The Room With A Hue

When I first started teaching in a teacher-led, project-based classroom, I remember always asking myself, “Why is it so difficult for my students to use their imaginations and think for themselves?” How could I have ever expected my artists back then to ideate and organically create on their own? I and others had been doing it for them their ENTIRE lives. Independent thinking and making, weirdly enough, need to be structured, scaffolded, and supported from a young age. Once a child learns that they are incapable of having their own ideas, or that their ideas are not meaningful to adults (who supposedly “know everything”), they lose the ability and - more critically - the passion to imagine, ideate, and create. Some art educators design whole units of study focused on developing creativity - but why is this necessary? Isn’t the goal to encourage imaginative thinking and authentic art-making all along? The only reason could be that we have unknowingly taught the creativity right out of

Hi, I’m Jen. 👋  I’ve been teaching art since 2010, pausing briefly in the middle to raise my two sons. I’ve taught specialized high school art courses and elementary art, and love my current teaching position at Lane Elementary School in Bedford, MA working with grades 3-5. I am a TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behavior) art educator, who believes that the child is the artist, the classroom is the child’s studio, and that we should always ask the question, ‘what do artists do?’ We develop the Studio Habits of Mind, thinking dispositions used by all artists as they work in the studio. Our classroom culture focuses on growing the creativity, curiosity, and potential of each child by meeting them where they are and cultivating their emergent interests and needs. I love the work that I do, and I’m glad that you’re here to experience the magic with us. ✨