Point of View: Be a HEART Teacher

Every aspect of who I am informs why I’m a HEART teacher, and you can become one, too. Being a HEART teacher means directing our energy, experience, and resources toward changing the terrain of art education. Years ago, I began to learn about the roots of injustice in our education system, and I’ve been pulling at these roots in the gardens that are our schools ever since. I want to share what a HEART teacher is, why it matters, and how to cultivate it in your classroom.

The HEART Mindset
Being a HEART teacher is at the intersection of art, education, social-emotional learning (SEL), and self-care—the fundamentals we can immerse ourselves in to integrate the lessons learned in our own lives into the classroom. It’s what also allows us to celebrate every one of our students and to acknowledge their inner wisdom and lived experiences exactly where they are. Therefore, a HEART teacher’s mission is to continuously become as inclusive as possible, to be trauma-informed, to engage in cultural responsiveness, and to never think we’ve “landed.”
This growth mindset an

brace our own evolution as art educators means we are committed to the change needed for a lifetime and to creating a better world for our students. Let’s look at a few of the ways you can practice becoming a HEART teacher.

Core Values
HEART is an acronym that stands for: Honor our humanness, Encourage safe expression, Affirm our differences, Rise up together (in art), and Take time for you.
These core values of becoming a HEART teacher can help you lead with love in your classroom. Embodying these values places an emphasis on connection, communication, and choice over the myriad distractions that easily ensnare us in education. These values can be explored with other art teachers, used as classroom norms for student-centered expansion, or defined by your own intuition. Aligning with these will create change in yourself, your classroom, and beyond.

Honor Our Humanness
This means we develop our empathy and compassion to seek understanding. We acknowledge our own flaws and practice accepting our imperfections to meet ourselves and our students where they are. This doesn’t mean we lower the bar—it means we pause, breathe, and center ourselves before making a judgment and reacting. This practice alone drastically shifts the classroom dynamic and teacher-student rapport.

Encourage Safe Expression
This means we intentionally craft our creative experiences. It’s important to give students the option to go into the “stretch zone” or to stay safe and avoid stress as much as possible. After creating, meditation and mindfulness is an opportunity to reflect on and regulate emotions. Journaling responses or a class discussion can provide closure, another way to build safety in the art room.

Affirm Our Differences
This develops student communication, inclusion, and relationship-building by facilitating challenging conversations through the arts. Celebrating what makes each of us unique through choice-based art-making, art-based discussions, and critique provides opportunities for growth as students feel they can share their identities and interests.

Rise Up Together (In Art)
This is a call to community action! Helen Keller said, “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” Making art together enhances community connection through beautifying public spaces, collaborating on projects, and making art accessible to families. Art is a tool for social change, and this is your reminder to leverage this in your school community toward a bigger purpose that can make a positive impact.

Taking Time for You
While last on the list, this is where we truly start. Teacher burnout and stress is mitigated by implementing mindfulness, meditation, and self-care practices. By training with Breathe for Change, a program geared toward educator self-care and well-being, I realized that “teaching is not a tiger” (hello, sympathetic nervous system!) and that we are not meant to be in a constant state of stress at school. I also learned that I must model the behavior I want to see my students engage in. By adopting our own self-care routine, we show our students that prioritizing our well-being is an important part of learning.

These examples scratch the surface; there are unlimited ways you can be a HEART teacher. It’s empowering when students realize—and we remind ourselves—that a paintbrush can be an extension of the heart. When we all nurture our hearts through art, we will watch a more colorful future grow in the garden of education.