( teacher brings art professionals into her classroom )

teacher brings art professionals into her classroom
by jennifer hetrick

during art class time slots at boyertown junior high west, students in stephanie stamm's classes are often lucky enough for the opportunity to meet local professional artists, as their teacher presses on the importance of exploring career options shortly following elementary school days.

stamm has taught art at the junior high for a decade now. early in her history, the counseling department sponsored a career week in which varying types of professionals from the community were brought in to help students survey some of their own potential future occupations.   

when this tradition died out, stamm made sure to keep it going by bringing into her classroom between five and 10 working artists of differing fields per year from the surrounding community.

her students beam of enthusiasm when the speakers tell them about the details of what they do, which leads stamm to continually search for new breeds of artists to introduce to her classes.

this past september, stamm invited freelance cartoonist alan macbain into her advanced two dimensional art classes, which consisted of approximately 30 students.

( photograph courtesy of stephanie stamm 
with credits to aaron jenkins )

macbain freelances his cartoon sketches to different newspapers in the area and lives in collegeville. 

among many other figures, he draws superheroes, animals, musicians, and other famous people.

stamm’s students asked macbain a good handful of questions including how he comes up with ideas for his final cartoons and how he started into his artistic pursuit many years ago.

in october, she had taste buds going happily haywire with cake cravings when she introduced mary dice of dice's creative cakes to her students. they gawked over a 30 pound tub of icing and excitedly tested out shaping their own roses on the cake of the hour.

( photographs by stephanie stamm )

dice explained how when she first delved into pastry arts and cake decorating, one task might take her a full 60 minutes, and now with her skills well practiced, she could do the same work in just 10 minutes. 

stamm said dice makes about 70 cakes per week and also manages to prep sticky buns for sale.

“she demonstrated how you combine colors and color theory,” stamm said about dice who kindly let the students have their cake and eat it too.

“it's neat when they come in to show their work and explain what they do,” stamm said about the visiting artists. “the kids really love that.”

former art teacher at the junior high, arlene christ, recently visited stamm's classes and talked about her involvement with the pottstown carousel and local art goes to school programs.

in the past, stamm has introduced danielle fisher of boyertown's clayote to her students, along with painter of local farms, joyce floreen, many other area painters, and students’ parents who are skilled in various crafts.

“he likes it when we bring people in from the outside,” stamm said about her school’s principal, gregory galtere. “he’s very supportive.”

stamm said she enjoys bringing in these art professionals to let her students see what is possible for them in careers they might not otherwise know about while still in junior high, with limited exposure to the work world at their age.

in fact, stamm is always looking for new artists to speak to her students, especially since they are so ecstatic to meet professionals living out the expression of their creativity locally.

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