My name is Leslie LaChance and I am a Visual Arts teacher EC- 12.  Two of the most important lessons I have learned to motivate a student are to treat them like the unique learners that they are through differentiated instruction, and to link their art making to art in culture, giving it context and meaning. Like any other subject, supporting the students’ literacy in Art is best done by providing them with multiple stimuli that help to refine their understanding of whatever lesson or technique is being taught. Students benefit when they are given the opportunity to learn the language of Art so that they can discuss their own artwork and others’ art, analyze art, write about art, and read about art, which are all skills that I find to be universally and interdisciplinary important.

Everyone is different, that is what makes us individuals. What bring us together in the classroom is the art we are collectively making.  My students have different interests, natural abilities, and personalities. In my art classroom I want to create flexible lessons to allow for each specific group of students, along with their individual styles, to have the room to manipulate the lesson and make it their own (as long as they follow specific criteria for assessment, of course). On that note, as a beginning teacher I am going to be experimenting with all new subject matter. I look forward to allowing my students to influence my material and my assessments in a way that sets them up for success. Luckily, in Art there can be multiple ways for students to answer one question, or guideline. That is what is so exciting about art in the classroom. The students have the opportunity to benefit from a structure that gives them prompts that will challenge them, have a professional to guide them and motivate them, and to learn and work with others who share the same goals.

Not all art is picture making. It can be a way of thinking about things and a way to develop problem solving skills by figuring out how to make something and make it beautiful, whatever that object may be. There are so many avenues to create art whether it is on the computer, outside in nature, painting on canvas, with wood, iron, recycled materials, inanimate objects, printmaking/screen printing, sculpture, ceramics, drawing, installation and crafts of many kinds. My job will be to open student’s eyes to as many art forms as possible to switch on a creative light. I just want to teach them about beauty and its many forms, how people before them have expressed it, and provide them the resources to figure it out for themselves.

Leslie LaChance

Art Teacher

leslielachance311@gmail.com

(979) 480-3151