Editor’s note: To read profiles of all 2015-2016 Blackboard Awards honorees, click HERE!
Rallou M. Hamshaw
Grade 7 Painting, High School Painting & Drawing, And Grade 12 Art History
Rudolf Steiner School
Tell us about some of the special joys and challenges you’ve experienced as a teacher.
Observing student growth in the visual arts from year to year is immensely rewarding. Our well-conceived curriculum at the Rudolf Steiner School, where all the arts are mandatory, enables students to develop their skills, cultivate their imaginations, and deepen their feelings for their work through a seamless continuum of art courses. These classes, which address age-appropriate readiness for different media in an intentional, organic way, help the students to produce excellent, genuinely artistic work. Limited studio space can be challenging at times.
Please share a special project or achievement (or two) that you are particularly proud of from this year.
Every year, twelfth-grade students have the opportunity to join an oil painting elective class. This year, the course was very well enrolled with eager and gifted senior students, all of whom produced wonderful work over the course of the school year. Of particular note, however, was a small group of ambitious students who turned their attention to painting the human figure in oils, a difficult undertaking for most artists at any age. These students brought extraordinary patience and sustained interest to their work over many weeks of engagement with a single painting. The results in all cases demonstrated surprising sophistication in terms of skill, sound command of the demanding medium, and mature, sensitive feeling for their subject.
Over the course of your career, what do you consider one or two of your greatest achievements?
Cultivating a love of art, instructing and guiding students in such a way that they take an active role in imparting direction to their own work, and encouraging students to maintain the highest standards for their own artistic achievements are among my most satisfying accomplishments as a teacher. Also gratifying have been our students’ consistent acceptances into America’s top art schools, and a few in England. In addition, students from the Rudolf Steiner School (usually seniors or juniors) have frequently won Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney’s High School Art Competition Award for district 12, which is held every spring in New York City.
What drives you? What keeps you motivated and committed to being a dedicated and hard-working educator?
My experience as a professional artist informs everything I do as a teacher. What drives me is a sustained desire to impart to my students the enthusiasm for painting and drawing that I experience in my studio. Understanding the value and importance it has on child development, the rich and diverse arts curriculum at the Rudolf Steiner School supports me in doing this in a unique educational setting, where all the arts are taken seriously and are thoughtfully integrated into the school day.
Any special advice for parents on how they can support their children academically at the grade level you teach? And more generally? And how can they have the most productive relationship with their children and school?
Naturally, it is helpful when parents stay in close touch with their children’s school and teachers, and when they show interest in what their children are learning. Listening to children and reading between the lines when problems might be brewing are useful tools for gaining insight into what is really happening at school. Sharing issues that might be adversely affecting children with their teachers is crucial. It is important for parents to be objective as well, and to maintain a balance between knowing when to step in and when to let their children sort out their own problems. For parents with artistic children, taking them to concerts, operas, plays, ballets, and museums helps to forge a special bond; in fact, exposing all children to New York’s plethora of cultural offerings is a gift like no other.
