Joanne Frimel
Joanne Frimel - Trained Illustrator, Art Instructor, Art Specialist, Curriculum Writer, Political Activist for Public Education, and Consultant has over 30 years experience and a reputation of excellence in the field of art education including 16 years as the Art & Project Specialist at the Spring Branch School of Choice from 1993 to 2010. During this time period Joanne devoted herself to the 100% at-risk students that the SOC served as a Dropout Intervention and Prevention Program, an alternative school, Grades 7-12, for SBISD Secondary Schools. She programmed, designed, and delivered her Art Across the Curriculum projects to thousands of SOC students over the years who needed an alternative to the traditional teaching/learning approaches that had failed them. Through her interdisciplinary and co-teaching collaborations, SOC students were motivated as they experienced hands-on and interdisciplinary learning at its best with lessons and activities that built student’s self-esteem, exercised their creative and higher level thinking skills, and opened up their world, through art, while increasing student’s powers of perception.
Joanne also enjoyed working with the students sent to SBISD’s Discipline Alternative Education Placement Center – also located at the Spring Branch Education Center, writing curriculum and integrating art into the program’s Alcohol Awareness Classes. She also developed activities and special tools for the special students in the Life Skills program. Joanne has also lead many Service Learning Projects with art class students and with students in core classes to produce original products, hybrids, based on Thematic Integrated Instruction rooted in the visual arts, which raised thousands of dollars in scholarship funds for alternative student’s across the state of Texas. Joanne has received hundreds of hours of Professional Development, including Service Learning training in Long Beach, California, and through a variety of wonderful SBISD opportunities over the years. She also provides professional development to her peers.
Joanne, a team player, and her Art Across the Curriculum Presentations & Workshop, which also involved her core curricular colleagues, have been well received by educators of all disciplines and by administrators in Texas and throughout the United States such as at the Texas Art Education Association Conferences, the National Dropout Prevention and Intervention Network National Conference, and for the Houston Suburban Schools Chapter of the Texas Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development and for the P. Buckley Moss Foundation at Sweetbriar College, in Lynchburg, Virginia. In 2005, the Oklahoma Department of Education received her workshop and adopted Joanne’s 300 page Art Across the Curriculum Guide as a model program for alternative schools in the state of Oklahoma.
Joanne’s Awards & Recognitions include (and student awards):
• School of Choice Teacher of the Year 1996
• P. Buckley Moss Foundation for Children’s Education National Teacher Award 2003 (for reaching and positively impacting special student populations and low-socioeconomic demographics, through art).
• Award of Excellence from the Spring Branch ISD Board of Trustees & Superintendent, 2003
• 2008 Educational Support Professional of the Year, Texas State Teacher’s Association. Includes 8 consecutive years as Spring Branch Education Association Officer – TSTA Delegate – National Education Association Delegate to the Representative Assembly and NEA Fine Arts Caucus Leader.
• Most Recent - Joanne is the Recipient of the 2010 James F. Veniga Outstanding Teaching of the Humanities Award from Humanities Texas. Art is a reflection of mankind, past and present --- Art is everywhere!
• Joanne students’ awards over the years have consisted of Youth Art Month winners from Creative Alternatives (renamed City Artworks), and exhibits at the Children’s Museum of Houston, Christ Church Cathedral (CA student work and teacher work join exhibition); SOC student produced City Hall Billboard Design and TSTA Western Caucus Brochure Cover Designs; Various city-wide and educational conference shows; SBISD’s Spring Art Show at Memorial City Mall; SBISD Ad Building Show annually. Joanne exhibited her own collage work at the Annual SBISD Art Teacher 2009 and is currently working on a series of “Pet Portraits with Personality” for leaders of the SPCA and numerous art pieces created by Joanne and with student’s help for the SBISD Secretary’s Association’s annual Bosses Night Event.