Nancy Walkup is a wonderful mentor, friend, and advocate for the arts in public education and art education in general. An accidental crossing of paths with her, yet it is really anything but accidental, changed my professional life in so many ways. Nancy is the editor of School Arts Magazine, the NAEA Elementary Division Director (that's just one of many hats she has worn for NAEA), but the most important hat she wears is she is a nurturing mentor, formally or informally, for art educators everywhere. I'm trying to remember where I first met her...and honestly....I'm drawing a blank. It seems like I have known her forever. It must have been at the first Texas Art Education Conference I went to. I'll have to try to think that one through. In addition to MANY other things she does, Nancy is an "information highway" for art educators. Her Facebook page reads like the Wall Street Journal for art teachers. And then there is Twitter and Ning and Pinterest and the SchoolArtsRoom Blog and the NAEA Elementary Facebook Page...and, of course, her 27 year career teaching elementary art, and her Louisiana and Texas Art Educator of the Year Awards, and her courses she teaches at the University of North Texas, the Folk Art Extravaganza professional development workshop she leads every year in Santa Fe and other art education trips she takes. I honestly don't know where she finds the time for all of this. But, probably the best thing about Nancy, is besides taking care of every art teacher she knows, she is a top notch human being.
So, why am I writing about Nancy? The first time I heard about Fund for Teachers was on one of Nancy's many art-related Facebook posts. She shared a . . .
Funds for Teachers announcement from their Facebook page. Something as simple as a committed, caring art advocate sharing a simple Facebook post, and the happenstance of me seeing it as it came through my newsfeed, is why I have had the good academic fortune of becoming a 2014 Fund For Teachers Fellow. I wouldn't be a Fellow if it wasn't for Nancy. Come to think of it, I wouldn't be a Fellow if a a group of men who ran the Prosper Open Foundation, an educational foundation for our school district, hadn't hired me to be their director, and then if a woman named Brenda Keener hadn't hired me for my first teaching position in Prosper ISD, and if a school board member named Daniel Jones hadn't supported me, and if an incredible superintendent named Drew Watkins hadn't believed in me, and if a high school principal named Mike Brown hadn't given me opportunities, and if a principal named Jody Capehart at LCA and Diane Lopez at MCA and principal named Mike Farrish at Wakeland High School hadn't believed in me, and if a principal from a little elementary school in Anna, Texas named Mark Keene hadn't given me a chance 23 years ago, and if my current principal Laine Jones didn't allow me to flourish as an art teacher. But, then.....it was my three children...Hunter, Andrew and Chloe that changed my creative direction in life completely and taking my oldest child to Kindergarten made me want to be a teacher. But then, it was all the educators in my entire extended family and my husband's extended family that also inspired me to be a teacher. And, well, it was all the INCREDIBLE teachers I had growing up that INVESTED in me and had EXPECTATIONS for me and INSPIRED me that probably really made me want to be a teacher. Minnie Walk and Deva Cupp in my little quintessential two room, red brick school house with a big bell on the roof (no, I did not grow up in the ice ages) and my little class of six students for six years had a great impact on me. There was a feisty, ball-of-energy woman named Liz Rose from Ireland that poured about 12 years of 4-H sewing into me. It was GT sewing on steroids. She made it great fun because she was fun, but boy howdy did she make me work hard...and long days...we'd sew all summer long, sometimes 12 hours a day. And my Aunt Shirley who spent hours and hours with me making homemade bread which I sold around town and at the Annual Beefiesta-what a job that was-I don't remember exactly, but I think we made upwards of 200 loaves of homemade bread for one event, the old fashion way-no bread machine! There were middle and high school teachers and others...Mr.Hussey, Mr. Weber, Mr. Hedges, yes...even Miss Marcellus (she made us work hard and boy did she expect us to behave), Mr. Federson, Coach Kyle Carroll, Mr. and Mrs. Hantla, Mr. Jones, Mr. Laudick, Mr. Snyder, Mr. Suppes, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Krebs....and many others. Jean Sego and Nancy from KSU. Dr. Simpson from Boston University. I have very memorable moments with each of these teachers or administrators. Mostly they were great moments, some of them were those learning curve moments when an adult pours themselves into their student...even if it is something difficult. I also had the luxury (some students might not have seen it that way) of my high school principal being my Sunday School teacher. So, I wouldn't be a Fund For Teachers Fellow if it wasn't for them. But then, now that I think about it, I wouldn't be a Fund for Teachers Fellow if it wasn't for my mom and dad and the values I learned growing up in a farm family in Kansas. And I guess, I wouldn't be a Fellow if it wasn't for my Dutch and English and German ancestors...and my Native American Indian great-great-great-grandmother. I guess the point I am making is we are all a link in a chain. Every teacher is just simply a link in a chain. It's important to me to keep that chain strong. And although I've always poured myself into my students (just ask them-sometimes they might have liked a little less pouring), these days I also find myself pouring myself into art teachers all over the globe, literally, and younger teachers and struggling teachers....and I suppose anyone that will listen!
I didn't set out to be a 2014 Fund For Teachers Fellow. It is just a link in the chain of my life. And I am so very excited to develop the whole Istanbul project for not just my art students, but students and teachers all over the globe. Yes, I am!!! Oh am I!!! And if you know me very well...you know things like this DO EXCITE ME! But...what I am already thinking about...is how will this link in the chain of my life become a link in the chain of someone else's life. Maybe I'll be sitting in a rocking chair someday with white hair and a little drone from Amazon will deliver a message to my house and it will be a message from some former student that has just won the Nobel Peace Prize....or just had their first child....or has decided to be a teacher....or just wanted to say "hi." The important thing is to keep adding links to the chain. I'm not exactly sure how being a 2014 Fund for Teachers Fellow is going to impact that chain....BUT IT IS. Simply, it is. And that is really EXCITING! And you already know I get excited easily!
Read more about Fund For Teachers at: http://www.fundforteachers.org/
