Erin Delventhal

Teaching Philosophy

When you allow students to explore their creativity and problem solving skills, you help them to realize their potential to learn.  As an art teacher, my hope is to develop my students’ capacity to learn and create by giving them the freedom to take chances, learn from their mistakes and test their own limits.  This process is one of the many gifts of art I am passionate to share with my students.  By allowing the creative process to flourish in my classroom, each student, regardless of ability or aptitude, will begin to understand their potential to grow, problem solve and think creatively.

Creativity, which Ken Robinson defines as “the process of having original ideas that have value” (TEDtalk 2006), can have great implications on all disciplines in life.  As an art teacher, my hope for my students to look at life around them and apply creative thoughts that are constructive and helpful to the problems they face.   The students that I will be educating are going to find themselves in a world that is full of challenges.  Given the pattern of development in the world, there is also much unpredictability.  We need to get students comfortable with challenges by allowing them to develop the best tools to handle an ever-changing world. As the world evolves, it will demand students who can think critically & creatively, problem solve, and understand their capacity for innovation. Art can facilitate this by actively engaging students to explore their imagination, take risks, view solutions from multiple perspectives while testing possibilities and learning from mistakes.  

The act of developing a work of art allows the student to judge and utilize multiple variables such as light source, color, form, line, shape, space, texture, rhythm and value to create harmony on a 2D o 3D surface.  This process affords the student the opportunity to judge each component, in relationship to the whole piece, as the art evolves.  Through this creative process, students define aspects of themselves they wish to express.  As a result, more knowledge and insight is gained while, simultaneously, the student realizes they have more to share.  My role as an art teacher is to help facilitate the process of creating art so students can reach their fullest potential and gain the most from their art experience.