Visual arts teacher Jessica Jiao has always wanted to be an artist. Since she was young, the expressions and lessons she learned through art have stood out to her. She went to Boston University (BU) and has taught art in Brookline schools ever since.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What led you to work at the high school?
I did my student teaching in Brookline when I was in BU, so I was kind of in the area. I taught elementary grades K-5 at Runkle, and then my high school experience in Brookline High School. I’ve been working in the Brookline District for the past three years in total, counting my student teaching.
Can you tell me more about your teaching experience and what made you want to become a teacher?
My art teacher guided me through my toughest time, and I was like, ‘Interesting, art can help you to express yourself, to be something and to communicate with others about your ideas.’ So after I talked to my art teacher more, and he was like, ‘If you love art so much, and you think that maybe doing art is not just something that you want to stick with, maybe try out art education, teaching it to other students.’ Later on, I realized I do want to teach my skills to students, and I do see lots of teenagers nowadays who don’t realize art is a way to express themselves.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
This is what I tell all my students: I love to go trace squirrels. I know, it sounds so funny, like why would you want to trace the squirrels, but I love to walk around the cities and I love to feed the squirrels, although I’m not supposed to. So I just like staring at them at the Boston Common Park—that’s what I always do. I enjoy walking around the city and getting inspiration for my own drawings.
What made you want to do visual arts specifically?
I am an artist myself, so I want to be able to spread my own knowledge to the younger generation and make myself more valuable and more meaningful to helping students who are interested in art, so they are able to achieve what they want to use art to do.
