What is your job?

I’m a special educator, and I split my work between co-teaching and regular teaching. I have one co-taught [English] class with Dave Mitchell and two with Sarah Westbrook. I teach a Physics I class with a small group of students, and then I have a learning support.

What are your strengths as a teacher?

As far as teaching in the high school, I think one of my strengths is that I, first of all, really enjoy working with teenagers. I think they are very creative at this time in their lives and I enjoy hearing their thoughts about their learning and just the world in general. I think one of my strengths would be that I’m a good listener.

Why did you decide to be a teacher?

It wasn’t the first thing on my list. When I started out, I got a fine arts degree, and I was working as a graphic designer. I worked in

many houses where we did newsletters, brochures, pamphlets, posters, things like that. I did a lot of graphic work and enjoyed it. I was teaching an art class in the afternoons in Cambridge, and I began to really enjoy developing lessons and fun projects to do with the kids. I started spending a lot of time thinking about what would be fun for the classroom, so I became a substitute art teacher for one year and had a great time. I then was asked if I would work in a self-contained classroom up at the high school where I could incorporate the arts with the core class. I said that would be a lot of fun and I would love to try it. That’s where it all began.

Why did you decide to become a special education teacher?

I started out and I got certified as a visual arts teacher. It was very difficult to find work. There weren’t that many jobs out there. However, there were many special education positions out there, and what I did is I sold my strengths around what I had done with the art class, and how I would incorporate that into the core classes. As I got more and more interested in that, the special ed classrooms were particularly interested in trying some of these new strategies for learning. That’s where I began to think more about becoming a special educator, and I also knew that there [were] more possibilities to be hired. I think the big reason was that in special education, we are trained to see how we can make learning most conducive to students. We have a little flexibility as to how we want to present it, whether it’s visually or orally. We have all of these ideas now and models about how kids can learn, and I just generally find it interesting.

What do you do for fun outside of the school?

I enjoy making artwork first of all, painting and drawing. I show actively in the Boston area.

What was your high school experience like?

I went to an alternative high school in Watertown. It’s a very small school. During that time alternative schools were becoming more and more popular, because they offered more choices to parents as far as the choice of where they wanted their kids educated. My folks thought that a smaller school would be better for me. It was pretty much an independent school where you had a lot of responsibility to make sure that you were learning. There weren’t that many rules and the atmosphere was rather relaxed. They had what they called a winter term for six weeks where you could concentrate in one particular area, which was a lot of fun.

What were your interests during this winter period?

I did a lot of art. I also did a lot of reading with the English teachers and I enjoyed that quite a bit. This school really opened me up to sort of think about my interests.

What did you did over the summer?

This summer I made art. I had two invitations, one gallery in the South End. It presently has eight pieces that I’ve completed. Then there’s a coffee shop on High Street in the Financial District, where a lot of people who work in the large buildings on Federal Street go in for coffee; I have eight works there. The last place is called The Atomic Bean Cafe in Cambridge, which is on Mass. Ave in Central Square. I use that place, which has a nice display wall, as sort of a testing ground, so if I have new works or things that I want to sort of share I hang there, and then I get a lot of feedback. I have a blog out of what they call the United Kingdom; we call it England. I correspond with people from all over the world. I have about 40 followers of my work, and then I follow perhaps maybe a few more than that, and we exchange what we’re working on.

Could you tell me about one of your favorite paintings that you’ve done?

I did a portrait series this past summer and last spring which I’m really proud of. Some of the drawings are larger than life-size, and it allowed me to become very expressive with my drawing and to take more risks with how I wanted to show emotion in people. It turned out that I really had a lot of fun doing these, and I was actually getting a lot of strong feedback, both from the blog, and from the shows at the coffee shop. I really enjoyed that body of work. I generally work in a series, but that body of work, is probably my most interesting place.

Do you plan on continuing your painting?

I do. I do it in my spare time and I have friends who do it as well. I belong to an open studio in Waltham where there’s probably 80 other artisans, and I’ve gotten to know them. I also lived there for about eight or nine years. I had a studio.

Is there anything you’re working on now?

I’m working on these rock paintings. They’re 12×12, they’re a small series, and I’m basically exploring light and color. It’s all seascapes, and the composition is very much the same, with the sky band at the top, and water. I have fields of yellow, red, blue, various colors, and then, perhaps a few, what they call a collection of rock, at the bottom. I feel like they’re very contemporary. When I put them all together, I think they’re interesting for viewers, because they can sort of see the progression of the work and my thinking that goes on with them.

Robby Lamont can be contacted at [email protected].