PROFILE RESUME RECOMENDATIONS
I am an artist and art teacher currently living in Newbury, Vermont. I’ve been creating and selling my own artwork for many years. When attending college, towards the beginning of my career as an artist, the idea of teaching was the farthest thing from my mind. After raising a daughter and son and being closely involved with their various educational endeavors, I more or less evolved into teaching. I helped build sets for their plays, helped out with school projects and events, and worked with their friends, teachers, and our community to make the school environment vibrant and more effective.
As I became more and more involved in the daily actives at the schools where my children attended, I found that I had a good rapport with the kids and a natural ability to teach them things. I took a long- term substitute position at Oxbow High School as their Architecture and Design Tech teacher. Left to my own devices, I discovered that I was not only good with these young people, but I was able to create a coherent curriculum and develop effective classroom management tools. During the next year, I substituted for the art teacher at Newbury Elementary School where my son was enrolled. She was kind enough to let me try my own lessons and work on improving them when she was out sick or in meetings. I, as a studio artist, had some skills and techniques that the students were never exposed to. I had a great time. The children really liked the content. I was hooked.
Next, our Supervisory Union received a grant to start an after-school enrichment program. I applied and was hired to be the site coordinator for Newbury. I developed an enrichment program from the ground up. I was able to bring in people for hire from the school and surrounding community to add to the program’s variety. We offered Spanish, German, French, Botany, Photography, Sports, and I taught the Art classes while I administered the program. This added to my diverse experience in education and I was able to develop many more projects and lesson plans. I began looking at all of these plans and recognized the connections between them and what the students were doing in school. I began to develop my own organized visual arts program.
A year later, Newbury Elementary School announced that they were looking to hire a new art teacher. I was advised by friends and family that I could apply for a provisional license that would allow me to teach there. I applied for and received that license and the job at Newbury. I never felt as at home or as comfortable in a work environment as when I was in that classroom. I hadn’t realized it, but in working alone for all those years, I was really missing something. Working with the students, my students, collaborating with the other teachers and working with community members opened up a new world for me.
At Newbury Elementary School I honed my craft as a teacher. It was an incredibly challenging and rewarding time for me. I had great support from my principal, staff. I was assigned a mentor art teacher, Timm Judas of Plymouth State University, for the first year. He met with me periodically and helped with organization and defining the pedagogical vocabulary which I then found myself immersed. I experimented with my projects and lessons and built them into units covering a wide range of genres and media. By the time my second year began I had a well-defined and effective program in place. Based on my first year’s performance, I was given an extra day’s FTE to expand my practice into Project-Based Learning initiatives, collaborative teaching, and working with the principal and staff to develop and refine visual representations of the school’s philosophy and mission. I was an integral part of an effort to further reach out to the community through trimester exhibitions that were open to the public which included visual arts, academics, music, and dramatic performances and were announced by my student- run newspaper. There were a lot of successes at Newbury.
I was not, however, licensed to teach as yet and had to leave to enroll at Upper Valley Educators Institute’s teacher intern program. That experience validated my practice and gave me an even stronger foundation supporting my teaching with many more strategies for classroom management, participation, and arts assessment. The most significant insight gained through my experiences at UVEI is that I need to be teaching. Licensure is no longer necessary to my continuing to work with children and young
people and the process has proven, with respect to time away from teaching, too wasteful and cumbersome I am passionate and driven and have a wealth of life experience that I can tap into to help inform my practice. I am now pursuing teaching opportunities that do not require licensure, yet recognize my experience and skill as a teacher.
Sincerely,
Karl Neubauer
As I became more and more involved in the daily actives at the schools where my children attended, I found that I had a good rapport with the kids and a natural ability to teach them things. I took a long- term substitute position at Oxbow High School as their Architecture and Design Tech teacher. Left to my own devices, I discovered that I was not only good with these young people, but I was able to create a coherent curriculum and develop effective classroom management tools. During the next year, I substituted for the art teacher at Newbury Elementary School where my son was enrolled. She was kind enough to let me try my own lessons and work on improving them when she was out sick or in meetings. I, as a studio artist, had some skills and techniques that the students were never exposed to. I had a great time. The children really liked the content. I was hooked.
Next, our Supervisory Union received a grant to start an after-school enrichment program. I applied and was hired to be the site coordinator for Newbury. I developed an enrichment program from the ground up. I was able to bring in people for hire from the school and surrounding community to add to the program’s variety. We offered Spanish, German, French, Botany, Photography, Sports, and I taught the Art classes while I administered the program. This added to my diverse experience in education and I was able to develop many more projects and lesson plans. I began looking at all of these plans and recognized the connections between them and what the students were doing in school. I began to develop my own organized visual arts program.
A year later, Newbury Elementary School announced that they were looking to hire a new art teacher. I was advised by friends and family that I could apply for a provisional license that would allow me to teach there. I applied for and received that license and the job at Newbury. I never felt as at home or as comfortable in a work environment as when I was in that classroom. I hadn’t realized it, but in working alone for all those years, I was really missing something. Working with the students, my students, collaborating with the other teachers and working with community members opened up a new world for me.
At Newbury Elementary School I honed my craft as a teacher. It was an incredibly challenging and rewarding time for me. I had great support from my principal, staff. I was assigned a mentor art teacher, Timm Judas of Plymouth State University, for the first year. He met with me periodically and helped with organization and defining the pedagogical vocabulary which I then found myself immersed. I experimented with my projects and lessons and built them into units covering a wide range of genres and media. By the time my second year began I had a well-defined and effective program in place. Based on my first year’s performance, I was given an extra day’s FTE to expand my practice into Project-Based Learning initiatives, collaborative teaching, and working with the principal and staff to develop and refine visual representations of the school’s philosophy and mission. I was an integral part of an effort to further reach out to the community through trimester exhibitions that were open to the public which included visual arts, academics, music, and dramatic performances and were announced by my student- run newspaper. There were a lot of successes at Newbury.
I was not, however, licensed to teach as yet and had to leave to enroll at Upper Valley Educators Institute’s teacher intern program. That experience validated my practice and gave me an even stronger foundation supporting my teaching with many more strategies for classroom management, participation, and arts assessment. The most significant insight gained through my experiences at UVEI is that I need to be teaching. Licensure is no longer necessary to my continuing to work with children and young
people and the process has proven, with respect to time away from teaching, too wasteful and cumbersome I am passionate and driven and have a wealth of life experience that I can tap into to help inform my practice. I am now pursuing teaching opportunities that do not require licensure, yet recognize my experience and skill as a teacher.
Sincerely,
Karl Neubauer
