Mary Shannon Heinzelmann is a long-time Arts Teacher at Albert Einstein Academies (AEA) in San Diego, CA. From her roots in a musically and artistically inclined family to her transformative teaching methods, Mary Shannon's story illustrates the serendipitous magic of pursuing a passion. This discussion includes the positive and negative impacts of the digital age on the many forms of art, how California is breathing new life into arts education, and the impact art has on all subjects in a student's education.
Mary Shannon Heinzelmann is a long-time Arts Teacher at Albert Einstein Academies (AEA) in San Diego, CA. From her roots in a musically and artistically inclined family to her transformative teaching methods, Mary Shannon's story illustrates the serendipitous magic of pursuing a passion. This discussion includes the positive and negative impacts of the digital age on the many forms of art, how California is breathing new life into arts education, and the impact art has on all subjects in a student's education.
And I want my elementary students to be excited about art. I want them to remember the feeling they had when they were in my classroom. They're not necessarily going to remember everything about the elements of art and the principles of design or anything like that, but they're going to remember that they were allowed to be creative, that they were allowed to express themselves, and you just don't get that from here. Cut this out and paste it here and then draw a face on it. You get it from okay. So think about where you want to put this. Why do you want to put this there?
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Superintendent's Hangout, where we discuss topics in education, charter schools, life in general, and not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, dr Sharedda. Come on in and hang out. In this episode I had a conversation with Mary Shannon Heinzelman. Mary Shannon is a longtime arts teacher at Albert Einstein Academies, is an artist in her own right and we touch on a range of topics from the role of art and aesthetic appreciation in school to the integration of art throughout the curriculum and its connection, especially to science. Mary Shannon's journey from the East Coast to the West Coast, the chance meeting with individuals that led her on her life's journey, her gratitude at being able to work in an area that she truly loves, that's seamlessly integrated into her life, the role of technology, some of our shared laments about technology and society, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did sitting down with Mary Shannon Heinzelman. Thanks, mary Shannon. Thank you so much for coming in this afternoon and hanging out for a little bit.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:I was wondering if you could start with your origin story. Just tell us who you are, where you come from, what brings you to the present moment.
Speaker 1:Well, I am originally an East Coaster. I grew up right outside of Washington DC, in Northern Virginia. I am the youngest of three girls. My dad was in the military and so we traveled a lot when I was very young, lived in Japan and Spain and then when he retired we settled in Falls Church, virginia. I grew up there and I loved growing up there because we're so close to DC and the Smithsonian and all the museums and I can remember family trips down to the mall and seeing the National History Museum and the Natural History Museum excuse me and the National Gallery of Art. That was sort of a part of our lives growing up. So I really appreciated being so close. I didn't even realize that you had to pay to go to museums until I was older, because the Smithsonian is free. It's a wonderful resource. I grew up there.
Speaker 2:And then you grew up there.
Speaker 1:Well, let's see. I ended up going to college at James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley beautiful mountain town in Harrisonburg, virginia, was an art major and I've always loved art. My mom used to tease me that she could never throw away a toilet paper towel roll because I'd always make something out of it. In fact, to this day I don't like throwing them away and I probably have 14 crates at school ready to create something with them. But I was always making stuff and drawing stuff. So art was always a really big part of my life.
Speaker 1:My dad's family is artistic in the sense that they're very musical. My grandmother was a concert pianist. She worked for Irving Berlin for years, and so music was always a really big part of my life growing up Musicals and Broadway shows, things like that. So we would always I can remember my dad calling me up like Mary Shannon, get up here quick. You got to see this and Fred Astaire would be tapping away on the screen. So that was arts, and music has always been a really big part of my life growing up, and so I have a real appreciation for that and I still love going to see shows. I mean, there's all kinds of arts right and definitely influenced what I grew up to become an art teacher.
Speaker 2:So you and I met. I think I mean it's a long time ago so I could be fuzzy on the details, but I seem to recall that one summer or one vacation you were painting a mural in the front office. You're painting something on the wall, and I think it might have been before you were the full-time art teacher.
Speaker 1:So you know what it is. I think that was actually my friend.
Speaker 2:Oh see, see, that's how I see it. There we go.
Speaker 1:This to the school because my friend Heather Peters that's right, okay, yeah, tell us about that. So when I moved out to San Diego I guess my husband and I have been out here 21 years now and when we moved out here we didn't know anyone. I mean, we moved right after 9-11 and the anthrax and then the shooter that was going up and down the East Coast, the sniper. Do you remember that?
Speaker 2:I do.
Speaker 1:And it hit our gas station that we go to and my husband came home and he was like that's it, we're out of here, right? So he is a big golfer and he used to work as a naval contractor and he would come out to San Diego a lot on business. And so he said, well, we can go out to San Diego or we can go to Florida. He wanted to move someplace warm where he could golf all the time. He's like well, I've been to Florida, so let's try San Diego. And we moved out here and didn't know anybody.
