Painting Our Futures

Teaching wasn’t always the plan. “I, in some ways, kind of found my career by accident.” A graduate from MICA, Pauline Savage found her career through her husband, “My husband was an art teacher, and while I was still in college I would come in and work with his students to build their portfolios.” It was through this experience she discovered her love for teaching and working with students. Following this, she found Jemicy, a place where she saw dozens of students with potential, and built a program for them from the ground up. Both with an understanding of what it’s like to live for art and struggle with school, Savage and her husband, Brandon, constructed the perfect program for students with language-based learning differences. This didn’t just happen through luck and chance; the couple looked into other schools and saw what worked and what didn’t. The program’s most appealing aspect is its freedom and lack of tight structure. While of course given guidelines and order, the student is given the freedom to create whatever they want on their own timeline. This teaches students how to build their executive function skills by learning how to properly manage their time and organize a project that matters to them. With the opportunity to express themselves in the way they need, Jemicy students flourish in the arts, and over the past eighteen years have earned around six million dollars in scholarships. 

Aside from the achievements of many of her former students, Savage’s proudest accomplishment through her teaching career has been mentoring students and teachers, as well as all she does for students with executive function: “A lot of people think that if you’ve got executive function issues, that you can’t build them but our students do it. So that makes me hugely proud ‘cuz that’s going to help with everything in life.” Savage too grew up with executive function challenges, so she understands and empathizes with students who struggle with it in their day-to-day lives. For those who don’t know, executive function is the part of your brain responsible for working memory, time management, and cognitive thinking skills. This can affect a person’s ability to remember to do things, switch from one task to another, create a timeline for oneself, and be organized. As stated previously, Savages’ art program does an incredible job at teaching students time management in things they actually enjoy doing. With this motivation for one subject, it makes it significantly easier to enforce these skills in other areas. 

Not pursuing art wasn’t an option. From a young age, Savage knew she had to create. “I didn’t really have any other options like as a teenager I needed to make. I drew probably a couple of hours every day.” For many students, art is the reason they go to school each day, their main motivator; but as many students mature and continue, their motivation starts to lack. This was nearly the case for this creator. Being the only observational artist in a class full of conceptual painters, Savage really began to stumble. In fact, after graduating she actually stopped painting for a while, but her creative side still managed to push through. She found new hobbies such as cooking, knitting, and making her own clothes. “My creativity is like, such a big part of my life that it finds a way out. I can’t control it!”

If you’ve seen her work, you’re probably wondering why she didn’t pursue art professionally. The simple answer is she didn’t want to: “being a professional fine artist painter is spending a lot of time promoting yourself, schmoozing, and making moves in the art world, and I wasn’t really interested in doing that.” In addition to that, while her paintings and artwork are beautiful and skillfully done, Savage felt as though she didn’t have anything to say in her paintings; as opposed to other artists who make you feel things and see the world through their eyes. Coincidentally, and whether it makes sense or not, this is one of the reasons Savage loves teaching so much; because she gets to teach kids how to show the world how they see the world from their perspective. “I wanted other people to experience the feeling that I get when I observe. That’s why it’s like teaching art is so awesome ‘cause I get to share that other piece of it too that’s extra special with people who are teenagers.” 

Mrs. Savage is a one-in-a-million teacher. She takes her time learning with each student, getting to know their minds personally so she can teach them in the way that works best for them. A parent of a former student of hers told me that she had saved his kids’ lives, and that is a statement I can say is true for me as well.