HSD art teacher overjoyed to brighten young students’ days

Whether it’s the positive feedback or soothing music in the background, there’s a calming vibe in Janet Carlen’s classrooms. 

Carlen teaches TK through first-grade students at Sunnyslope and Cerra Vista Elementary Schools. While she has taught for a decade, Carlen joined the Hollister School District this year and exudes joy at the opportunity to educate budding students. 

“It’s a dream come true,” Carlen said of teaching the youngest students in the district. “TK through first—it is the best.” 

The Hollister School District offers Carlen’s art instruction to the TK through first-grade students at those sites, with additional teachers at the middle schools and the San Benito Arts Council—through a partnership—filling the gaps. 

Carlen is a professional artist with a master’s degree in arts education who taught in Gilroy and Morgan Hill—with a stint in between at the San Jose Museum of Art—before coming to Hollister this school year. 

On a recent afternoon at Cerra Vista, that signature soothing music played in her classroom after school ended as she spoke with a steady smile about her path to Hollister, fondness for teaching young students and positive approach to instruction.

Carlen creates her own art and is particularly interested in the arts’ impact on social-emotional wellbeing. 

“In particular, because art interrupts the stimulus response mechanism in the brain to allow the psyche to speak,” Carlen added. 

The background music is an element of her focus on atmosphere and what she called “process over project.” 

“We go over the elements of art. We’re having a rigorous arts education,” Carlen explained. “But for me in particular, it’s the social emotional aspect of it. Again, it’s that interruption of stimulus response.” 

“So I have the music going,” she went on. “The atmosphere is what’s most important to me, so that they feel they are at peace and they are associating art with a positive experience.” 

Carlen, seated in front of a monitor displaying a painting of a greenhouse filled with lush flowers, then alluded to some of the latest brain-science information regarding cortisol. 

“When a child is stressed, cortisol will fill the brain,” she said, “and they won’t be able to learn.” 

She spoke about her priority in the classroom on positive reinforcement. Carlen recollected attending an event and meeting a very successful professional woman as they shared their occupations. The woman admitted she couldn’t draw well, and Carlen asked her the last time someone criticized her for anything she had created. 

“She could name the kindergarten, her teacher, what she was drawing—a rainbow with two clouds,” Carlen said. “She was so proud of it. Then she put a face in the clouds. Her teacher criticized her for putting a face in the clouds.” 

“Again,” she added, “brain science has proven when they are criticized for creativity, something happens and that part shuts down.”

Carlen said other subjects in school, rightfully, are more results oriented.

“My art classroom is a very safe place to fail,” she said. “We work on it. If you don’t like it, we can try again.” 

One of the techniques she uses is to put a painting on the board and ask what the students see.

“What happens is the most magical experience,” Carlen said, “in that they will each see something different in that painting.”

Carlen noted how she will emphasize to students the importance of each perspective.

“What they are seeing is unique,” she surmised, “and we need their voices because otherwise we wouldn’t see what they are seeing.” 

Carlen focuses on fostering a positive environment. 

“It’s crucial for them to have that safe place to fail in order for them to develop emotionally,” she said. “There’s a lot more going on here than just projects.” 

That said, Carlen’s classrooms also provide structure. The start of the school year is focused on getting to know classroom expectations—progressing into lessons on patterns, colors, shapes and lines as a foundation. From there, the instruction gets gradually more complicated. 

“Also, you can see my room is set up as stations,” she pointed out. “I have a paint station. We have our scissors and glue stick. We have a clay station, a building station and a drawing station. And the reason I have that is for the early finishers, they can choose what they would like to do.” 

Carlen loves that her classroom is often the highlight of students’ days, and she gave special kudos to the district for allowing it to happen. 

“A great big thank you to this district, which has focused on the arts. I mean, I’m so grateful for their program,” she said. “Again, it’s laying that foundation for them to absolutely develop creativity, and to love art.”