Speaker 1:And so I decided to take a class at the Museum of Art because I said, well, I want to meet people that I have things in common with. So I took this painting class and Heather Peters was actually the instructor of the class and we became really good friends. And in fact she's probably how I got almost every job that I've had out here in San Diego, because I started working for the San Diego Museum of Art doing their Girl Scout programs and summer camps and classes, and then I started working for Monart, the drawing school up in Solana Beach, and then the Carl's Bad Gallery. These were all jobs that Heather had had or when they had a position opening up, she would always kind of bring me in, and so Heather was actually the one who, when Libby contacted the Museum of Art Heather, came out and worked with a couple grades, I think and did that mural.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's what it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and when she left, that's how I met Libby at her studio, kind of going away party, and Libby and I started chatting and was like she was saying, oh, we're looking for an art teacher. I'm like, well, I'm one. And that's how I kind of landed at your feet.
Speaker 2:And that's all pre-social media and it's interesting to reflect on how friendships and kind of things in common lead to other things and fast forward. That's more than that's what. 17, 18 years and you're still here. So you now teach art full-time and, I think, went back to school and got credential, because I remember you were an artist and a practitioner, but then to get into the schools there was a circuitous route, credentialing, et cetera, right, I think it was just transferring from Virginia to California because I was credentialed, that was my major in college I was in art education.
Speaker 1:I had my student teaching back east. I taught back east for a while. But then I kind of let it slack, because when I came out here I wasn't necessarily working in the schools. I was at the museums and the galleries and private schools, things like that, in order to get it validated in California. I had to go through all those hoops which. I'm glad I did. It was worth it.
Speaker 2:Now that I've gotten all the details wrong, that I remembered it is a long time ago.
Speaker 1:It has been a while.
Speaker 2:It was interesting when you said 9-11, all those things you cite. It seems like 50 years ago. I'm going to just jump down to a question that always comes up for me when I think about and observe really dedicated educators teaching in areas that are kind of non-traditional.
Speaker 2:They're not really the three Rs. Oftentimes people refer to them I think wrongly but as enrichment or the specials. The specials Because we're so special, which is great to be special, but it does kind of have an implication of being an add-on. Would you like to add guacamole? Would you like to add avocado to that? Would you like a special? How do you view your role in a school organization and your role in the curriculum, your role in the program, your role in relation to IB? You're a professional, you're an expert. How do you see that and navigate that in relation to your peers, when the greater society, conventional wisdom, still sees art as an add-on?
Speaker 1:That's really too bad. They do see it that way. I'm hoping that that is starting to change. You really have to advocate for yourself. Being the lone art teacher at a school it can be kind of isolating. Having colleagues that support you and you can bounce ideas off is really important. One of the things that I love about our school is that we have teams. Those teams I work with each team. We work with the curriculum and as they're developing their IB units and concepts and all those things that go into that, I then pull pieces that I feel can really enhance the learning, that can really elaborate and expand on it. It gives a different perspective for kids. We have so many different types of learners. I'm a visual learner.
Speaker 2:It'll be tough if you weren't right. I'm really an auditory learner.
Speaker 1:I got to feel things and see things and work things out. There is a lot of trial and error. I've definitely had some projects that we've tried that have blown up in my face. One of the things I also like about IB is that idea of reflection and continually that growth. I'm constantly learning how to be a better teacher. How can I at the end of a lesson, how can I make that better next time? I do have to teach a lesson six times to each class in the grade.
Speaker 2:Which is kind of a gift.
Speaker 1:It is really nice. Sometimes I always feel bad for the first class I teach because they're like my guinea pigs, like well, let's see how this works. Then we work out the kinks. Working with the team and collaborating, I think, is a really important part. To advocate for that and to really have a voice, you got to speak up and say this is what I need, this is what I'd like to do. What can we do? Luckily, most of the teams are really supportive of that. They are excited about doing it because they don't necessarily have that skill set To bring that into the classroom. The majority of the time. They're very excited about that. That's a plus in our environment.
Speaker 1:The IB looks at art as a core subject. That is part of their whole model. I think that, maybe because they are more internationally minded and they have a broader perspective, perhaps that that is something that they're realizing is really important. I've heard interviews and talks with people where they talk about how science and art are so connected. If you took one away, then you would lose the imagination and the creativity that a scientist needs in order to think of new possibilities. I feel like that's always been the way I've thought about art, one of my favorite classes in college was and this is a long time ago before this was the norm but art through art. Across the curriculum, our whole class was trying to develop art lessons that could teach science or English or math or different concepts. I think that that, to me, is how I've always viewed art. Ib just lends itself to that. It's really a positive match.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I've been very impressed with in your work is the public art installations Looking at spaces outdoors, or sometimes quasi outdoor, indoor because we're in San Diego we have a lot of those indoor outdoor spaces and the art that you've brought to those spaces, often using recycled products and those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I reflect on about education I've talked about on previous episodes and I've been open about the fact that my daughter attended a school for a number of years where aesthetics was a focus intentional focus in classrooms. In the Waldorf school the teachers do chalkboard drawings every once a month, I think and they're always thematic. Every teacher does one, they take hours, they come in on the weekends and they do this thing and it's connected to what they're teaching. That's clearly not a common theme in public education. So much of what we see in school this isn't a criticism of Einstein, but so much of what we see in general is prepackaged stuff. Somehow in the teaching profession we're supposed to have bulletin boards with construction paper on them and then little scalloped edges around and we're supposed to put up live, love, laugh and motivational slogans.
