Teacher Leonard Fox shows TJ students how to use art in order to improve their lives.
Leonard Fox helps his students understand the wonder of art. Photo by Rachel Uyemura
New Art Teacher Leonard Fox proves that it isn’t necessary to be a world-class artist for art to make an impact in an everyday student. He uses the traditional teaching route to immerse a classroom of budding artists with the wonderful styles that they will be able to learn and improve. Fox teaches drawing and painting in all of his classes.
Fox has spent the majority of his career working for Denver Public Schools, spending six years at West High and 11 years at Morey Middle School. Fox says that he wanted to come teach at Thomas Jefferson in order “to go back to high school.” When asked why he wanted to become an art teacher, Fox said, “It’s always been a passion of mine since I was tiny. I knew when I was little that I wanted to be an art teacher and I just had a passion for it and for sharing it, so I knew that’s what I wanted to be.”
Fox attended the University of Northern Colorado where he studied Art Education. He earned his Undergraduate Degree in Art Education and earned his Masters Degree in School Administration a decade later. The only class that he has taught is art, but he was also the President of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and a Principal at Knight Fundamental Academy, where he was able to use his Masters Degree.
Even though he teaches drawing and painting, Fox says his personal favorite form of art is three-dimensional work. “I work with wood, I do wood turning, and make some furniture,” says Fox, who also says that his main goal in teaching this class is for TJ to have the kind of program that leads all the way up to the AP level and win some prizes and put some kids’ artwork out there. “I want this to be the best program in the city,” he said. There are no competitions set up yet, but he is currently trying to get kids’ artwork up for display in local shops around the neighborhood. Fox says he also wants TJ to have a few in-house art shows, and for students to take their artwork to the All-City Art Show. Fox says he would also like to help students work towards scholarships for different art schools. “Hopefully, I can get the program up to that level, because those scholarships award students thousands of dollars,” she said.
Fox’s art class differs from most art classes. “The difference is just being able to have all of those years of experience to say that I’ve been at the high school level, I’ve been at the middle school level, and I’ve been at the elementary school level. My program is built for my students to be ready for college,” says Fox, who makes sure that his class is very focused and that all of his students can make it to the next level of difficulty, no matter where they start. In his level-one class, students focus on the principles of design and the basic fundamentals of art. In his level-two class, they move onto history and culture. In his level-three classes, their main focus is 3D design. By the time the students get into their fourth year, they will be ready for AP classes. Fox says, “It is really just a system. I don’t approach it as an assignment. The whole system is standards based, so that they come out meeting the standards of the district. But really, it’s just a system structure so that they can build on whatever they’ve done before, to be able to grow as high as they’d like.”
If a student has a desire to improve artistic abilities, Fox’s drawing and painting class is a great place to do that. Whether students are budding artist sor an advanced students of fine art, Fox will help fine-tune their skills so that they are prepared for whatever they would like to do with their talents.
