Feature Teacher: Mrs. McNaul

Art teacher enjoys seeing what students create

Mrs.+McNaul+believes+that+art+is+life.

Wyatt McKendree

Mrs. McNaul believes that art is life.

Mrs. McNaul is the B-A Art teacher for students in Grades 7-12. Most of her family was/is good at either music, crafts or computer arts, but Mrs. McNaul is the only one with technical fine art skills. She fell in love with art when she was a little girl and took private art lessons until she was in junior high. She didn’t start off her career teaching art though. She was initially a marketing specialist, but decided pretty quickly due to ethical reasons that she wanted to use her talents elsewhere.

Mrs. McNaul said her favorite thing about teaching art is that she gets to see what other students create, and by doing so, she has the opportunity to expand her own creativity. This year she decided to take out one of the projects from the eighth grade curriculum and replace it with one that she did from previous years. When helping students in the high school art classes, kids are welcome to call her over if they need help; however, in middle school the classes are so big that she does a method where she moves from table to table for individual help and is always willing to approach students who raise their hands in need of immediate help.

If she could choose any skill to be better at, it would be wood and metal working, because she unfortunately lost those skills after college. Some of Mrs. McNaul’s students do use their art education after high school. One of her first students, Sarah Garber, owns two art centered businesses. One of them being The Clay Cup and the other being Play Time Pottery. Another one of her students traveled to Europe and painted throughout the country as well while also teaching English.

Although many students do not go into art specific careers, a lot have art disciplines and use those skills in their jobs (like those in the medical fields). No matter a student’s interests or talents, art is life, and they will interact with it always.