Speaker 2:Of course you got to have your standards and then you got to have something that says keep trying until you succeed all those things. How do we bring an appreciation of aesthetics and creativity and a real attention to detail in the way we view the world so that things aren't just prepackaged? Does that make sense? So I see you do it inherently in the art that you bring to a campus and the projects you do. How do you, I guess let me rephrase my question when you go into a classroom that is designed or decorated in a way that you would never decorate as an art teacher, how do you kind of integrate yourself in there so that you're not just seen as okay, kids are going over there to work with Mary Shannon. They're going to do a bunch of exciting stuff and then they're going to come back here for the quote unquote real academic stuff.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me.
Speaker 2:How do you bring art in a way that's real and authentic to a profession that, historically, has not integrated art into what happens in the instruction of the day, and I think that that is one of the reasons that art teachers and art programs are traditionally seen as enrichment on the side.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not like the little craft projects is what you're saying Like. A lot of times you see that and I veer away from that. I want to find art pieces that inspire my kids. I want to make connections, because when I think about art, I think about how that's a human experience. When you go to museums, or even if you don't go to museums, you walk around, like we just did a mural walk in North Park and there are so many murals my family and I we did this scavenger hunt kind of thing and there's so much public art around San Diego. We really do a fantastic job in this city of murals and things.
Speaker 1:That and those kinds of experiences are what you know. When you look at a piece of art, whether it's on a wall in a museum or it's outside on the sidewalk or your electrical box or whatever it is, you are connecting with it on a human level. You are what do you see? What are you experiencing? What can you connect? So to me, art is what brings our shared humanity together, and that is sort of part of art, that's part of our mission statement, right?
Speaker 1:But that is why art is so exciting for little people. You know, they want to share it. They want to experience. They want to share their experiences. They want to tell you what they think or what they see or what they feel, and so I always try and find projects that inspire. If I'm inspired by it, then I'm going to transmit that excitement and that to my students and I love it when they come back and they're like oh, I taught my mom how to do this project.
Speaker 1:When we got home or I have parents coming, I'm like, oh my gosh, this kid is drawing. You know this over and over and over again. It's so exciting and they told me all about this. If I have the excitement for it, then that I feel like transmits to my students and I don't.
Speaker 1:I feel like those sort of crafty projects are great for in classroom with your general Ed, who may not have a background in art, but I want to expose them to different materials and different ways of looking at art, different cultures and different you know processes and get them excited. Because when I think about elementary art now, I never had an elementary art school teacher. I had a music teacher, but I didn't have an art teacher, and probably until middle school probably, and I want my elementary students to be excited about art. I want them to remember the feeling they had when they were in my classroom. They're not necessarily gonna remember everything about the elements of art and the principles of design or anything like that, but they're gonna remember that they were allowed to be creative, that they were allowed to express themselves. And you just don't get that from here.
Speaker 1:Cut this out and paste it here and then draw a face on it Like you get it from okay. So think about where you wanna put this. Why do you wanna put this there? What you know, whatever it is, whatever element we're doing, and so I think transmitting that excitement and that shared connection is something that broadens the art experience.
Speaker 2:You talked about, you know, making it relevant for children from different backgrounds. Can you expand upon that? I mean we have a very diverse student population on a whole bunch of different levels, both socioeconomically. You may have someone who's been to Paris, to the Louvre, and then you have another student in the same classroom who hasn't yet been to the ocean in San Diego and doesn't know what a starfish looks like in the real world, and everything in between. How do you think about designing your lessons with that wide range?
Speaker 1:in mind. Well, the bonus of being part of the IB curriculum is that that's somewhat built into their units of inquiry the idea of exploring other cultures and other traditions and being very respectful of that, and I'd say the majority of 98% of my lessons tie directly into their unit of study. So it lends itself very easily for that for sure. But then I also try and have a lot of visuals, if I can have something like real in front of them.
Speaker 1:You know that's better for me. I want them to be able to feel it, touch it, look at it. We just did shells with second grade and I was amazed at what they picked up on on the small little details that well, I can show you how to draw a shell, but you look at this shell. How would you draw this shell? You know, and having their experience directly there in front of them, it connects that a lot better. And also I really try and be aware of when I'm picking artists to focus on that. It's not all you know white guys who lived 100 years ago and while those are great, I love Van Gogh and Monet.
Speaker 1:I'm a huge fan of those guys, but there are also a lot of contemporary artists that are living and working today that I focus on and I like to have, you know, videos of the artists talking about their work, so they're actually hearing from the actual artist and we don't get to hear from Van Gogh about what he saw and what he was feeling. We can guess a lot and you know a lot of intellectuals can tell us what they think happened, but hearing from artists that are in LA working today or you know that are on YouTube or whatever, and have a video talking about their inspiration and their process, I think that brings it more to their current. You know, this is their world and this person is still living in this world, creating. We're still, and so I think, bringing those variety of artists and as well as variety of types of art, there's so much. There's so much in the art world.
