West Elementary

Greetings and salutations! My name is Susan Paige and this is my 18th year teaching art at West Elementary. Prior to teaching in Jefferson City, I also taught art at Simeon Career Academy in Chicago, IL.

I am originally from the Columbia, MO area and graduated from Rock Bridge High School in 1996. In 2000 I earned a BA from the University of Missouri in Interdisciplinary Studies. In 2001 I moved to Chicago where I went on to receive a Masters of Art in Teaching from Colombia College. After living in Chicago for a few years, I moved back to mid-Missouri to be closer to family. I accepted a job here at West and have been happily working with the younger artists ever since!

I consider myself a modern art educator in that I am not an “arts and crafts” teacher but rather one who focuses on aesthetics, process, history and visual literacy. I believe art education is of equal value to the other core curriculums. I also believe that art can bridge all the areas of study including: reading, writing, math, social studies and science while offering unique problem solving skills, increased creative thinking and visual literacy. 

I have very high expectations for myself as an art educator and of each of my student artists as individual learners. Children in my classes are regularly challenged to push beyond what they previously thought they were capable of and work toward unique and ever-expanding personal goals. A motto in Ms. Paige’s class is, “There’s no such thing as good enough!” by this I mean that I will not accept anything less than each child’s very best work and I hope to instill in each student artist this same high level of personal expectation.

The rationale for art education on which my curriculum is based, has two main components:

1.     1. A basic understanding of the art elements and principles, which guide all art production. This understanding will be reached through hands on experimentation with a variety of media and processes that allow each student artist a chance to express his or her ideas and experiences through creation of unique and original two and three-dimensional works of art.

2.    2. Visual literacy, which is the ability to interpret, manipulate, appreciate and create images using both traditional and contemporary media and processes in ways that promote problem solving, evaluating, communicating and learning. Student artists will become visually literate through regular examination of master artists both historical and contemporary by means of group discussions that include aesthetics, art vocabulary and critique. As students progress in to upper elementary, they will continue to advance their visual literacy through individual research and writing.