After going years without one, Casa Grande is bringing back an old sculpture class with a new sculpture teacher. Ms. Amy brings with her 27 years of teaching experience, a Masters degree in educational leadership, a bachelor’s degree in Art and a love for the subject that she hopes to share with all her classes.

It was highly requested that the sculpture class be brought back by art teachers and students alike. She isn’t the only one teaching sculpture, but if you sign up for the class, there’s a good chance she could be your teacher. Ms. Amy spent 22 years of her life teaching high school and eventually wants sculpture to be a ceramics focused class, but for now, our 3D-Make teacher and other Sculpture teacher, Mrs. Mollie Lounibos, says “We are very lucky to have her.”

Ms. Amy has had a well-established career. Her first years of teaching high school art were at Saint Vincent for 20 years, after which she left due to administrative drama. She then went on to teach at Quest Forward Academy for 2 years before going back to college and getting her masters degree. After finishing college, she taught at Santa Rosa Charter School for roughly 5 years. However, she missed the experience of
teaching art to high school students. In an interview, she shared that it is much easier to reason with and teach teenagers rather than children. It is because of this that she chose to return to teaching at the high school level. A good thing for her and the school it would seem, as Lounibos claims the school was waiting in anticipation for her to accept the job offer.

Ms. Amy likes to work with her hands, and she also enjoys helping students with their own creative projects. Students in her class have been creating everything from decorative masks to Dale Chihuley type sculptures, the latter of which are usually constructs of blown glass, but of course her class used cardboard modeling and paper mache instead. As of right now, she has been teaching her students how to make felt stuffed animals with stitching. When students approach her trying to figure out what material to use or how to use it to get the result they want, she tries her best to help and provide ideas.

Because she taught for roughly 20 years at St. Vincent’s, she was used to being the teacher that everybody knew and knowing all the faces she would see every day. In an interview, she noted that the thing she was most nervous about when coming to Casa Grande was not knowing the students she would be teaching; good thing for her that we are such a welcoming community.

Growing up her favorite artist was Paul Cezanne, a French post-impressionist painter. She also said she went to Montgomery High school where her favorite teacher was her Driver’s Ed teacher, Mr Rabinowitz, who exemplified to her how teachers build relationships with students. As a teacher who values her relationships with students as they make their artistic journeys, the person to inspire her to be that way deserves some recognition.

All things considered, we are very happy that Ms. Amy joined us at Casa Grande, and we are looking forward to what she will bring to the sculpture class.