Speaker 1:I mean and I'm just talking about visual arts, but there's performing arts and there's musical arts and there's the design and the architecture. I mean, art is all around us. It's an everything we look at and do. It's how someone designed the water bottle you're drinking out of, or the clothes you're wearing, or the car you drive, or the house that you live in. I mean, these are all creative thinkers that created this. You know, these are all artists that were given an opportunity to think outside the box, and now we're we get to surround ourselves with that, which is cool.
Speaker 2:You and I were talking, we were reminiscing, before I hit record about, because we're kind of we're from the same era age-wise. I don't wanna give it away, but it's a while ago that we were born and so we grew up before the proliferation of screens. We grew up before iPads were babysitters. We grew up before iPhones were ubiquitous. It's certainly in developed world. Have you seen a change in your time in as an art teacher with the proliferation of screens?
Speaker 2:Because, now you're teaching students who don't remember a world before portable screens and I often think you know I looked the other day. I have tens of thousands of photos in my Google Photos account. I don't even I'm so embarrassed by the number, but ask me how many I really have printed out and take the time to look at.
Speaker 1:My board. You actually had to wait for film to be developed.
Speaker 2:I have a bag over here of photos from when I lived in Central America 31 years ago and I have hundreds of photos in there. Most of them are blurry and terrible and whatever. There's a few gems, at least for what I'm looking for, but it cost. That bag cost me probably $1,000 of developing.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And remember that right, you used to drop it off and sometimes you would have messed it up, so the whole thing wouldn't work. Or your fingers in front like and so now it's instant, but it's almost like in this sense that it's so instant it's lost some of its meaning. So have you seen some of that, even in like kids, appreciation of reflecting on what a flower looks like, Because they could just pull that thing up and there's 10 million photos of a flower.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there's sort of two sides to that. While it's, you can look at it as wow, you have all these images at your disposal to look at as reference, and that's great. But do you take the time to sit and look?
Speaker 1:at the details and things. That's true. I definitely have noticed a change, definitely in the last 10 years. For sure, their attention span is shorter. It's easier to sometimes show them and easier is not the right word. It holds their attention a little bit when you're showing a video as opposed to talking about it with people. I definitely think that it can be used as a tool, but I think they get too distracted. They don't have the bandwidth to last.
Speaker 2:For my weekly staff video that I send out. I get metrics on how long people watch the video, like the average amount of time. I can't say who did it, but I can see the average viewing time. Was this right? And it doesn't matter what time of year it is, it doesn't matter if something really spicy has happened or not. It's just about six and a half minutes. The viewership drops by like 50%.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:And that's adults and that's part of ostensibly someone's work. And so I mean the open question, the rhetorical question is has this affected all of our attention spans? Right To the point where there was no email to get an email for my principal when I started teaching. But you'd get maybe a newsletter in your mailbox and you'd kinda look at it as you were drinking your coffee or whatever. Those days are gone. We're inundated with interruptions all day long and I've had a lot of people who would say even to those videos well, I don't have time to watch.
Speaker 1:But they have 10 minutes to scroll on their phone.
Speaker 2:Well or, in all honesty, the videos could be bad too. Maybe I'm not that interesting, but assuming that there was something of interest you're like wow, a week, just seven times 24 times 60, there's a lot of seconds in a week that you can choose to allocate. It's just an interesting reflection on how we spend our time when I was in college. I'm not artistic, certainly in visual arts or anything, but I took an art class. I had some extra credits or classes that I could take at the end of my senior year and it was an introduction to drawing. It was one of the most powerful classes because first day of class, very soft spoken teacher goes okay, everybody draw a tree. I think it was like charcoal pencil. So I'm thinking, whatever, this is easy, wow, and I draw this thing and I'm done and I show it.
Speaker 2:And he goes is that what you see when you look at a tree or is that just what you have in your mind, right? And he goes now we're going to go outside and you're going to go and sit next to this tree for an hour and draw what you see and then come back in and of course I'm eventually looking at the texture of the bark and the way the light hits it and all those pieces, and I'm wondering have we lost some of that as adults and children? Right, contemplating nature, contemplating it doesn't have to be outdoors, but even the way the light is bouncing off the door frame right behind you, right, do we stop enough to look at that or do we just all get on our devices?
Speaker 1:Well, I would like to think that we do take that time, but I don't think people do anymore. I think you make a valid point. I mean, how many times do I look over and we're watching something on the TV and my daughter's on her phone and my husband's playing a game on his phone at the same time? I'm like how can you possibly see the facial expressions of the comedy, the comedy, or how can you see the timing and like you're missing the whole experience? You know, I have that same discussion with some of my students when we do like when I studied Georgia O'Keeffe, that was one of the things that she's.
Speaker 1:One of her quotes was something like you know, I want to make busy New Yorkers stop and take a look at this flower. Like you know, I want them to take the time to look and to really see. And so when we do that lesson, you know I do the same. Like, all right, everyone draw a flower and they all draw like a little circle with little daisy petals all the way around. I'm like I know you know what you think. You know what a flower looks like.
