Lincoln Street School teacher revolutionizes art class
Source: Portsmouth Herald News ()
EXETER — It’s Monday morning and the art room at Lincoln Street Elementary School is buzzing.
Around the table in the center of the room, 19 third-graders shift in their seats. Art teacher Deb Wheeler-Bean asks, “Is there anything you have to offer before class begins?” For a few minutes, classroom talk focuses on the Red Sox’s World Series win. Then Wheeler-Bean gently steers the conversation toward today’s assignment. She has fewer than 45 minutes to work with the students. She’ll repeat this scenario several times a day, five days a week, with each of the approximately 500 students at Lincoln Street School.
Wheeler-Bean, an art teacher for five years, the last two at Lincoln Street School, has “brought a lot of excitement and enthusiasm” to the school’s art curriculum, said principal Dick Keays. “Students can’t wait to go to art class.”
Distinguished by her spiky hair and ready laugh, Wheeler-Bean tries to go beyond teaching her students how to draw or paint.
“My basic goal is to have students leave Lincoln Street School knowing they’re creative people,” she said. “I stress that they all have creative intelligence. Even if they don’t become artists, they have it in their power to think and create.”
Wheeler-Bean has a degree in photography and received her bachelor’s degree in art education from the New Hampshire Institute of Art. A photographer as well as a practicing artist, she’s “honored to be doing what I love.” One of her greatest challenges, she said, is working with students to recognize their creativity.
“By third grade, some kids just shut down and say ‘I can’t do this’ or compare themselves to other kids,” said Bean. “The most challenging part of my job is reopening that door.” Wheeler-Bean tries to nudge that door open in different ways. A lover of poetry, she encourages students to integrate language into artworks or jot down thoughts and notes in a sketch journal. Each student maintains the journal …