There are a lot of things I personally value quite a bit within and outside of my role as an art educator. As an educator my goals are to uplift and empower my students and inspire them to go on a journey of self-exploration through the arts. It is important for me that students leave my class feeling more capable and equipped for creative challenges they may face than they did coming into art class. Often as a student I felt unrepresented by the curriculum as a queer, disabled student, so I also have a goal of inclusion in my classroom. I want students to find joy and inspiration in the parts of them that make them unique, inspiring them to take inspiration from their lived experiences and make connections through the arts. Overall, I value creating a space that is safe and inspirational to best support students in their personal growth in my classroom.

Outside of the classroom, I have a lot of dedication to my family. My mom and stepdad have always been incredibly supportive of me, so I find it really important to acknowledge and do my best to honor that! My mom and I are both Mexican-American as well, and that is something quite precious to me. I love that part of myself and embracing what it means to me to be Latino, especially in an area like central Ohio where while there is a latino presence, it can be difficult to find community. I also have a number of social values I hold near to my heart; inclusion, sustainability, and respect for ecology are all important to me!

Some of my Central focuses as an art teacher are using art as a tool for developing self esteem, developing a positive self-image, creating cultural connections (including both connections to a students own culture and connections to other cultures of the world), and developing a sense of social responsibilty. These are all concepts that can encompass a wide range of ideas, I'm sure anyone can think of a wide variety of meanings you could ascribe to each of these concepts, and that's part of what I like about them. A singular mission statement for my art education career is "I want to give students the tools to make art that helps them make positive connections to themselves and to the world around them"

Self Esteem Animal Collage

In this project I want to introduce self esteem by having my students connect themselves to something almost all children love, animals. I want children to think about animals they enjoy and then connect themselves to them by identifying shared traits. I want this to go beyond physical traits and become an introduction to symbolism and how many cultures have personified and anthropromorphized animals as part of their storytelling and artmaking practices. My goal here is to connect three aspects of an art classroom, the practical fine motor skills needed for collage, the self esteem booster in having students connect to something they have positive associations with, and a connection to world art history through the activity.

The Self Esteem Pinch Pot

This project takes inspiration from a class-pleasing classic- the pinch pot! It also fuses this classic with another concept many may be familiar with, the Self-Esteem Bucket. If you arent familiar with the Self-Esteem Bucket, heres a rundown of the basic concept: Everyone has a bucket which represents their self-esteem. Positive things which make us feel happy and good help us to fill our bucket, while things that bring us down and lower our self-esteem put holes in it.

The goal of this project is for students to make their own pinch pot out of clay and decorate it as they please using paint. Once the pot itself is complete, students can move on to make things to place in their pot, these things will be objects that they enjoy, objects which remind them of themselves, and objects that represent things they enjoy. My goal here is to have students connect with ideas about what they like in life and about themselves, and participate in artistic choice-making at the same time as they select the design of their pinch pot and what they will place inside. This is also a great lesson for students to hone their skills with sculpting clay and being gentle with delicate things- you don't want to squish your pot or drop it!

Becoming and art teacher is a decision I made based on my experiences in the arts, as a student and as a practicing artist. For me, art has been a powerful tool for self-love and self-empowerment, which I've previously mentioned as some of the "Big Ideas" in my practice as a teacher. I make art that makes me feel good about myself, art that makes me feel powerful and worthwhile; When I feel low, art is something that helps me uplift myself and feel better. PArt of my goal as a teacher is to teach students that this is something they can do for themselves; It's a belief of mine that self-love and empowerment serve a lot of purposes in life, an important usage being an offense against societal messages meant to degrade and tear down self esteem. All students are vulnerable to this, but I find that minority group students are especially vulnerable to having their self-esteem damaged. My goal is to give students as many tools as possible to fight against this and develop a healthy and positive self image, and in turn spread positivity and self-love to their communities.

Gazing At The Stars by Buhle Nkalashe

This piece by Buhle Nkalashe explores his culture as a South African, it shows a man wearing fabric decorated with traditional South African patterns and is a depiction of the beauty and intricacy of the textiles of South Africa. Buhle Nkalashe explores South African culture in the majority of his pieces, with his portfolio mainly consisting of portraiture of South African people. His work is a beautiful example of how art can be a tool and expression of identity, culture, and the beauty you can find in those things. It's important to note that his portraits focus on Black South Africans, those who where marginalized and discriminated against during Apartheid and had their culture treated as dirty and lesser than. In Buhle's work, you can see the love for and beauty of South Africa's culture, empowered against discrimination.

Portrait Of My Grandmother by Archibald John Motley Jr.

This piece is a portrait done by a Black artist named Archbald John Motley Jr in 1922. The painting shows his grandmother, a woman who had been born into enslavement and who became the matriarch of her family. This painting is an empowering portrait giving the artist's grandmother a sense of dignity and authority, qualities which are often denied to Black women. It is a powerful example of art as a form of empowerment and respect for community, the artist chose to paint someone he loved dearly and who he held a great deal of respect for. This portrait immortalizes the qualities about her he knew well as her grandson and is a beautiful show of how art can be used as a tool for showing love, respect, and recognition of those who live with us in our homes and in our communities.

Self-Love Transformation by Bharathi Dev

This piece is one described by the artist, Bharathi Dev, as being about the transformative and life-changing nature of self-love. Much like a butterfly transforms from a caterpillar to its adult form, self-love can transform your life and change it for the better. This piece is a beautiful demonstration of art as an expression of the nature of an evolving sense of self and the growth of self-love through the symbolism of butterflies. This artist also incorporates her identity as an Indian-American woman and how throughout her lifetime her understanding of herself has changed and been transformed by that aspect of herself, she works to capture the universally everchanging nature of emotion. Her work shows how art can capture both personal and universal narratives about love, beauty, and self-esteem alongside the deep and complex factors that play into these things.

Super Blue Omo by Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Njideka Akunyili Crosby grew up in Nigeria, but in 1999 she moved to the United States. In her work, she attempts to capture the dual nature of her life raised in Nigeria and her life living in America. Her work is people-oriented framing portraits of familiar figures in contexts which can reflect aspects of her childhood, her adulthood, and both of those time periods super-imposed over each other. She captures the immigrant experience and the emotions of leaving one beloved place for another, finding the ghost of these places in each other. Her work is a gorgeous, multi-media exploration of multiple identities intersecting in one person's experience, her work exists as a demonstration of the love for community and home, even when that means loving two places at once. She fully embraces both homes she has known, displaying the vibrancy and mundanity of her lived experiences.