The Art of Self-Esteem : Teacher Guides Students to Creative Excellence

In an era when many schools are slashing their art departments for lack of funds, art teacher Myra Allen at Gladstone High School is all the more remarkable for quietly turning out painters, sculptors and all-around artists who are capturing prizes and awards throughout Los Angeles County.

This year, students Lilo Tavvoa and Ramon Velazco won first place in sculpture at the Los Angeles County Fair for realistic busts they did of each other last spring when they were seniors in Allen’s class. Sylvia Poareo won third place for a ceramic vase.

Another of her students, Oscar Magallanes, 16, was accepted into the prestigious Herbert Ryman Living Masters Program, which trains talented teen-agers in classical drawing at the Otis Parsons Art Institute in Los Angeles. Yet another, Kyung Oh, won $1,000 for designing an environmental poster for the Azusa Land Reclamation Co.

Allen says that for many of her students, art has been the ticket to self-esteem. Many were chronic underachievers until this year, but plunging into ceramics and sculpture focused their energy and made them realize they could succeed, Allen said.

“I really believe it’s helped turn these kids around,” said Allen, a soft-spoken woman with a nose ring who is in her third year of teaching art at Gladstone High School in the Azusa Unified School District.

Allen says Tavvoa and Velazco, the two sculptors, spent their free periods sculpting “crouched behind my desk in a little space” as she taught other classes.

“People would come by and say, ‘Wow, this is really neat,’ and they started feeling good about themselves, they really started blooming and blossoming. It was almost against the odds.”

Today, the teen-agers are both freshmen at Citrus College, and at Allen’s urging are considering careers in art. Tavvoa would like to become an architect and Velazco is looking into designing movie sets.

Allen, 45, whose quiet demeanor belies a steely constitution when it comes to exhorting her students, is a former Air Force sergeant who earned degrees from UC Riverside in sociology and black studies after leaving the service. She minored in art and earned a credential to teach art in secondary school.

She calls herself an artistic late bloomer, having only become an artist in the 1980s.

In 1986-87, she lived with her then-husband, a university professor, in Botswana, where she had her first solo exhibition and taught art.

Allen also consulted for the Botswana government, drawing up curricula and a list of supplies needed for arts education in the country’s secondary schools. In her spare time, she studied sculpture with Charles Goddard, one of the 10 leading potters in South Africa.

At Azusa Unified, Allen spends hours of her own time working individually with students, as well as teaching art, ceramics and drawing. She calls herself very lucky to have a position in arts education when so many school districts are cutting their art programs.

Allen uses sticks as well as carrots. She hauls students off to parent-teacher meetings to discuss discipline problems. But she rewards good behavior with pizza and Bob Marley reggae hats.

In class, Allen floods students with images, showing them slides of her travels to the sere landscapes of New Mexico as well as works by famous sculptors--all to engage their imaginations.

“They said, ‘Aw, we can do that,’ ” Allen recalled. “Oh yeah?” she said, challenging them. “They wanted to show me that they could do it and they did. I used to give them extra clay to take home, and these kids would work 40 hours of their own time on personal projects.”