Evan Jewell

Joy of teaching, seeing students creating

When we first meet Evan Jewell, and listen to him speak of his work as an Art Teacher, immediately, what is evident is his pure joy – of teaching, of seeing students learn, and of seeing concrete results in student “making”.

“What do I love most about the joy of kids making art? What excites me the most? I guess when kids really get it, and when I get really good products from them. I get really excited because I love [installing] exhibitions of student artwork. I love putting up displays and I love showcasing their work and when they do a good job, I get really excited about that. It's like when I know something's going to come out really good in my kiln and I can't wait to get in there in the morning and just get it out and get it in the display case and showcase it. I really liked that part.

I like being able to bring art into our hallways and I think it makes the kids proud too. They see their work on display.”

Like many veteran teachers, Evan’s route to his current position took a few twists and turns. 

Evan described his early love of art and how he took a thoughtful route to his career.

”I'll start from the beginning. I grew up in Colchester.  I had this amazing art teacher as a kid in elementary school. 

I just really loved art and I remember as a little kid looking up to her so much, I wanted to be an art teacher.  And I do remember at some point, I think it might have been first grade, the other kids saying, wow, you're really good at drawing.

So, I knew there was something there. But you know, as I got older, I wasn't so sure about that. I thought I was going to go to school to be an illustrator. When I first started college, I thought I was going to do graphic design. I got a work study job in the graphic design studio. I hated the computers. I hated it. I found it just to be so boring and complicated. I wasn't interested. I had some friends who were in the art ed program. I decided to switch majors, and started the art ed program at Plymouth State

It was a great program, but I transferred to St. Michael's. I finished with my secondary ed degree there, in art and fine art. I then did my student teaching at South Burlington Middle School.”

It was really difficult to get a job coming out of college at that time for a specialist. Attempts to land an art teaching position in Vermont did not work out immediately for Evan.

I had an opportunity to go teach in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They had an opening and I had a friend who had just taken the other art teaching job at that same school.

With his friend’s encouragement, he landed the job, and was there for two years. 

A Vermonter, Evan really wanted to come back and eventually made his way to St. Johnsbury where he has been for 17 years. He really did want to be an art teacher, pursued his vision, and achieved it.

“People say, even the kids ask me, do you like what you do? And I'll say, I am about 90 percent happy in my job, which I think is good. I think the only thing I regret might be that I wish I was an artist; I don't have time to practice what I teach anymore because I'm a full-time educator. It makes it difficult because you can't teach what you don't know.  

I will dabble in anything and everything, but I tend to do a lot of watercolors. I work with watercolor, the more illustrative type, when I have time. I will use chalk pastels and drawing, pencil drawing. I also really get into ceramics.  If given the time and space to do it, I would get into that too.”

What sustains Evan teaching art in rural Vermont?

Evan truly loves teaching art at the St J School in the rural Northeast Kingdom. Continuing to teach, and continuing in place is much of what sustains him. He sees no change in the foreseeable future.

”Most importantly, it is a joy working with students, and inspiring students.

We all have good days and bad days, but on good days, … it's those times where I have a project that I do that's really successful and kids are really proud of themselves and feel accomplished - that's satisfying for me.

What keeps me in rural Vermont? I adore St. Johnsbury. I love it. We have so many issues here, but I love it. I focus on the good things, right? We do have a high poverty rate.

We have a challenging socioeconomic situation in the town. But we also have St. Johnsbury Academy. I love it. I ski, I mountain bike.

The outdoor recreation around here is amazing. We're 30 minutes from the White Mountains.  We have Burke Mountain 20 minutes from our backyard, Kingdom Trails 15 minutes away, so I love those things about this area. My son is grounded here. He's made friends. He's connected through sports.” 

“I don't think I want to go anywhere else. We did live in Massachusetts when we were younger for 2 years.

And I felt sort of claustrophobic and trapped when I lived down there, even though it was a beautiful area, I just felt trapped there. Another draw for me in this area, is our camp on Maidstone Lake. It’s a family camp, and it's only an hour away. 