Speaker 1:Let's look at this flower how many petals are there? What shape is the petal? What are the patterns on the petal Like? It takes time to really see and artists need to slow down and take that time and, as an artist myself, I I like that time, I like that reflection and observation and and I try and instill that into my students when we start a new lesson, like well, I know you know what this is, but what does it really look like, you know? So I think that's a valid lesson for any art class and I think, where you talk about the intersection of art and science, for example.
Speaker 2:I mean, you can't have scientific observation, that or in any discipline. You can't look at something and already in your mind have jumped to a conclusion without actually really consciously observing what. What's there and what's not there. Oh, I know what that is. Wait a second, is it really what it is? And I think 149 characters and tweets and Fox news and MSNBC oh, none of that helps.
Speaker 1:No, I mean we live in a fast paced world. We live in a very fast like lots of information coming in at all times. You know, you've got social media, you've got your text, your TV, your movies, you're streaming.
Speaker 2:You've got 49,000 channels and you can't find something to watch.
Speaker 1:So we're inundated with this technology and this information coming at us all the time, and so I do worry that kids won't take the time like that, they'll lose that ability. So that's another reason why it's so important to have art in the schools, because they have a chance. And, like I said before, you know, everyone learns different and and there are kids who just don't, you know, succeed in math or science, but they really excel in art. And they're kids who don't excel in art but they have fun doing it and that's what matters. They're taking the time to express and get that physical, tactile, um creation going. And you know, when I go around the room and I look at what all the kids are doing, I get really excited about what I see and I try and really look at each kid's art and pick something out of it. That's like an honest comment, not just, oh, that's nice, I mean that's great.
Speaker 1:It's great to say oh, I love that, that looks great. But like, oh, I love how you use those colors. Oh, I love the way those colors interact together. How did you do that? Or, oh, I didn't think about that, you know. So, pointing out those specific things that they would never necessarily they're just going to rush by it, but to be mindful of that and to point it out to them, then they start thinking oh well, I'm going to experiment more with those two colors, maybe that's going to be, you know. So I think that's sad that we do have this sort of fast pace, but I think that's why art is so important, because it does take us, take it to slow down and really think and look and observe and reflect on what is in front of it and feel yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And a couple of minutes ago you mentioned a number of artists. Who are some of your artistic inspirations and how does that manifest itself in the classroom and in your teachings?
Speaker 1:Well, if I think about like or schools of art.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I of course, some of my favorites I always like to bring in as lessons, because if I'm excited about it, they're going to get excited.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:And Giorgio Keefe is one of my faves.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I've been to Santa Fe New.
Speaker 1:Mexico right, have you ever been out there?
Speaker 2:My family lives there, oh really. So every time I go I'm like I get it. Have you gone to the museum? Yeah, I'm like I get it. We're going to see You've gone to.
Speaker 1:Abicu her home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's awesome and you can see from the landscape just like where the inspiration came from.
Speaker 1:And I love all of her collections. I'm a collector as well.
Speaker 1:I like have, you know, rocks or stuff, you know, sticks and stones and things that I collected. He had them all on her thing. I love that. But I definitely bring in my favorite artists that I like as inspiration. Like Modigliani, I like his style of portraiture. I tend to use a similar style in my own personal artwork in terms of the linearness of his faces.
Speaker 1:I mean it's funny because a lot of times I'll be like, ooh, I'll do a new lesson. I'll be like, okay, I'm so excited, this is one of my favorite artists and they're like you say that all the time. I'm like well, because I love art, like there's so much that I love about it and there's so many different styles of art. I love the Andy Goldsworthy getting the environmental aspect of that and using the actual land as a canvas. But I'll tell you, what really inspires me that I bring into my teaching is and here we are talking about social media again, and I actually put off getting on Instagram for a long time because I'm like I already have Facebook. I don't know, I waste too much time. Anyway, I'd rather be in my sketchbook or.
Speaker 1:I'd rather do something else than be on.
Speaker 1:But then Shayna got me onto Instagram and I kind of hate her and love her at the same time, because now I waste so much time looking at this girl.
Speaker 1:But I follow these art teachers that are all over the country and doing amazing things in their classrooms and that inspires me and I'm like, oh, I'm going to try something like that in my classroom. So I like the idea of colleagues I may not know them personally, but to me I'm calling them my colleagues because fellow art teachers and there's a real great community of art teachers sharing ideas and things that are exciting to do in the classroom and so I do pull a lot from what other teachers are doing, because I think the social media aspect of it, while it can be overwhelming, it also has a lot of positives to me as well, like getting those inspirations and being exposed to another way of doing things. I've done a project like that, but this is another way of trying this. I'm excited about this, so I bring that a lot into my teaching. But I mean, I just want to share what I love, and I love art.
Speaker 2:Do you paint and draw outside of your teaching?
