Art Teacher Interview: Whitney Panetta - Teaching Resources for Art Educators

In this interview you will get to know Whitney Panetta, a high school art teacher. She is also the creator of Look Between the Lines. “I have had experience teaching K-college through student teaching, full time teaching, being a graduate assistant, and volunteer work. The majority of my education experience is in art education and yearbook, although I love designing products outside of my expertise. I received my Bachelors of Fine Arts in Art Education and my Masters of Art Education at the University of Georgia (go dawgs!). While in graduate school, I was a writing teaching assistant and helped teach undergraduate art education students. Since college I have taught art at the high school level for 9 years. I’ve taught in both public and private schools and have taught Introduction to Art, Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, AP Art, and Yearbook. I’m incredibly lucky to be able to say I love what I do for a living.” You can find all her resources and follow her in all the right social places by finding her links by clicking here.

How do you find inspiration or ideas for creating or designing art resources or art projects?

Most of my inspiration comes from other artists. I love seeing what they are creating then spin their techniques or subject matter into inspiration for project for my students.

What areas of teaching art would you like to get better at?

I would like to return to the basics and refine my drawing skills.

Do you have any particular things that you add into your curriculum that you feel are important for your students to learn, but aren’t necessarily in the standards?

I add a lot of personal connections to my projects. I love when students can individualize projects and make them their own. It isn’t always about teaching technique, it’s a lot about teaching self expression.

What is one “Big Idea” that is important you want your kids to explore?

Self expression.

Get access to my Art Resource Library!

Click here to visit the Artastic Collective! The Artastic Collective is a community where you can access a library of Art Resources and Lessons created by ME, Kathleen McGiveron, or by the name your most likely know me as, Ms Artastic. With your membership, you can access an art resource library, with new resources being added to the community both weekly and monthly. This art resource library is made up of resources from my TpT store, and resources that I create EXCLUSIVELY for the Artastic Collective. This will take care of your lesson planning, allowing you to have clarity for what to teach, the convenience of clicking, printing, and teaching immediately, direction of where to go with your year long plan, and speeding lesson planning which will allow you to have your freedom back!

Have you ever had an awkward teaching moment?

More than I can count! I did get stung by a bee once while teaching a class… I wanted to cry but couldn’t!

What advice would you give to a first year teacher?

It will get better (although you won’t feel like you have a handle on it until after year three).

If you could have any artist (living or dead) be a visiting artist in your classroom, who would it be and why?

This is sooooooo tough… Right now, Lisa Congdon. Her work is clean, simple, and her messages are so positive and thought provoking. I would also add Banksy, Vincent van Gogh (but I bet he would be moody so maybe Monet instead), and Frida Khalo to that list.

What is your biggest daily challenge?

Managing work, kids, and life in general. It’s a lot to juggle!

How do you fuel your own creativity?

I am constantly making. I can’t imagine teaching art if I also wasn’t regularly creating.

If you could have dinner with any artist (past or present), who would you choose and why?

I really love Impressionism and Paris so I would want to have dinner with Mary Cassatt and hear all about her life in France in the late 1800s. She’s really interesting because she grew up in a time when of course women weren’t supposed to be artists and against her families’ wishes she moved from Pennsylvania to Paris and hung out with a bunch of male artists. I love her soft pastel drawings and sense of color and emotion. She never married or had children but she painted about mothers and their children all the time. She seems like she would be a feisty and fun lady to talk to and I would learn a lot from her.

Helpful Art Resources for Teachers

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Yours Truly,
Kathleen McGiveron (Ms Artastic)