Mom & dad encouraged us to try lots of new things and always made sure we were exposed to all kinds of different opportunities...we baked, gardened, farmed, raised animals, played sports, had musical instruments, did arts & crafts, went to camps, you name it.
I was encouraged to learn hard work and blue collar, hands-on skills but also expected to excel intellectually too, which I am really thankful for. I was a pretty lucky kid. All this said, I'm kind of a "Jack-of-All-Trades, but Master-of-None" type girl.
Somehow, I have stumbled upon this journey to teach art at Cyril Elementary & Cyril High School and am pretty excited about it! I've seen several art teachers come and go at Cyril and just decided that our students needed someone who really loved them and would put some effort into making art really fun for them. So a few months ago I started working on getting my teaching certificate and here I am. It all happened a little faster than I expected, but I'm ready! (or at least getting there)
My first "art class" was at the Vo-Tech in Fort Cobb and I was probably about 6 years old. My dad was a farmer and was taking a welding class in the evenings. I'm not sure how he pulled it off (I guess it was just the day & time where things were not so formal), but the art class was right next door to the welding class, so he would drop me off while he went to weld, and I had the wonderful experience of learning Oil Painting from the one and only Marjorie Wolf. I remember having so much fun in her class and she made me feel like I was a great artist.
Another great art experience of mine, was having Mrs. Bennett in 4th grade. (I was not so fond of her math classes because she was pretty strict, although having math races on the board was fun!) I must have enjoyed her art classes because I can remember just about every single project that we did that year. I did a watercolor painting of an old boathouse & a pencil drawing of my shoe. I happened to be wearing my Eastlands leather shoes that day in the late 80's when it was popular to do the twirly ties with your laces! We got to etch glass, emboss a picture on those thin sheets of metal, made some jewelry out of this strange powder that you dusted on metal shapes, then heated up and we learned how to weave a basket. Mom actually brought the basket that I weaved over to my house the other day!
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| The basket I weaved in Mrs. Bennett's 4th grade art class. On the back of the basket I wrote my name in pencil, along with the date: February 6, 1990. |
My hopes for my art class this year, is that my students will start to appreciate art. I hope that every students finds something they enjoy...even those kids that aren't naturally inclined to draw or paint, will find some projects that they are great at...art comes in LOTS of different forms. And I hope that my kids have fun. So much fun with art, that they will look back in 30 years and remember all of the neat things that they did in Mrs. Gray's art room!
