How Resilience and Choice Can Transform Your Art Room (Ep. 518)

In this episode of Art Ed Radio, Tim Bogatz sits down with Melissa Birnbaum, a New York City art teacher and chair of the NYC chapter of the New York State Art Teachers Association (NYSATA). Melissa teaches at an international high school in the Bronx where 100% of her students are American newcomers and native Spanish speakers–many of whom have never had an art lesson in their lives. She shares how she designs her choice-based art room to meet students exactly where they are, using sketchbook journals, materials play, and a scaffolded approach that builds foundational skills while honoring each student’s creative instincts and lived experience.

Tim and Melissa also dig deep into one of the most meaningful topics in art education: resilience. Melissa explains what resilience actually looks like in her classroom, and what she learns from her students. She talks about the power of “confidence coaching,” normalizing failure, and why loving your students is the most effective classroom management strategy there is.

Tim Bogatz: Melissa Birnbaum is joining me now. Melissa, how are you?

Melissa Birnbaum: Hey, Tim. Greetings from New York City. I found a quiet corner for us to have a conversation. I’m really excited about this. I’ve been a big fan of the podcast for a few years now.

Tim Bogatz: Thank you, I appreciate that. And I’m glad we finally get to officially talk to you on the podcast. Can we start by you just giving us an introduction? Can you tell us who you are, tell us about yourself, your teaching, your art—whatever else you want to share.

Melissa Birnbaum: Happy to do that. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker—native New Yorker, second-generation public school educator—and a wannabe full-time artist. You know how that is; always trying to find the balance. I’ve bounced around a lot of different roles in education and alternative spaces. Many of my roles were combined with teacher leadership and administration. But I went back to the classroom full time three years ago because I feel like I’m in the twilight of my art education career—and that’s the best part. I feel like the art classroom is where it’s at, and I love, love teaching.

I’m also the chair of the New York City chapter of the New York State Art Teachers Association. That is all about community. We’ve formed a full peer support community with a lot of camaraderie where we support each other, and that has been really rewarding. I’ve never really taught in a mainstream space—always in alternative spaces. When I went back into the classroom, I chose to return to a New York City International High School in the Bronx where 100% of my students are American newcomers and native Spanish speakers. The common thread through my career—with all of my students—is that all of them have something heavier going on in their lives that they must attend to. They chose a school designed to meet their needs, and most of those needs are connected to unusually tough life circumstances. Some are also connected to being a square peg in a round hole of an education system.

There are no sequential art programs where I’ve taught. I’ve always had complete autonomy designing my own curricula, and I have pedagogical control—I’m a bit of an egghead about that, so I love it.

Tim Bogatz: That can sometimes be wonderful and sometimes difficult without support, but if it’s something you love, there are a lot of benefits.

Melissa Birnbaum: It’s so great because there’s so much fantastic content out there. It’s allowed me to create specific curricular frameworks that work for each school, while staying true to what matters most to me—creating mindful spaces in the art room where my students can grow emotionally and intellectually. That’s a biggie for me.

Tim Bogatz: I really like that. Thinking about the kids you teach and the spaces you’re in, a lot of your students probably don’t have much art experience. Can you talk a little bit about what that is like—teaching kids without much art background—and tell us a little more about what your classroom looks like?

Melissa Birnbaum: Sure, happy to do that. One student flat out told me on the first day of class this year that he had never had an art lesson before in his life. He looked at me with these giant, wonderfully earnest eyes. I just took a deep breath and thought, here we go. He’s 16 years old.

My current school’s biggest goal is reinforcing English language literacy, so every single class school-wide is required to begin with a journal. Naturally, my journals are sketchbooks. At the start of each class, students get about 10 minutes to sketch, and I give visual prompts so they can either copy or riff off of them, depending on their level.

One of the first assignments I do is three-dimensional shapes, because it’s kind of my art teacher diagnostic. If a student can render those 3D shapes, I know they have the spatial awareness to move into advanced drawing more quickly. If they don’t, I know I can provide those scaffolds.

Tim Bogatz: That’s a perfect beginning assessment right there.

Melissa Birnbaum: I’ve discovered a handful of students who are incredible draftspeople, and I’m supporting them now. For the ones who struggle, I scaffold like crazy. Each day I have the same written prompt—I ask my students how they’re feeling. I usually get one word: happy, sad, or “más y menos.” But some students tell me their life story. That journal has become an invaluable tool because I get to meet all of my students in the middle. It’s a great way of reading the room right away.

This year I transitioned to a more choice-based art room, and I think this works well because we have skill builders where we play and explore different materials, and everyone starts on the same playing field. Because of the art background deficit that many of my students have, I may start out with a middle school lesson versus a high school lesson—they have the motor skills, but lack the foundational experience.

