My name’s Quinton Baldwin. I am 17 years old and can’t wait to be an art teacher. I moved to Galway three years ago and was surprised with how advanced and encouraging the art department was. In addition, I am Vice President of Students Against Destructive Decisions (S.A.D.D.), a member of Yearbook, and Impressions.

I’ve known since the fourth grade that I wanted to go into teaching but was never really sure what topic I wanted to go into. I really knew I wanted to be an art teacher when I caught myself instinctively helping my peers do their projects. Whether it would be helping them choose a color pallet or aiding them wedge out their clay. I really like to see a piece go from a blank canvas into a piece that could be hung in a gallery and the whole time see the artist grow with the experience. Through just the past four years of really working hard on my art I realize how much I’ve grown and I hope to be able to inspire other students to do the same.

I’ve taken every art class that my school offers, but my favorite would have to be Adobe Illustrator. For my senior year, I decided I wanted to intern with one of the people that inspired me to choose this career, Mrs. Mierzwa. I intern in the high school art room and help teach Adobe Illustrator, a small class of fifteen students. It was awesome helping my peers learn how to use the toolbar, symbols, and how to use the application itself. Each project that was assigned would focus on one main thing that they would have to learn. For example, they were given a typography project that made them practice the text tool and text on curve. They had to take an image and make the whole thing into text by using different sizes, colors and fonts. What I was most excited for was when I was able to teach my own lesson.

I  had to make my own lesson plan, present the project, and then grade the outcome. For my lesson I decided to give a lesson with inspiration from Tiffany’s stained glass. Students learned about how Louis Comfort Tiffany was an amazing artist that made a movement in art making stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels, and metalwork. The students had to pick an animal, person, or an object and make it look like stained glass using the software. They had to draw inspiration from a reference of stained glass, include color, texture, shapes, and other forms of art. After the students finished their projects they had to write essays about the history of the project, the tools they used, and their experience making their projects. Writing these essays are part of the Common Core curriculum and help the students reflect on what they made and the thinks that they had learned.  

By having this experience it gave me a look into what it’s like to be a high school art teacher. Fall of 2019 I plan on going to FMCC and getting my Associates Degree then going onto a SUNY school. I’m very excited to pursue my career in teaching and helping students bring out their inner artist.