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Hi, I'm Amanda.

I'm an art teacher, art student, and artist living in Northern Virginia.

I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Media Arts and Animation from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. I am currently a candidate for a Master of Arts in Teaching at George Mason University and an art teacher for FCPS.

As I continue pursuing my education in art, I am exploring expressive portraiture and how to build narration into my static work. I work as both a digital painter and a traditional oil painter. As a teacher, I believe every student is a capable artist—it just takes a bit of practice on their part and thoughtful teaching on mine.

Yeah, that's me --->

My artistic practice

Student Work & Teaching Portfolio

Tangibility—that's what sets art apart as a practice from other subjects. Through practice, exploration, and a bit of hard work, students can create something that inspires and fills their souls with a sense of accomplishment.

As a classroom management strategy, my goal is for each student to develop their own sense of agency and ownership in the art room. Art is an opportunity for students to explore their interests and develop work that is a direct reflection of themselves. Through demonstration and scaffolding, I hope to impart both creative and technical artistic knowledge. As a teacher, my goal is to help every student leave the art room feeling like an artist.

When it comes to lesson design, I enjoy creating lessons that help build skills while also allowing students to infuse their artwork with their own personalities. The following lessons focus on individual artworks. Currently, I am expanding my pedagogy and curriculum to make the lessons more collaborative, so the final works feature both individual and group-driven components. For example, my fourth graders created a self-published comic anthology that they illustrated and bound as a class. I am also passionate about expanding the artistic disciplines my students are exposed to in my art room. In addition to book binding, I am encouraging my students to explore methods of sewing and fiber arts.

View samples of my lesson plans here and here

View my resume here 🎨

Interested in seeing how I would approach teaching portraiture to secondary students? I am currently developing a lesson that makes the process more approachable and experimental without sacrificing technique and core artistic knowledge. You can check out my progress here .

As a response to a prompt from my Secondary Education class at GMU, I developed a middle school unit focusing on the intersection of art, creative writing, and technology. You can view the overview of the 3-lesson unit here.