Speaker 1:Yes, I do For renewal and for learning. I try and at least sketch in my sketchbook every day, because it really it first de-stresses me.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:I feel the only way I'm going to get better at my art is to practice it, and I try and tell that to my students. It's like I'm not expecting you to pick up your pencil and draw the Mona Lisa. I can't draw the Mona Lisa and I've been drawing my whole life. But the only way you get better is to practice, and I've noticed when I have taken time away from my art that I get cranky and I start getting down on myself. I can't do it. I'm not that good of a painter, whatever.
Speaker 2:You start making loopy flowers. Everything's a daisy.
Speaker 1:I mean, I can't remember who said this quote, but it was like inspiration exists, but it has to find you working, and so I love that idea of I'm going to try new things and the more I do it, the better I'm going to get, or the more ideas I'm going to get, and so that's exciting to me. So, yes, I work a lot in sketchbooks. Actually, I probably have about 10 or 15 sketchbooks that are different sizes and for different mediums, and I go from sketchbook to sketchbook.
Speaker 2:And the students know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I brought in my sketchbooks to share with them when I'm working on something.
Speaker 2:Because I think you know you'd like to think in a perfect world that a literature teacher is doing a lot of reading on their own, that a math teacher.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying they should just go home and churn out a bunch of math problems, but in a perfect world mathematics and mathematical thinking is an active part of their life. So it's not just an abstraction. They teach and then they shut it off at 3 pm and they're done, and so to keep it alive and then for students to see, you know, wow, this person's striving. You know it would be terrible to have a PE teacher who never worked out right, right, not trying to cast dispersions, but you know right, and so I think that that keeps it really active and alive.
Speaker 2:I remember one of my good friends growing up attended Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and I remember and we were in college at the same time I was in Maine and he was in Rhode Island, and so we'd visit each other and he'd go oh my God, I can't believe you have to read all these books and write these essays and all this stuff, and I'd say I can't believe that you get these projects, and then you have to go and do critiques in front of your peers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are tough and I can't think of anything more terrifying. And he's going. The most terrifying thing for me is to have to read that, those sonnets and write an analysis of Shakespeare. I'm like that's a piece of cake compared to this. So it's interesting the different ways that we learn.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And I think to be able to cross over right, we should ideally have both of those experiences and many more right To get out of our zones of comfort as well.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:I think that I don't you know. If kids are working on their art at night, late into the night at home, and their sketchbooks or whatever that looks like, I would hope parents would be happy and say, wow, they're doing that schoolwork, it's meaningful, rather than when are you gonna start your homework? When you stop doodling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it when kids come in because I do front gate duty, and so when they come in in the morning and they're like, oh, let me show you what I did last night, mrs Heinzman you know, and I'm like, wow, you know, and it's not necessarily what I taught them but they're in there in practice. I'm like I'm so excited that you're doing this. You should do it every night, drawing that sketchbook, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my mom recently took up watercolor painting you know, and she lives in New Mexico, so she's got an endless palette of opportunity and I think there's something really meaningful. Most of us are never gonna create something that would be gallery worthy unless we own the gallery, but there's such deep value in that. I think that's really one of the reasons I wanted to have you on. What do you do for renewal personal renewal outside of your teaching? You teach, as you said, the same lesson five, six times.
Speaker 2:You the average listener is not gonna know, but you have been an absolute trooper in the last well, throughout your career as a. You know there was an in early days at Albert Einstein. The art program was seen as such an adjunct that every year we would raise money and you would kind of be going to the gala wondering if enough money would be raised for your position. Now, luckily, we changed that I don't think in retrospect. That was not. No one should have to go through that, especially for what I consider to be one of the core academic areas. But you know you've faced you know, having to move classrooms, teaching in a multipurpose room, being an ambulatory teacher waiting for a bungalow that has never arrived, all these different things. It can't be easy. You love what you do, you love the kids. But how do you recharge your batteries so you can keep going?
Speaker 1:Working in my sketchbook, creating for myself. I find, like when I spend a quality, like good chunk of time creating for myself, I get excited about doing it with kids. I get excited about going back to school and sharing and seeing what they can come up with. Obviously I, you know, with a family, you know I have a daughter and it's when she was younger. It was a lot harder to find that time to get into my studio and create. But you know, when I'm a better person, I'm a better mom, I'm a better wife, I'm a better teacher, and so when I feel-.
Speaker 2:You're a better freeway driver. Freeway driver.
Speaker 1:Well, I did grow up on the East Coast so I do not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too, me too.
Speaker 1:I know I don't like driving. I like driving in the rain, but I know how to drive in the rain, but so I think it's. You know, find what I like going to the beach walking. There's something about the ocean that's very healing.
Speaker 2:Negative ions.
Speaker 1:Right. I can remember when I first moved here to San Diego we lived down in PB and just walking out my door and being able to walk up and down the beach and sit and the sort of magnitude of the ocean is something that sort of puts things in perspective too for me. I don't know Finding time to do yoga. I have sad leap and laxadaisical in that. I need to get better about that. But I always feel better when I'm taking care of myself, the things that I enjoy and love and bring me, you know, energy that always helps me replenish and get ready for those little people walking through my door.
Speaker 2:What does the 50 year old? I'm sorry I outed you, but you're younger than I. Am 50 something year old. 50 something year old what is the 50?
