice of creativity.