TEACHING IS AN ART
By Kathryn Turner
Author and educator Dr. Howard Thurman once said,”Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” And anyone who has ever met Donna Holder knows that art is what makes her come alive.
Holder is an Art teacher at Effingham County High School, and her passion in life is creating art and teaching her students to express their own creativity. She is a native of Effingham County, and both teaching and creativity run in her family. Her mother and her aunts were teachers, and her father and grandfather were talented craftsmen. “My dad was very artistic.. [and] my grandfather was into music and had a woodworking shop, and he could make anything, and I just enjoyed being around that type of stuff,” she says.
Holder always knew she wanted to be an artist, but a bad experience in one of her own art classes made her want to be a better teacher. She says, “[It] wasn’t a good experience, and I thought, ‘I can do better than this!’” So she made it her goal to become the best teacher she could be.
After graduating from Effingham County High School, she took the next step to achieve her dream of becoming an artist and educator by enrolling at Georgia Southern University. Her art classes were much harder than she thought they would be, and she soon realized that she would have her work cut out for her.
“When I got to college and I took my first art class…I went home and cried because my drawings were so bad,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know anything, [but] I still knew I wanted to do it. I just knew that I had to work harder. And that’s what I did.”
Fortunately, her hard work paid off. She received her undergraduate degree in Art Education, and then went on to earn a Masters in Art and a Masters in Instructional Technology. Now her students at ECHS reap the benefits of her artistic expertise. When I first walk into her classroom, I have to stop and take it all in. Art covers every imaginable surface. Paintings and drawings are on every wall, stacks of various crafting materials are piled high in every corner, and even the ceiling looks like a patchwork quilt, with every other square a painting done by a different student.
Creative clutter abounds in her classroom. She is a self-proclaimed “pack rat,” and says she needs tons of inspiration and tons of “stuff.” In fact, she has so much “stuff” that she needs two extra storage units to house her excess supplies and her overflow of artwork.
I have to laugh as I sit down for our interview, wedging my notebook between spools of wire and assorted pieces of metal strewn on the table. She is armed with an arsenal of art supplies!
“When people give stuff away, I take it,” she says while looking around the room. “My husband and my students will tell you I’m such a disorganized mess,” she jokes, “but the kids say it’s my personality.” Her enthusiasm for all things artistic is truly contagious.
Anything she can get her hands on, she will use as a medium for her creativity: paints, pictures, pottery, papier mâché, or any other miscellaneous materials that inspire her. But what inspires her most is her students’ enthusiasm about art. The most rewarding aspect of her job is knowing that she has introduced art into the lives of her students. “It’s great to know that they appreciate it and that they remember it and that I’ve linked them to art somehow,” she says. To be a good mentor for her students, and to know that they remember her class long after they have
graduated means a great deal to her.
Holder says her greatest mentor was Bruce Little, an Art Education professor at GSU. “He was just an excellent teacher,” she says. He was an abstract artist and an outstanding teacher who made a tremendous impact on her life and on her teaching style. Little’s non-traditional teaching methods and his love of abstract art clearly influenced Holder’s own teaching techniques.
Like Professor Little, Holder wants her students to realize that art does not have to accurately depict reality. “Kids think you have to draw realistically to be an artist,” she says, “so a lot of the things we do, we start off realistically, but then we just go wild!” She encourages her students to use their imaginations. Though she refuses to pick a favorite medium, she does admit that painting abstracts is something she particularly enjoys. With their vibrant colors and fun juxtaposition of shapes and textures, her paintings are something to be admired. The energy conveyed in her abstractions is as scattered and whimsical as the art in her classroom.
She beams with enthusiasm when she talks about anything artistic. So what, exactly, does she love about it? “Just the freedom to be able to create! I get so excited when I start something new…Just the fact that you can make something and you can change it and keep altering it, and eventually it will turn out…it’s just FUN!” When Holder talks about art and teaching it, in particular, her eyes light up and she really comes alive.
She maintains that she and her students are always learning together, which keeps her on her toes. “I like to experiment, and the kids get so tickled at me. [For example], we just learned to crochet, so crochet’s my thing right now. I’m getting into whatever they’re getting into.”
She does everything from glass art to ceramics, from photography to drawing- and she loves it all.
When asked about her goals for the future, she says, “It’s back to the education part, because I am a teacher. My ultimate goal is to teach these kids and to give them an appreciation for the arts, because so many of them aren’t exposed to it.”
And for seventeen years, she has worked to achieve that goal.
Her only limitation is time. She is the mother of three children: Robbie, Brady, and Lynnesy. Between work and raising a family, it is difficult for her to make time for art when she gets home. “I love to teach it, and I love to do it, but [it's hard to find] the time to do both,” she says.
Her husband, Buddy, is also a teacher and a coach at ECHS, and he recently helped convert their attic into an art room. But other than her busy schedule, nothing stands in the way of Donna Holder when it comes to her art. She has taught for the better part of two decades, and she has no plans to stop any time soon.
Holder says her most strictly enforced rule is that her students are not allowed to use the word “can’t.” “If they come in with the attitude, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t do that,’ then they’re right. There’s nothing I can do to help them, because they have that mental block.” And she stands by her rule: “They can’t say ‘I can’t.’ They have to try.”
Before I can ask her if she ever runs out of inspiration, she interrupts me with an emphatic “No.” She is uninhibited when it comes to ideas: “I never run out of inspiration. It’s everywhere! I mean, I can look out the window when I’m riding down the road and see something that I think would be cool to try,” she says.
As we are wrapping up our interview, Holder shows me some of her students’ drawings. I notice a striking sketch of a young woman, and she explains that the drawing is of a student’s mother, who had been killed in a car accident. Holder is visibly moved when she tells me how the student would only draw pictures of her mother as an outlet for her grief, and I am struck with a deeper sense of appreciation for both the teacher and the subject.
Mrs. Holder is an artist and an educator whose vibrant personality is as unique as her artwork. Her talent for teaching is as remarkable as her talent as an artist. And that seems fitting, because teaching is an art in itself.
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