Speaker 1:I'm happy for every year I've had on this planet.
Speaker 2:Hey, I am too, and I'm like see these.
Speaker 1:I hope to have many more.
Speaker 2:I'm like see these wrinkles. I earn every single one of them, right.
Speaker 1:These gray hairs Happily done.
Speaker 2:Happily, I'm good, I'm moving forward. What does the 50 year old you tell the 20 year old?
Speaker 1:you if you can 50 year old me tells the 20 year old me, I'd say the first thing I would tell her is to breathe, to not look at all the little things, to look at the bigger picture, because you can really get bogged down with all and I get stressed very easily and I got to learn how to de-stress. And so technology drives me crazy. But I didn't come from a generation I mean I didn't have a. I don't even I still don't have a personal computer, I only have my work. But I mean I didn't get a cell phone until I was in my 30s and I tell people I work with that and they're like what? Like well, they didn't have that.
Speaker 2:They didn't have them. I'm the same yeah.
Speaker 1:So I just feel like I would focus on what like breathe, not worry about the little things but focus on what it is. I think maybe I kind of took a little securitous I don't know how to say that word.
Speaker 2:Securitous, securitous, yeah, route to here Round Hazelbakers, mar-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to where I am here and where I'm, and I should have stayed focused on that probably. I took a little detours here and there. I thought maybe I took a break from teaching for a while and I thought, well, maybe I'll paint murals and I'll do some faux finishing and that kind of stuff, and I realized I am not a business person. That is not where my strength lies.
Speaker 2:Doing murals for free is just not a great model.
Speaker 1:You know I'm like this is average sales and marketing. It's just not me. So staying true to who you are, I think, is the best advice you can give any younger self. Not stressing you got a long life ahead of you. Enjoy every day. I hope I still have a long life ahead of me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd say stay true to what your passion is and find a way to make it. Where I'm one of the very lucky people I think in this world that loves what I do. I love my job and I don't know if every I love that I can make money doing it. You know, I can make a salary and not everyone can say that Sadly my husband is not going to be a professional golfer. I know he wants to be, but you know.
Speaker 2:I know he's probably gonna give me a hard time about that one. Sorry, john. Sorry John. You're watching shows and some videos that you play in golf.
Speaker 1:He's an excellent golfer. I'm not saying he's a bad golfer, he's an excellent golfer, but there's excellent golfer.
Speaker 2:And then there's PGA, but he's not gonna get paid for it you know, like I mean and wouldn't it? Be great if he could Quite the opposite. He's gonna have to pay for it, exactly.
Speaker 1:But wouldn't it be great if he could? And I'm one of those lucky people who am able to do a job that I am passionate about and something that I love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's that very cliched but also very true statement that if you do something you love, then you won't work a day in your life. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously they're the grind days but in general right In general you know to think that you can kind of blend what you do for renewal with what you do to put food on the table and it's pretty seamless. How many people are just waiting and counting down to a retirement date?
Speaker 1:or oh, john's got his retirement clock ready to go, it's going.
Speaker 2:On the computer. You know he actually has a clock on his desk oh really, A digital that is counting down.
Speaker 1:It's a digital clock that counts down until his retirement.
Speaker 2:Of course, now we're gonna have a daughter in college soon, so you're gonna have to go in at night and when he's out playing golf, you might need to reset the DNA.
Speaker 2:Right, he'll retire before I do, that's for sure, for the cost of college, yeah, and it doesn't mean he doesn't like what he does for a living, but so many people are that way, right? Yeah, I think that's one reason you and I were talking about because you're a big music fan and we were talking about these rockers that seem to just stay around forever.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We're like well Sting and Mick Jagger.
Speaker 1:Who knew Keith Richards was gonna last this long right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, mick Jagger is 200 years old and he keeps having kids and all that stuff and you're like, but they're doing something. That. How can it feel like work when you have 100,000 people cheering and you're jumping around and you could sing anything and they're gonna cheer, you know, and you could stay in shape and put the leather pants on and you know Right, and I think that's. I think we see a lot of artists and performers who just keep that going. You don't hear, oh, brad Pitt's gonna just tap out because he's 55.
Speaker 1:Like come on man, he's gonna just start taking the distinguished gentlemen roles and keep moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always kind of think I would like to be like. There's an artist who I love, alma Thomas-Woodsy she's, or Alma-Sloot. Yeah, she was a middle school art teacher for her whole career in DC and afterwards she took I mean, she started painting for herself more and then got a solo show at the Whitney and now her painting was hung in the Obama White House. I mean, it's like not until she was 60 did she start Like I see all those, there's some of these things where they say like well, so-and-so didn't get their first hit until they were 45.
Speaker 1:And you know I mean.
Speaker 2:It doesn't work with golf, though.
Speaker 1:It doesn't work with it.
Speaker 2:Sorry, john, you could play in the senior circuit.
Speaker 1:I can see him doing the golf cart thing and the starter after we retire is being the starter at the golf course. That's right, or he could be a golf pro at a golf course.
