A knock on my door pulled me from my toe-tapping, paintbrush-wielding flow. Pulling Airpods from my ears I saw two of my current Drawing II students from the class I teach at Grand View University standing outside my door at Mainframe Studios.
It was both an odd yet gratifying moment to find myself on the other side of an experience not too long past in my own history as an art student. Now instead of being the admiring student who looks up to her instructor, I was that instructor.
Throughout my college career, and even now in the years beyond, particular instructors of graphic design, drawing, and printmaking had and continue to have a lasting impact on my life and work as an artist and now educator.
Indeed, it was one such professor who put forth my name for the teaching position I have now held for two consecutive years. What I didn’t realize in assuming the role of teacher was how gratifying I would come to find being a mentor myself.
Teaching I have come to realize, fulfills me in myriad ways. It schools me in my own practice as a working artist. How often after all, have I had to rethink my own methods of art-making in order to effectively teach them to someone else? It stretches me creatively (especially during a pandemic!) to find ways to successfully convey concepts and hold critiques with students who are sometimes not physically present for class. It has humbled me in understanding how much hard work often goes unrewarded or unrecognized. But most of all, it has helped me realize how much fulfillment I find in connecting with and nurturing the burgeoning talent that fills my classroom every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.
—-
I have the fortune this semester of prior acquaintance with 11 out of my 15 students who I previously taught in Drawing I last fall. Our familiarity was especially beneficial on the first day of class this January when, following a burst pipe over winter break, I returned to campus to find my classroom in complete disarray. Drawing horses were upturned, easels pushed against the walls, tables all topsy-turvy, and the creative detritus of art students past littering every flat surface. After a (brief!) moment of panic I began setting my students to work setting the space to rights. Some upbeat tunes and minor cajoling from me as they walked through the door and it was soon back to, if not tip-top, then at least workable space. And without a single complaint from any of my students.
When I think back to my very first morning in the fall of 2020 when I starting teaching, I don’t think I could have pictured the kind of rapport I now enjoy with my students such were my nerves standing before that group of barely 20-somethings.
Nowadays, it’s not simply confidence earned from constant practice that puts me at ease in the classroom. It’s a vested interest in my students and their work. I love learning who has the heaviest hand during a gesture drawing exercise and who loathes touching charcoal with their bare fingers. I love seeing their progress from day one to day 45 and every step in-between.
Certainly, it’s my students who have to put in the work, sweat, and eraser crumbs to achieve such progress. But two years in, and I have yet to tire of being at least some small part of setting them on their creative paths. And if I’m lucky, they take an occasional detour to visit me in my own studio and make me feel, if not like a rockstar, then at least like a pretty damn cool art teacher.