As a teaching artist, I firmly believe in the transformative power of arts education. I have witnessed how any student with the right motivation can participate in art-making and experience a positive influence on their lives. Our students, with their multi-faceted personalities and unending thoughts, require creative outlets to express their experiences. Arts education is the means through which I empower them to do so.

As a child, art was my avenue; if I had something to say, it was my form of expression. I used visual and performing art as my voice when I thought I didn’t have one. As a teacher, I try to facilitate this process for my students. I aim to provide my students with a space where they feel safe and comfortable expressing themselves and beginning a discussion about topics they care about. I am not there to lecture them or tell them what to think; instead, I am of the frame of mind that we are here to learn together and express ourselves in the way we deem best for ourselves.

Over the past decade as an arts educator, I have guided my students through diverse artistic experiences. We have explored everything from drawing and painting to ceramics, art history, graphic design, photography, video production, printmaking, and bookbinding. Our art has spoken about topics ranging from the every day to the profound, from yearly calendars and home recipes to identity expression and mental health exploration.

I am currently employed in my eighth year as an Art Teacher at St. Thomas the Apostle School in Los Angeles, CA. There, I help my younger students see the art they encounter in their daily lives in the inner-city—from graffiti on the walls to murals of religious figures on the side of a corner market. With my older students, I aim to expand their artistic vision beyond the paper and pencil in front of them by showcasing artists and mediums outside of what we stereotypically consider art. I hope they learn that their art is not only worthy of our attention if it is in a museum or worth millions of dollars. I can happily say that some of my alums have become professional artists, designers, and performers. Others have taken their art skills into their school and work as engineers, technicians, scientists, investigators, and, yes, even art teachers.

I have previously been a teaching artist for the UCLA VAPAE Studio Sessions Afterschool Arts programs for seven years and for the Studio Sessions Arts Programs for middle and high school students with artists Barbara Drucker and Christos Dimopoulos.

In 2021, I had the great opportunity to work as a maestra de arte/art teacher for m a t i l i j a escuela bosque, a forest school based out of the San Gabriel Valley. Here, we would make art out of and be inspired by the amazing nature surrounding us, and we learned to be stewards of the land that the Tongva people still call home.

In 2023, I was a fellow for the Summer Institute for Educators at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., where we embarked on a week-long arts residence at the museum wherein we had discussions, made art, and performed music and movement as a form of arts immersion and professional development. In 2015, I was a teaching artist with Turnaround Arts California at the Hoopa Valley Reservation in Humbolt County, where we worked on community artwork and a showcase with students at the Hoopa Valley Elementary School. Our goal was to engage with students through the scope of art therapy and arts advocacy to create art that communicated the importance of their cultural traditions and their connection to the Trinity River.