Lisa Freedberg sits at her ceramics wheel getting her hands covered in clay. photo by Aviva Freedberg
The TJ community welcomes a new ceramics teacher during this unfamiliar time.
At the start of the 2020-2021 school year, Thomas Jefferson added some new teachers to our community, one being the new ceramics teacher, Lisa Freedberg. Teaching at a new school is never easy — especially right now — but for Freedberg, it is about being part of the TJ community. Both her husband and two eldest children graduated from TJ, and her youngest is currently a junior, so TJ is not far from home for her.
Freedberg has been a teacher for 18 years, and 13 of those years were with Denver Public Schools teaching at Southmoor Elementary. She grew up in Columbus, Ohio and graduated from Ohio State University with her Bachelor of Art Education and is currently working on her Master’s in Art Education, hopefully graduating in the spring or summer of 2021. She decided to move out to Colorado to be with her husband. In her free time she loves to spend time with her family and friends, run in the early mornings before school, listen to True Crime podcasts, read historical fiction, and make art.
Art was always a passion of Freedberg’s from when she was just a child. She took as many art classes in high school as possible. While she was considering majoring in art in college, she worked with elementary students and discovered that she loved to share art with kids. During that process she also found out how much she enjoyed teaching and working with kids. That is when she realized she wanted to be an art teacher and decided her future career. She was not set on what type of art teacher she wanted to be since she loves several types of art. “Fiber arts are my most favorite media, but I love to weave, embroider, and needle felt. I also enjoy ceramics, drawing, and painting. I love to create and work with my hands and make lots of messes when making art,” Freedberg explained.
Online learning is not easy for anyone, but figuring out how to keep kids engaged in online art is hard. Freedberg has come up with the idea of making at-home clay kits for her level two, three, and four students to be hands-on. This makes it so that the students are able to get the experience they would in the classroom even if they are not able to get clay on their own. For her level one students, she is engaging them in hands-on activities and using what they can around the house. “[The most difficult part of online learning is] not working directly with my students in the ceramics studio. I look forward to being in the classroom with them and creating alongside them,” Freedberg stated.
So far this school year, Freedberg has had her students do as much hands-on learning as possible even with remote learning. She put together “clay kits” that had a big slab of clay, pieces of newspaper for a workspace, and as many tools as she could give to her students equally. Students were then to come pick up the kits at TJ on designated days. Her efforts to make these kits made it so that hands-on learning with clay was possible at home.
Coming from being an elementary school art teacher to a high school ceramics teacher, there is a big shift in the different types of art that the students are doing. When she was working at Southmoor Elementary, she had her students doing more drawing and painting with different types of paper. At TJ she is doing all clay work with her students from pinch pots to wheel work and bigger pieces.
Her transfer from elementary to high school was uncomfortable for her, especially during times like these. “The hardest transition from elementary to high school was getting used to how the students like to learn and how to keep older kids engaged online,” stated Freedberg. Her high school students have been great, but the transition was difficult in the beginning.
The TJ community and administration have been very helpful with her move into TJ. Even with distance learning, Freedberg loves getting to know her students and seeing the work they can do in ceramics. With all the love she has for TJ and its community, she is going to be a great fit for the art department. Welcome to the TJ community, Lisa Freedberg!
