Becoming Educated

Welcome to my website and my blog for all things Art, Clay, Homeschool and maybe more!

I started off in Education in 2004, almost 20 years ago as a preschool teacher in a private Christian school in San Diego. Let me back up for a moment and let you know that I truly had no desire to become a teacher, but the Lord leads us to where he knows we will be best used for his glory and he has clearly showed me that Education is where he wants me! For once in my life I listened to my mom and did what she told me to do and that was “STUDY WHAT YOU LOVE” so I changed my major when I transferred to SDSU from Liberal studies to Applied Design and basically got a degree in Art! I remember sitting with my mom and dad at dinner one night and my dad said what are you going to do with your degree? I said: “ I don’t know, teach, what else do you do with an Art degree?” Teach or create art, in the last 25 years I have done both and what a journey! In my 2nd year of teaching the school I worked at needed an art teacher and said to me in my contract meeting, we love you, we have two contracts one for preschool teacher or one for art teacher. Go ahead and pray about what you want to do, NO NEED TO PRAY!!! YES I want to teach Art, and there went my 15 year journey of teaching art to all grades K-12. I was able to explore, learn, build, and develop beautiful relationships with parents and students through the art room! I was so very blessed and I had a group of administrators who supported me through this journey and allowed me to grow an amazing program where students were able to experience and explore drawing, painting, clay, printmaking, photography, graphic arts, fiber arts, art history, the list goes on. I didn’t do it all alone I had some great teachers that I worked with along the way that were able to help me grow the VAPA program.

And then I had my own child and everything changed and what was most important to me in life changed and my priorities and ideas towards education where shifting. Once my daughter was able to come to school with me we quickly realized that a Classical Christian school was not going to be the educational path for her. She was diagnosed with Dyslexia in 2nd grade and so my husband and I made the move to public school believing she would get the help that she needed and she did for 3 months and then Covid hit! I was already declaring to the world even in 2019 that I was done with teaching so 2020 was my last year teaching in a traditional school setting. My daughter was able to go back to school in the fall of 2020-2021 and I was thankful so that she could get the help she needed even if she had to wear a mask, but come the 2022-2023 school year my husband and I were done with mask, quarantine and everything schools were putting kids through, so we decided at the last minute to homeschool! Another thing that was not on my list of things to do in life, but I know that the Lord had always put a spark in me about homeschooling, I just didn’t know how it would be possible since I did need to work. I have a dear friend who I worked with for many years in private school who was a veteran homeschooler and had started a home school program where parents could sign up their kids for classes on Monday and Wednesdays. Basically her and her team facilitate classes for vendors to teach in one place so you could have your child in 5 different classes each day ranging from Math, Literature, Arts, Sciences, History, PE, and the list goes on, it’s awesome!

I was able get my daughter enrolled and then began teaching a High School Art class and Ceramics classes in the second semester and how amazing it has been to be teaching again on my own terms, being apart of a community of homeschoolers and like minded educators!

I would love to use this Blog and website to facilitate classes for any students and parents who want to learn about ceramics and the potters wheel. I also want to provide a resource to homeschool moms out there who have no idea what to teach their kids when it comes to art. As well as provide lesson plans that are free for homeschool moms to use for teaching art. I know there are a million resources out there to get ideas. I just want to provide a place where all ideas are welcome, creativity flourishes, and support for us homeschoolers can happen! If your student is attending the program that I teach with, Awesome, if you are looking for art lessons for your student after school or you just want to take spin on the potters wheel because you always wanted to try it out, reach out to me I would love to teach and help you discover the creativity that God has placed in you!

Until next time, Alicia

Xoxo