Whiteboard Art & Educational Art Gallery

As a teacher for 10+ years, I have spent a LOT of time around whiteboards, and as an artist ... I cant help but make art on them. 

The bulk of this collection comes from a single year, a daily personal project from January to June of 2023. Here's how it came about.

When I returned to California in June of 2022, I decided to spend a year substitute teaching, which made sense for lots of reasons: 

So I challenged myself to start making art daily, with a few little rules that developed along the way. 

Moose and Wolves of Isle Royale National Park

Isle Royale is a remote wilderness island, isolated by the frigid waters of Lake Superior, and home to populations of wolves and moose. As predator and prey, their lives and deaths are linked in a drama that is timeless and historic. Their lives are historic because we have been documenting their lives for more than five decades. This research project is the longest continuous study of any predator-prey system in the world. 

https://isleroyalewolf.org/

High School, Biology Honors

George Orwell's "Shooting An Elephant"

"It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it."

―  George Orwell

The essay describes the experience of the English narrator, possibly Orwell himself, called upon to shoot an aggressive elephant while working as a police officer in Burma. Because the locals expect him to do the job, he does so against his better judgment, his anguish increased by the elephant's slow and painful death. The story is regarded as a metaphor for colonialism as a whole, and for Orwell's view that "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant

High School  English

Mandalorian | SpongeBob & Patrick Do Math 

“You have something I want. You may think you have some idea of what you have in your possession, but you do not. Soon, he will be back with me. He means more to me than you will ever know.” 

―  Din Djarin

The Mandalorian's parental role in the series makes him a softer and more relatable character; he changes in a positive way because of raising the Child, becoming less selfish and self-absorbed. He risked his life and drastically changed his career as a bounty hunter to accept his responsibility as the Child's caretaker and guardian, marking a significant parental sacrifice. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mandalorian

Middle School, Grade 7 math - The chalkboard has the equation from the example on that day's assignment, the human figure is the math teacher, and the Mandalorian was in response to the Baby Yoda plush.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

“There are things you can't back down on, things you gotta take a stand on. But it's up to you to decide what them things are. You have to demand respect in this world, ain't nobody just gonna hand it to you. How you carry yourself, what you stand for--that's how you gain respect. But, little one, ain't nobody's respect worth more than your own.”

― Mildred D. Taylor

In the book, Taylor explores struggles of African Americans in 1930s Mississippi through the perspective of nine-year-old Cassie Logan. The novel contains several themes, including Jim Crow segregation, Black landownership, sharecropping, the Great Depression, and lynching.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll_of_Thunder,_Hear_My_Cry

Middle School English

Biology Textbook Illustrations

A frog’s tympanic membrane, or tympanum, is the circular patch of skin directly behind its eye that we commonly call its eardrum. It functions much like our eardrum does –the tympanum transmits sound waves to the middle and inner ear, allowing a frog to hear both in the air and below water. In addition, this membrane serves to keep water and debris from entering a frog’s ears.

https://naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/a-frogs-tympanum/

Lobsters do not show typical signs of senescence. For them, life just goes on until an inevitable end. Unlike people, as they age, lobsters do not weaken, and they continue to grow, feed as normal and reproduce. They can also regenerate limbs if they lose them.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/are-lobsters-immortal.html

High School Biology

Earth Science & Life Science Diagrams

Through a series of cracks within and beneath the volcano, the vent connects to one or more linked storage areas of molten or partially molten rock (magma). This connection to fresh magma allows the volcano to erupt over and over again in the same location. In this way, the volcano grows ever larger, until it is no longer stable. 

https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP/about-volcanoes

Sea turtles don’t retract into their shells.  Unlike other turtles, sea turtles cannot retract their flippers and head into their shells. Their streamlined shells and large paddle-shaped flippers make them very agile and graceful swimmers. In the water, their rear flippers are used as rudders, for steering.

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/10-tremendous-turtle-facts

Middle School Earth Science & Life Science classes

STAR WAR-HOL (Star Wars Pop Art)

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” 

―  Andy Warhol

High School Media Editing class, the teacher was a fan of Star Wars.

We're No Strangers To World Mythology

“Never forget, the words are not the reality, only reality is reality; picture symbols are the idea, words are confusion.”  

―  The Egyptian Book of the Dead

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”  

―  Michelangelo

“You know the rules and so do I.” 

―  Rick Astley

Middle School World History, on a day where each group had a project on a different set of religions and mythology from different chapters of the textbook. 

Bill Nye: Muscles & Bones

"Bones and muscles work together, or you aren’t going anywhere. Muscles always pull, even when you push on something like a door somewhere in your body your arm and leg muscles are in tension. They are all attached to bones, and those bones are pushing; they’re in compression. By pulling on bones you can breathe, talk, and move all over the world. "

https://www.billnye.com/the-science-guy/bones-and-muscle

Bill Nye: Everything Is Chemicals

"Every single thing around you is made of chemicals. Plants, rocks, computers, food, and you are bunches of chemicals. All chemicals are built with elements, the 109 different symbols on the Periodic Table. Different combinations of elements make different chemicals."

https://www.billnye.com/the-science-guy/chemical-reactions

Stranger Things

“You shouldn’t like things because people tell you you’re supposed to.”

―  Jonathan Byers

“Nothing is gonna go back to the way that it was. Not really. But it’ll get better. In time.” 

―  Jim Hopper

Out Of My Mind

" Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them. [...] By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings. But only in my head.  I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.”

― Sharon M. Draper, Out of My Mind 

Being stuck inside her head is making Melody go out of her mind-that is, until she discovers something that will allow her to speak for the first time ever. At last Melody has a voice . . . but not everyone around her is ready to hear it. 

https://www.sharondraper.com/library/out-of-my-mind

Sea Caves, Spongebob

MewTwo, Mew

Monty Python & The Holy Grail

Rick & Morty Meets Cast of Star Wars For A Gaming Day at Blipz and Chits

Gravity Falls

Grogu, Totoro & Friends, Buddhist Snorlax

Mario

Owl House

Macbeth

Lord of the Flies

Spanish Class 

Spanish teacher likes motorcycles

Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle

Spain & France

Montevideo, Uruguay

The Louvre

Pelagic Depth Map

Arctic Creatures (and Red Panda?!?)

Albert Einstein - Atom

Albert Einstein - Passionately Curious

James A. Baldwin

Harriet Tubman, Conductor of the Underground Railroad