Joanna Junkans

Personal Philosophy
The most influential teacher I ever had was my art teacher in high school. Since I took art

every year, she was my teacher every day for 4 years. For the most part, this teacher taught

relatively traditionally - we had a very specific assignment perhaps with less emotional or

creative threads, but which enabled us to develop the art skills that the curriculum indicated. My

sophomore year, I took Advanced 3D, and things were different. In this class, we proposed our

own projects. Once she approved them, we got to work. This arrangement allowed us to try

things and mediums we never had before, and it taught me more about what it is like to have a

real job with a real supervisor than any other class ever had.

As an art teacher, my goal is to teach students how to think, problem solve, and plan

projects. I think that much of the time choice-based art education is the best way to do this,

especially in secondary education. It is important to me to create a space where students feel free

to think, to experiment, and to fail.

The art teacher has the unique opportunity in schools to be afforded considerable freedom

of curricular content. As a teacher with that kind of freedom, where teachers of other subjects

may be much more accountable to specific curriculums, I believe that we have a responsibility to

teach students the things that are going to help them the most in the rest of their lives, regardless

of the direction they may later choose for a career. According to The Conference Board,

Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society

for Human Resource Management, the skills that will be the most sought after when our students

graduate high school and college are critical thinking/ problem solving, information technology

application, and teamwork/collaboration. These are not skills that can be taught through lecture

or guided assignments. These come from trial and error, project management, and freedom to

bring their ideas into reality.

 Joanna Junkans
Personal Philosophy
I know that teaching art in new materials and techniques is important, because each new

skill is a tool in the student’s tool belt that they can later use to solve a problem. I have recently

been working through boundary choice level projects, where you present students with a problem

to solve visually through art and give the students freedom in how they will solve that problem. I

want to be able to move students along the continuum toward using the problem-solving and

project management techniques that they gain in art class to handle their own problems that need

to be solved or to work toward things in which they are interested. I tend to agree with Donald

Judd that “A work need only to be interesting.” When students have strict parameters or copy a

teacher sample their work, to me, is incredibly boring and not art. By opening projects up it

makes artmaking more interesting to both the students and the viewers of the artwork.

It is important to me to see and treat each of my students like the individuals they are. I

want students to feel like they are in an emotionally and physically safe space when they come

into my classroom, where the expectations are clear, and they are valued as human beings.