I would want to live, like, as far away from civilization as possible, personally.  But, in Vermont, I'm really lucky to be in the Northeast Kingdom and have a full-time art teaching job. In one school!

In rural schools, art teachers often need to work in several school, grade levels, without a classroom…If you look around here, there are very few full-time art teachers. You know, they make it full time by having you travel to three different towns. And you don't have your own classroom.

So, I'm really lucky. I have my own classroom. I have a full-time job and I live in the Northeast kingdom. I consider myself very lucky in that regard.”

Teaching art, content and process, and integrating curriculum

How much of Evan’s teaching is focused on technique and skill versus encouraging students to understand their intentions, what drives them to create art?

“I would say the majority of my lessons are probably skill, technique, and process-based. There is also some art theory, and then there is some more worldly application, or content. 

My eighth graders did a unit for black history month, we did a project where they had to make a painting of 21st century black struggle. I gave them a list of events, and it wasn't only black struggle, but it was black joy.”

“So, the content of that was really more important than the skills.  I think it's possible to always have both where you're focused on a greater societal concept in the art and the message of the art but also, you're teaching some sort of skill at the time. What we focused on for the skills with that project was juxtaposition of color, like contrast of color a limited color palette, flat colors, because we looked at the work of Jacob Lawrence and how he painted everything with flat colors and he had a limited color scheme and how he used contrast of colors to emphasize certain things. So, we did both in that lesson.”

Depth of experience and endurance

“I think when I think about myself as a beginner teacher and then a teacher who's been teaching for 20 years, I think that I know how to work with students so much better now than I did when I began. I don't know if I know my craft better, but I know people better. I know students better and I know how to avoid problems with students - struggles and behavioral struggles and challenges. You just get better at that and it's hard to even identify what it is sometimes that you do. As a young teacher I thought I needed to be authoritative like classroom. I thought I could go in and just [assume] they would listen to me because I said so… that's not the way it works. So, I learned the first two years of teaching were kind of difficult in that regard.  

[We’re launching] an elective model for our students. We're going to pilot it with the eighth-grade next year. The kids had to choose their electives, and I just I had an overwhelming number of students sign up for my classes! I'll have some of the biggest groups, challenging, especially for a painting class, but I had 47 kids signed up.

I think it had to do with my relationship with students. They know who I am, and they know that I try to build good, positive relationships with kids.”

Outdoor, hands-on, experiential opportunities for students

Evan describes a unit he did on the work of installation artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy creates beautiful, natural, impermanent sculptures in the elements that will erode, break down, wash away as weather and nature’s forces cycle through.

“One of the veteran teachers on the 6th grade team at the time, the science teacher, owned a farm in St. Johnsbury. I was working on my master's degree in integrated arts. I went to him with the idea to go to the farm and let the kids do nature art installations in the style of Andy Goldsworthy. He was familiar with Andy Goldsworthy because his wife is a lover of art and works in various art mediums.

So, we planned a trip to the farm. This was several years ago. It was early April and there still happened to be snow on the ground.” 

“Some of the kid used sticks to build things, some of them used snow. We were out there for maybe three hours. It was great and you know, kids have a hard time with the concept that Andy Goldsworthy would use. He would choose one type of thing, so there was repetition in material, so we could only use rocks, or only use leaves, or, and sometimes maybe two things, but I think that's where they struggled. They are sort of impulsive, so if they go into the woods, and they want to …oh, we'll get bark, oh, we could use sticks, we could use those rocks, and those leaves over there.  So that's what I think was difficult, but to me, it didn't matter what they looked like because they were outside, they were engaging with nature, they were getting fresh air, they were active, they were being creative.

It was just really cool. It was like watching kids build forts in the woods. You know, … I think just engaging with nature and that creative process was really cool.  That's exciting. It's connecting art with science, which is a beautiful match.”

All artwork included here is student artwork.

Photo credits to Jon Morris, Technology Educator, and Evan Jewell, Art Teacher, St Johnsbury School