Speaker 2:He could do that. He could do that. Sorry, John.
Speaker 1:I know we're riffing on you we're riffing on you, but it's OK, John.
Speaker 2:This is the guy who asked if this was live, if he could tune in and listen. So it's OK, not everybody's in the moment. With the technology it takes all kinds. Mary Shannon, you've been very generous with your time and I realize it's a long work day and we just had a colossal storm.
Speaker 1:A couple of days ago.
Speaker 2:So we're all kind of like what was that?
Speaker 1:What was that? What was that?
Speaker 2:And wow, is it going to come again? And it seems like it won't, but we never know. I have one last question for you, but before I get there, is there anything that you'd like to add, something that's been kicking around in your head, any ideas that you're just like? I may get back to that, but I didn't give you enough space.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think so. I mean, I think one of the things I got to give props to, the prop 28, giving California arts. I've heard a lot of good things that are coming this way.
Speaker 1:So I'm really excited to see how the arts can be expanded in California. I like that we're taking it ahead of all the country really in that and honoring and valuing arts in our schools and with our students, because we need it. Art is, I mean, think about it since the beginning of time. This is how we reflect ourselves and our culture.
Speaker 2:Cave paintings.
Speaker 1:Cave paintings and all kinds of things, and throughout the ages. I mean, where would we be without the Renaissance and architecture and all of this? So I'm excited to see how this will change the art scene in schools here in California, because it's so needed.
Speaker 2:It's I agree, I hope the rest of the country follows suit. I completely agree and I think Charlie Munger, who was the number two investor for Warren Buffett, charlie Munger just passed away.
Speaker 2:I think, at like 99 or something. But he always said if you show me the incentives, I'll tell you what the result's going to be. And I think when you feed art and arts instruction into that machine, there is no incentive in schools, no measurable incentive. There hasn't been one to focus on aesthetic beauty. There's been no test score that's going to generate some outcome that says, wow, you're doing better in this area.
Speaker 2:So in oftentimes even fiscal education's got statewide tests. You can kind of whether they're relevant or not, how many minutes you can hang on a pull-up bar, but it's something and art hasn't had that, and so it's always been and will continue to be a priority for me at Einstein, and I think the governor and the lawmakers who pushed that proposition have that in mind. And we hear about STEM and then STEAM, so they added the A.
Speaker 1:Thank you, they added the A, but I haven't seen a lot of examples of where that A really comes to life.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, it's so important because there's so many studies quote a zillion of them but the arts are teaching critical thinking and creativity and problem solving, and those are skills that transcend art. You need those skills in science and English and history and all kinds of things. You want innovation and you don't have that unless you are taught how to be creative, how to think outside the box, how to be a critical thinker and observe and reflect, and those are skills that are taught in every class in art, and I think that's why it's so important that we do have those in the schools, starting from elementary. I think back and I'm like how did I not have an art teacher in elementary school? But I didn't. So I hope all schools will.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I completely concur. So my last question normally I ask people this in the context of a bumper sticker or a billboard.
Speaker 1:But you're an arts teacher.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to ask you get to do a mural, you get to do a mural, Mural, you get to do a mural. But it's going to be in a super prominent place, like I don't know, like the side of a cliff, on the side of the freeway where thousands of people every day can see it.
Speaker 2:You can write something on it or you can just have an image on there. But what does Mary Shannon's mural have on it to convey your beliefs? A message you would like the world to know about the way you see things.
Speaker 1:Oh, You're going to make me think of this on the spot. Huh, A whole image right up there.
Speaker 2:Or you can just write, you could take the shortcut. Just a red dot on there, you could be modern art, Modern art too, just through a blue balloon of paint on there.
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny when I think about things, when I look through my sketchbook, I have the same kind of themes running through my sketchbook. I have lots of trees. I love trees, figures, and so I immediately gravitate to that. But that's not necessarily something necessarily that I would want on the side of a mirror, on the side of a wall someplace, I think, something that would tap into creativity and all that it can bring us. So some kind of image where you're having all kinds of different peoples and activities and elements from our world, just without creativity these would not be here. I mean, think about it If you didn't have creative people in this world, how much would not like our arts and culture would?
Speaker 2:be gone, be gone.
Speaker 1:No movies, no TV, no music, no dance, no anything. And that's just the sort of performing arts, visual arts, that kind of thing. But that's not even dealing with all of the architecture, and so art touches all our lives. So maybe that would be the tagline, perhaps, but the visual imagery. I would want people to see how that creative expression has been created in our world.
Speaker 2:Well, you've certainly touched the lives of hundreds and probably thousands of students in your career, and so, on that behalf, I want to thank you, and I've always valued the art installations that you have had on our campus and so looking forward to many more years, and so thank you so much, mary Shannon, for taking this time this afternoon and coming in and hanging out for a little bit and sharing your life with us, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the Superintendent's Hangout. You can follow me on Twitter at DVS1970. Please be sure to share this show with friends and family on social media and in the real world. Thank you to Brad Bacallel for editing and production assistance and to Tina Royster for scheduling and logistics. Thanks for hanging out and have a great day. Thank you.