A nomination straight from the art
By Caitlyn Kelleher
Journal Reporter
The Community Journal
April 20, 2007
News photo by Caitlyn Kelleher

The room is filled with 22 students each working to create a vase from clay.

Theresa Barry never stops moving as she goes from student to student during Art 1 class, teaching each of them the next step in their project, how to keep their confidence high.

Barry's voice is light, but she commands her classroom. She focuses on each student who raises his or her hand for attention, never brushing off one student to get to another.

"The look on their faces really just makes your heart melt,"  Barry said looking around her classroom.

In her essay portion of the nomination process for Teacher of the Year, Barry wrote about the 3-D sculpture project.  She said like most of her other lessons, it starts with research about the style of the art and about famous artists in the medium.

In this situation the students work to make thumbnails of their vase and then a paper model before moving on to the clay version.

"It gives them the template so they can truly focus on the techniques," she said.  "The process is the most important part."

Jessica Bisbee, a student in Barry's Art 1 and Art 2 classes, nominated Barry for Teacher of the Year.

"I nominated her because she is an amazing art teacher," said the Oakmont sophomore.  "She really inspires kids to achieve their potential."

Bisbee said her mother found a flyer from the Department of Education noting that students can nominate teachers for the 2008 Teachers of the Year.

The 16-year-old wrote an essay and mailed it into the state agency.  She later found out that Barry was a semifinalist.

"She really wants our art to come from us and not other people," said Bisbee.  "She gives a lot of her time.  She really cares a lot... Unlike other teachers, she very rarely is sitting at her des."

"She helped me a lot with my art work outside of classes as well," she added.

Bisbee hadn't told her teacher about the nomination.  The first time Barry heard about it was when she got the package in the mail form the DOE.

"I got the packet in the mail and I had to write nine essays," Barry said.  "This is an opportunity to talk about the visual arts."

She said art is important because it is a way to contact all learners.

"We need to focus on getting these kids to care," she said.  "Kids don't always understand the power they have."

Barry worked as an art teacher in the public schools system of Mesa, Arizona between 1994 and 1995.  She took time off to raise her three children after moving to Massachusetts with her husband, fellow Oakmont art teacher Greg Barry, before returning to public school teaching.

She joined the staff of Oakmont in November 2003.

At he outset of her career she wanted to work in an inner city middle school, she said.

Now as she teaches in a small rural-suburban school, Barry realizes these students need to connect with education and art as well.

"We have our own set of issues," she said, noting that some of the students come to school tired or hungry or "because there is nowhere else to go."

She hopes that after her class that students have learned to see themselves and the world in a new way.

"I'm not one of those people who wanted to be an artist and ended up being a teacher," Barry said.

Her father was a supporter of education and she said she's always liked kids.  the teachers in her school continually paired her with new students as an informal student ambassador.

"I thought I was a wicked shy kid." she said.

In college Barry was taking a pottery class for fun and the students were sharing their projects.  Barry helped a fellow student describe her project and the professor suggested she go into teaching.

Barry [and] her husband Gregory have three children and live in Ashburnham.

"It never would have happened without him," she said of her husband.  "It's really been storybook at times."

The DOE will announce the Teacher of the Year on may 7.

[This article has been reproduced with the permission of The Community Journal]