Mrs. Christine Koehn, Art
I was born and raised in the Catholic schools of Omaha, attended Mercy and then went on to study art education at Northwest Missouri State University. Teaching has taken me to a variety of school districts including Omaha Public Schools, Sioux Falls, SD, Millard Public Schools and the Catholic Schools as a classroom teacher. This is where I gained my skills as a resource teacher. After fourteen years of teaching, I decided that I wanted to teach what I loved best...art. I was called to return to the Catholic schools, and where I hope to retire teaching art. I brought my family to St. Cecilia’s because of the job, little did we know that we hit the jackpot with this amazing community! The people and supportive art community have kept us here all these years.
Embrace Teacher of the Year and STAR 104.5 Teacher of the Week are a couple of recognitions that I have received. My husband Jay and I have seen the benefits of a St. Cecilia education in our own children, Millie & Liam. In my spare time, I enjoy being outside, reading, traveling, trying new things and wrangling our two dogs-Daisy & Clark. I am always open to visitors and guest teachers, so if you have an artistic talent and would like to share that with our students, please contact me.
St. Cecilia's Art Curriculum
Art at St. Cecilia's focuses around three main ideas: creating art, making connections and soft skills like perseverance and problem solving. We weave art history, artists studies and art movements and cultural awareness into these ideas to offer a well-rounded art curriculum that centers around the elements of art and principles of design. After being a classroom teacher for so long, it is important to me to connect what students are learning in the classroom to what we are doing in art. So it's not uncommon to hear us using math, science, reading and social studies language in the art room.
In the primary grades, art is all about exploration and experimenting. Students focus more on the process instead of the finished product. They test out and explore a variety of materials while figuring out how to get desired effects with certain tools. Learning that making mistakes is a good thing and not giving up are important parts of the artistic process. It's messy, and it's fun, and we love it! They also learn about a variety of modern and abstract artists at this age. Primary students also love to visit the Sunderland art gallery on campus for art scavenger hunts.
As students get older and move into the intermediate grades, we start to hone our artistic skills by looking more closely at how the elements of art work together to create something that is pleasing to the eye or a means of self-expression. Students learn about portraiture and proportions, guided drawing, specific artists, and artistic styles. At this age, students begin to learn about the purposes of art in our world and other cultures too.
By the time students get to middle school, they have developed a certain artistic style, and our focus shifts to self-expression, art history, and art appreciation discussions using art vocabulary. At this level, students create more sophisticated projects that take longer amounts of time. Students use more technology to create art at this age level too dabbling in photography, 3-D pens and digital art. Students in the intermediate and middle school grades also get opportunities to work with artists who show their work at the Sunderland. It is a really unique partnership.
St. Cecilia students are asked to showcase their artistic skills in a variety of areas including helping to paint the Operetta scenery, painting the tunnel mural, showing work at the Sunderland gallery, participating in the Duchesne Spring art show and our annual St. Cecilia art fair as well as numerous other city-wide contests. Each year, we host an artist-in-residence sponsored by the Nebraska Arts Council to provide our students a chance to work with rare materials and learn new techniques from real-life working artists.
I am always looking for ways to connect our students with artists in the community. If you or a family member are passionate about art and would like to share your talents with a certain class, please contact me. I always welcome parents as guest teachers, artists-in-residence and volunteers.
