Teaching Art is One of My Passions

I may not have mentioned what I do for my day job. I am an art teacher at Ukiah High School in Northern California. In fact, that is how I came to the Ukiah area in the first place. In 1971, I received my life teaching credential in Physical Education and Art from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. After living in Cayucos (a cozy little beach town on the central coast), I vowed that I would never move back to a big city (I grew up in San Diego).

In 1971, I was hired by Ukiah High School to teach Physical Education while Nadja Larson was having a baby. At that time, I went by Ms. Stone (Dirk, my first husband, never moved up to Ukiah, which broke my heart). I was young and fresh out of college. Oh yeah, part of the agreement to get the job was that I would coach girls’ volleyball, basketball, and track while also teaching full time. I didn’t realize I wouldn’t have a life outside of school, though it turned out to be a great year!

I didn’t get hired the next year—Nadja got her job back. I went to Europe for the summer and had a blast hitching with my younger brother, Eddie. When I came back I taught PE part-time through the Adult School in Ukiah. I won’t go into all the different jobs had over the ensuing years, but I started teaching art at UHS a little over ten years ago. The last few years, I struggled with lyme disease and had a difficulty working full-time. Last year, I taught at 80%, and this year I am working at 60% and I’m better able to deal with the stress of working with teens and dealing with lyme disease.

I get a large quite a range of students in my art classes. Some students are incredibly talented, others aren’t interested. One of the things I really get off on is showing their art to the community. We have an art display window (which I helped manifest several years ago, but that’s another story) at the high school in which student work is available for viewing by everyone passing by.

Five years ago, I came upon a site, Artsonia.com, that displays student art from all over the world. Artsonia inspired me to get a digital camera so I could take pictures of student art and started posting it. I thought you might want to take a look at what some of my students are doing—I hope you will be impressed—I know that I continue to be!