Nina Mastrangelo

September 2011

Artist Nina Mastrangelo knows why she decided to become a full-time arts teacher in the Santa Fe Public Schools, over seven years ago. Concerned by a school system increasingly focused on test scores, she saw an opportunity to make a difference.

“As an arts teacher,” she says, “I could give kids a chance to develop critical thinking and abstract exploration. I could help balance the system.”

Mastrangelo threw herself into her new job, juggling inspiring projects in various classrooms and schools. While she delighted in watching kids discover talents and make complex connections, she quickly grew frustrated with an inflexible school system, focused on giving the kids everything “except what they needed.” Just four years in to her new job, the test-driven environment was leaving her exhausted and stressed. If she was going to make it as a teacher, she realized things had to shift.

As with so many other educators, Mastrangelo did not plan on becoming a teacher; rather, she gravitated naturally towards the field, drawn by the energy and imagination of children. While studying Fine Arts in college, she spent her summers working on arts installations with youth in Iowa City and Las Cruces, New Mexico, and, in her words, “was awed by their brilliance.”

Though she went on to a career in the art world, the experience stuck with her, and she discovered the same joy of exploring arts with children when she began running volunteer arts projects in her daughter’s classroom, in Santa Fe. She joined the public school district’s artist-in-residence program, and in 2005, took the plunge to obtain her K-12 license through Community College and become a full time arts teacher.

A self-described “yes, let’s do it” person, Mastrangelo embraced her new career. As a specialist arts teacher (as opposed to the regular classroom teachers, who cover all of the traditional core materials), she moved between classrooms and schools, working with as many as 400 children in a week. As she filled her days guiding children to make “ah-ha” connections between art and academics, or discover passions for new media and forms, she failed to notice how tiring the job was, how it never felt like her work was “done.”

“I’d see the other teachers,” she says, “and think, ‘Wow, they’re so stressed, so exhausted.’ But I always thought in terms of they. I didn’t realize it was me, too.”

By her third year, however, Mastrangelo began to notice she was wearing out. She felt out of touch with her family, with her self. Summer vacations came and went in a flash, providing little respite. Like nearly half of all new teachers in America, she was in danger of burning out before her career could really get started.

And then she came across a new course on the district’s professional development web page: “Teacher Renewal,” run by the Academy for the Love of Learning. At first, she dismissed it as a mistake, or “code for some literacy or math curriculum.” But when she looked up the program on-line, she was struck by the invitation to connect to her “deep vocational longing,” and “transform” what she did in the classroom.

From day one, the program proved to be unlike any professional development course she’d taken. Since the participants came from all over the city, the myths about working in “rich” versus “poor” schools were immediately shattered. “As an arts teacher, I knew that every school has its own challenges and strengths,” Mastrangelo says, “but it was heartening to see teachers cut through the stereotypes, and really come to understand that everything they’d heard about those ‘other’ schools was not true.”

The Academy facilitators helped the participants settle into their new community, and then—rather than introducing new classroom management tricks or curricular fads—invited them to think back, recall their original impulses to become teachers, and examine why they were there.

“That’s the key to the program,” says Teacher Renewal Coordinator Patty Lee, a long-time public school educator and former director of the Alternative Licensure Program at the Santa Fe Community College. “The real curriculum of any classroom is the teacher standing before the class. If the teacher knows who he or she is, then the classroom will be invigorated and alive.”

For the first time in three years, Mastrangelo stepped out of the flurry of projects and papers, and took a slow, deep breath. During the workshops and monthly “Wisdom Circle” meetings, she listened to the stories of her colleagues—many of whom she’d seen at short faculty meetings, but with whom she’d never had time to speak—and began to analyze what she was experiencing. She heard other teachers describe the pressures of always being “on task,” constantly drilling testable skills. She watched one of her colleagues, a respected 17-year veteran, burst into tears when describing how hugs had been prohibited at her school.

Interacting with this community of teachers—the first professional community she’d had as an educator—helped Mastrangelo realize that though she couldn’t change the school system, she could change herself. Determined to sustain herself as a vibrant, creative teacher, and to continue modeling the kind of aliveness that she wished to draw out of her students, she recognized she needed to transform who she was, as a teacher and a person.

The first step was to refocus in the classroom. She had become a teacher to help kids think abstractly, make connections, and discover their talents—not to fret over paperwork and test scores. “I’m not against testing,” she says. “But not all kids are going to learn by being drilled in preparation for a test.”

The key was always to look beyond the grade book, truly to “see” each child. “Something we did often in Teacher Renewal workshops and Wisdom Circles was simply to be present, and listen—really listen. I brought this exercise into my teaching so that I would remember to focus on each child and give him or her my attention, and to ask open-ended questions that elicited thoughtful responses.”

The second change was personal. She listened to how the other teachers in her Teacher Renewal group kept their lives in balance, and took note. She began prioritizing exercise, the pursuit her other passions, and spending quality time with her family.

“I had to take care of myself,” Mastrangelo says, “so that I could be better at taking care of others.”

Well aware of how rare it is to find a supportive professional community in her field, Mastrangelo still attends the Wisdom Circles, nearly three years after first signing up for the Academy’s Teacher Renewal program. And her strategic decision to transform herself as a teacher and person, she says, has had a profound impact. Far from burning out, Nina Mastrangelo is as happy teaching as she’s ever been—and she’s become much better at it.

“I’ve become a far more effective teacher,” she says. “I’ve learned how to hold on to myself, so I can come to school every day energized and present, and be there when I’m there.”

Click here to learn more about Teacher Renewal