heART depARTment

2004-Present Grades taught 5th-12th I started my educational career and training with Teach For America, teaching 6-8 at Todd County Middle School on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Three years later, our son was born and we moved back to Wisconsin and I taught 9-12 and 5th grade for the LaCross School District, moving into a full time position wth them in my second year at Lincoln Middle School. I taught 6-8 there for four years. In 2011 we moved to Fort Atkinson Wisconsin where I have taught Drawing, Sculpture, Metals and AP Art Studio ever since!

So hard to put this succinctly! My high school art teacher, Ms. Mary Luckhardt, was an amazing teacher. I strive to have a classroom in which my students all feel as confident, comfortable and respected as we all did with her. That relationship with my students and their relationship with each other comes first and is integral to the success of our art department. Secondly, I found great growth in college as I had a series of professors who stressed both learning about and honing technique, and exploring a variety of ways to design and compose images. I strive to scaffold and spiral my unit progression so students are always building their understanding and mastery of the techniques necessary to master the medias that they utilize while also exploring a variety of different compositional concepts. Lastly, I struggled imbuing meaning into my own work as I never had a teacher that helped me to understand how to do that. I consistently strive to give my student project prompts and units that allow them to explore a variety of concepts and content while also finding their own voice in their works.

TEACHING AWARDS Herb Kohl Fellow 2014 Wisconsin Art Education Association Presidents Award 2017 ART SHOWS AND AWARDS Solo Exhibition ’07 (Wells Fargo, Mission SD) School District of LaCrosse Art Educators ’08 (Viterbo University), School District of LaCrosse Art Educators’10 (Lincoln Gallery) Solo Exhibition ’09 (Lincoln Gallery) Mary Hoard Art Show (Hoard Museum) ’12 -’18 (Popular Choice ’13, Honorable Mention ’14, ’15, 1st Place Professional Local Significance ’16, 1st Place Professional 3D ‘16, 2nd Place Local Significance '18, 3rd Place 3D '18) Black Hawk Artists Annual Show (Hoard Museum) ’13 -’17 Earth Wood and Fire Tour ’17-‘18

University of Wisconsin - Madison: -BS in Art and Psychology (UW Madison) -Senior Honors Thesis in Cold Metal Forging (UW Madison) -Graduated magna cum-laude (3.8 on a 4.0 scale) in 2004 -Course Work: 2D Design, 3D Design, Drawing (4 semesters), Painting, Watercolor, Jewelry (3 semesters), Ceramics, Lithography, Sculpture, Color Theory, Independent Study in Jewelry Sinte Gleska University: -Continued Independent Studies in Jewelry Design and Construction (Sinte Gleska University in Mission, SD

I am both an artist and an art educator. My passion for the arts began in the quiet moments of childhood and has followed me into adulthood through a career and personal life defined by the visual arts. I am a high school art teacher, the wife of a talented Native American Artist, mother to three talented young artists, a member of the Black Hawk Artists, and an Executive Board Member of the Fort Arts Council.