Outstanding teachers must be skilled in the following: planning and preparation, the learning environment, instruction, and professionalism.  I believe the art teacher should create a variety of diverse, dynamic, thorough, layered, and creative art lessons for implementation.  To meet these goals and expectations, I will continually ponder, review, and re-build lessons and procedures.  To provide this superior instruction, I must constantly be aware of educational trends in content areas so I can blossom as a professional educator at a steady pace.
    
Diversity in the classroom will be addressed by the following: instructional design maximized by including standards, goals, objectives, task analysis', technology, assessment, and differentiated instruction effectively.   My readiness will create layered, tiered lessons, for a variety of learning styles including auditory, visual, and kinesthetic while remembering Howard Gardener's Theory of Multiple Intelligences.  Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory will be remembered in my assessments by helping to clarify why students are putting forth the effort shown.  Student choice in my art class is essential such as tiered choice boards, while providing intra-student surveys as well as using "exit-tickets" often to provide me with feedback.  Current Illinois standards will be met successfully while using cross-curricular units when possible and bringing the Common Core standards into full effect.  To address the former successfully, I must be organized: when obtaining new and innovative information from workshops, seminars, conferences, and meetings about differentiated instruction, keeping these files/notes organized by hard-copy as well as digitally will be essential.  This will ensure effective retrieval when needed for implementation. Regular, positive parental contact and involvement will be maintained as well as art education within the community.

I started drawing in sixth grade and continue to learn how to succeed in the professional world of art on a daily basis while excelling in motherhood and creating new chapters in life with my husband. This successful, natural, faithful, multi-tasking I embody, is a characteristic essential for running a superior classroom.  While continually creating clients for my free-lance art career of drawing, painting, murals, and greeting cards, I aspire to use this professional expertise to entice, inspire, and excite the art student into understanding that problem-solving while using creativity is indispensable for everyday life.

Creating is a skill I have mastered, but at the forefront of my choices are to educate along side with an indisputable love for children that I discovered in myself as a confident, successful, caring adult.