I have one student who has taken art before and is wonderfully gifted. He said, “Miss, I took this all in middle school.” I looked at him with big eyes like—shh. What he doesn’t realize is that there’s a level of sophistication and rapid-fire leveling up happening. For example, we’re doing cardboard sculpture, and I’m using tools designed for older students—X-Acto blades, different flanging techniques. Or if we’re doing perspective, I’m moving quickly into two- and three-point perspective, but we start with: here’s the horizon line, here’s the ruler.

I also learned that if I start with materials play, it’s far less intimidating. There’s no still life set up with a lamp behind it. I give them materials to explore their inner child, and often I can turn my back and see the most intricate, amazing little things happening beyond what I expect. These activities are designed for restoration—they invite a low entry to a flow state. You know that glorious art room quiet where everyone’s working at the same time?

Tim Bogatz: So rare, but so appreciated when it does come.

Melissa Birnbaum: That’s the aspiration. After we play, we dive into projects under a theme-based umbrella, where I often invite students to work solo or in groups. With multilingual learners, heterogeneous grouping is a huge thing at my school—higher-skilled English speakers help lower-skilled ones so that everybody catches up. I let them at it, and I get some amazing stuff. I currently have a cardboard wonderland in my classroom right now.

Tim Bogatz: Kids love it. They can create such cool things. So I want to ask you a little more about kids who haven’t done a lot of art before. A lot of us have students coming in believing they’re not artists or thinking they’re not creative. Where do you think that belief comes from? And as a teacher, how do you help them start to see otherwise?

Melissa Birnbaum: That happens all the time. In my 20-plus years of experience, I still see Lowenfeld’s model of artistic development—that graph diagram from my MAT program. Most teenagers, if they aren’t named as artists after elementary school, think they’re lousy at it. The reality is they become inhibited and stop experimenting, which coincides with that painful part of adolescence. They’d rather copy something so they don’t mess up.

I always introduce drawing as a learned skill—everyone can gain more skill if they practice. For students who are paralyzed, I have carbon paper for tracing so they can experience some success. Then the carbon paper eventually gets taken away if a student decides to keep at it. Every journey needs little baby steps.

Another approach I take, especially with teens, is reinforcing that everybody has taste. If they know what they like and what they don’t like—that’s something. Having an opinion and arranging things a certain way is a work of art in itself. If they take care in expressing their tastes, then they are creating a mindful work of art. It’s like putting thought into how you get dressed in the morning. If you look cool, you can make cool art.

Tim Bogatz: I like that a lot.

Melissa Birnbaum: I love refining students’ taste with them. I often compliment students on their eye—how they put colors together, arrange things on a collage, choose background embellishments. We form that language together. If they’re still interested, I hit them with more art theory and art history to help their taste evolve. I have so many students who I can see would make such incredible designers, but they don’t have a vocabulary for that yet. That’s something I try to promote.

I only have most of them for a year, so I think it’s super important to move through drawing, painting, and sculpture so they get exposed to a lot. Digital media—most students are familiar with that. Because I only have them for one year, we can use it as a tool to express ideas versus learning it as a specific skill. With Canva, it’s a lot more attainable. But I like the idea of going back to the hands—especially now. It’s good for them.

Tim Bogatz: We actually talked about this in the April mailbag episode—how easy it is to create now with Adobe and Canva. Because it’s become so easy, we’re all gravitating back toward doing things with our hands. And I love the idea of trying to expose kids to as much as you can. If they haven’t had art before and this is your only time with them, the more you show them, the more they can learn—and the more they’re going to enjoy it.

Melissa Birnbaum: Exactly.

Tim Bogatz: So another thought came to me while you were talking—kids who haven’t done this before are struggling to get started because they don’t have the skill or the experience. They’re afraid of messing up. How do you normalize those mess-ups, those struggles, those failures, so students don’t interpret them as a lack of ability?

Melissa Birnbaum: I think I might have it a little easier because I work with newcomers—if you haven’t taken art before, it’s somewhat expected. But I do have strategies even when I wasn’t working exclusively with newcomers.

I let students start over. If something isn’t successful, I make them keep at it—on their own terms, of course. We don’t throw it away; we try it again. I’ve fetched my fair share of projects out of the garbage. I’ll literally sprint across the classroom: “No, no, no—what are you doing? That’s beautiful!” I’ll give them the material and say, try it again.

As a choice-based teacher, my assessment model is connected to effort, and that helps too. If a student struggles in my room, it shows me that they really care about what they’re doing. I’m very adamant about articulating that.

I have one student who draws unbelievably well but hasn’t finished one piece yet. He’s his own worst enemy. His process sketches are now framed and will be in the annual art show. They’re so beautiful—all these sketchbook pull lines on his paper, just mark-making and the act of art. It’s almost like he doesn’t believe it. It’s just about developing their eye and their taste.

