myArt myTeaching mySelf: Nourish Your Creative Self to Revitalize Your Teaching Practice, Gambill, Spring 2026

Course Number:	EDU 5710 S36
Instructor:	Paul Gambill, M.M.
Location:	In-person in Essex Junction & Online
Dates and Times:	Jan 27 - May 01, 2026
Credits:	3 Graduate Credits
Tuition:	Set by and payable to the Community Engagement Lab

Course Description

This course is for K-12 art teachers who want to explore and grow their artistic practice as a pathway to expand and revitalize their teaching practice. Through in-person art-making workshops led by master teaching artists, and asynchronous individual work, you will explore the creativity within yourself, make art with colleagues and on your own, and strengthen your teaching practice.

Audience: K-12 art teachers with a Bachelors Degree

Course Goals & Objectives

Course Goals:

Expand your art-making skills through hands-on workshops with master teaching artists.
Explore the creativity within yourself to fuel your teaching practice.
Develop tools and techniques to nurture your personal well-being and artistic identity and how to apply those skills to strengthening the well-being and creativity of your students.
Build relationships with a cohort of art-teacher colleagues in a supportive and creative environment.
Have fun!

Course Objectives:

1) Students will know…

The interdependence of their artistic self and personal well-being with their teaching practice.

2) Students will understand…

How nurturing their creative self informs and advances their capacities and skills as a classroom teacher.
How the creative process has potential to be a catalyst to build collective agency, inspire joyfulness, and strengthen individual and collective well-being.

3) Students will do…

Develop tools and techniques to nurture personal well-being and artistic identity, and to strengthen the well-being and creativity of K-12 students.
Create original art works that reflect their personal well-being journey.
Collaborate with art-teacher colleagues to build a supportive and creative cohort.

Course Schedule

Intro Session (remote)

Welcome/ introductions / syllabus review / setting our intensions / journaling assignment

Day 1-3 (in-person)

Creative Warm-ups / reflect on readings and journaling
Art-making workshops
Cohort building
Daily Reflection
Homework assignments: journaling, readings, personal art-making

Culminating Event (in-person)

Present and reflect on individual art works and journals created in the course
Set intentions for supporting the cohort as a network group going forward

Asynchronous

Journaling on your creative well-being, following the 12-week protocol in The Artist Way (required reading)
Create artwork reflecting your creative well-being journey

Required Readings/Resources

Costs for required readings, if any, may not be included in the course tuition.

Note: The 2 readings below that are more than 5 years old have been chosen intentionally. The 1992 book by Cameron is an iconic, one-of-a kind resource. It is the #1 seller in the creativity category on Amazon, and there is no replacement text. The Creative Capacity Guide is also a one- of-a-kind document, written by and for Vermont educators.

Cameron, Julia. "Living the Artist's Way: An Intuitive Path to Greater Creativity". St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2023

Ratkaj, Rochelle. "You Can’t Pour from an Empty Sketchbook: The Case for Artist Dates in a Burnout Culture". Rolling Stone, 2025, https://tinyurl.com/u9a83h54

Cameron, Julia. "The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity - 30th Anniversary Edition". Putnum Publishing Group, 1992

Booth, Eric, and, Gambill, Paul. "Growing the Ultimate Sustainable Crop: Creative Capacity in Vermont Students". Community Engagement Lab, 2017, https://www.communityengagementlab.org/creative-capacity-guide.

Golden, Tasha. "From Absence to Presence: Arts and Culture Help Us Redefine “Health”." Grantmakers in the Arts, 19 Jan. 2022, www.giarts.org/blog/tasha-golden/absence-presence-arts-and-culture-help-us-redefine-health.

"What Is the CASEL Framework?" CASEL, 2025, casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/

For additional course information

Paul Gambill

(802) 595-0087

For additional registration information

This course requires registration with the Community Engagement lab first using the Register Now link below.

Center for Schools Team

(802) 468-1325