Tim Bogatz: That sounds so familiar. You have things you absolutely love, and kids don’t see it yet. It can be a challenge to show them: this is good, this is worthwhile, you’re creating cool stuff. So, shifting gears—when we were talking at NAEA, you told me that one of the things that brings you the most joy in teaching is recognizing resilience in your students. I’d love to hear more about your framing of that. What does resilience look like in an art classroom?

Melissa Birnbaum: Resilience looks like the previous student I described—the one who won’t give up on expressing an idea, who starts over and over again. But it could also look like a student who has every option to cut my class, but comes to school anyway—and then comes to my class. It looks like a student who stops putting their head down because they start to perk up when I approach a subject of interest to them. That’s a big win for me.

Or a student who has the patience to learn a new skill. Or someone who doesn’t like my assignment but picks up their sketchbook and starts to draw anyway because they’re forming their own words and expressions and becoming artists.

When I first started teaching, I considered myself a failure if things weren’t in order, and if students weren’t following my exact directions, that was even worse. But I learned over time that engagement looks different for each child. The social-emotional needs of my students come first—100%—especially in my current working environment. Safety is so important.

If a student is engaged in some form of making, despite everything that’s happening in their life, they’re beginning to get there. And if they sit there and don’t do anything, they’re still watching me and listening to see how I’ll react. In my experience, if they do nothing for 30 minutes and just stare, they eventually pick up a pencil because boredom always wins.

I never yell at a student. My classroom management approach is to love them up. It’s really the only way. The worst-behaved kids just need love.

Tim Bogatz: I love hearing that, and I think that mindset can pay a lot of dividends in the classroom. So let me ask about teaching kids to be more resilient. In your experience, what are some moments in the creative process where students are most likely to shut down or give up? And how do you guide them through those moments?

Melissa Birnbaum: That’s very common, especially in high school where kids are already insecure about a lot of things. I studied design thinking and project-based learning quite a bit in my own teacher training—the idea of iterating several times before the final project. I’ve built this into my curriculum, and it works well.

After students play with materials in a choice-based room, I have them write me a formal proposal of what they’d like to make. Then they do a rough sketch based on reference images. Many are quite ambitious, and they attempt to execute those ideas. About 80% of the time, they cannot execute what they want to do—and that’s almost designed into the approach. It’s super frustrating for them, but they have to keep going.

I correlate this to life choices: if we get stuck, we have to explore all the options. How can we make this happen? Should we switch materials to see our ideas through—a painted background with marker drawings, for example? Should we work with pre-generated images? Can we trace or duplicate? Should we modify our design to be less ambitious but preserve a similar idea? Do they just need more confidence coaching?

I just named it, but “confidence coaching” is very common in the art room. For example, I’ll bring over a piece of scrap paper or material that a student will put next to their project so they can work out their problem on the side—whether it be color mixing or a specific drawing technique. They gain the confidence before they use that technique in their final piece.

Tim Bogatz: I really like that. And I appreciate all of those examples because there are so many different spots and so many ways we can help kids and meet them where they are. “Confidence coaching”—I think that’s really good.

I also wanted to ask you about this: resilience is a skill we need as teachers too. You said once that we’re all taught resilience through our own art teaching experiences. How have your placements, your classrooms, your students shaped your own resilience over the years?

Melissa Birnbaum: Oh my goodness, teaching has utterly humbled me. It’s always going to throw a curveball based on the chemistry of the people in your room—and that changes every single day. What I love about this craft is that one day is entirely different from another. We’re constantly trying to improve. If I get stuck, I have to explore options. I have to scrap what I was planning on doing that day, or modify it if it’s not working.

The first year at my current job almost just flattened me.

Tim Bogatz: Even with all your experience, you can still run into those walls.

Melissa Birnbaum: Miss Fancy Pants teacher-admin with all the facilitation skills, content background, and two master’s degrees is not fluent in the language that every single one of my students speaks in the classroom. That’s going to undercut trust real quick. I took the position thinking, “This is great because I can work on those skills. I kind of like that we’re both learning together.” My skills were poor in the beginning, but they’ve gotten a lot better. Three years later, I’ve stuck with it, I understand a lot more, and I’m totally hitting my stride. My students make me a better person—and I think that’s why I stay in the classroom.

Tim Bogatz: I love that. That probably goes for all of us—our students are able to make us better people. And I honestly feel like that’s a perfect note to end on. Melissa, thank you so much for sharing your experiences, your story, and your wisdom from your years of teaching. I really enjoyed talking with you.

Melissa Birnbaum: Tim, I’m so happy to help out. This was great. Thank you.