{"id":100049,"date":"2023-07-20T03:38:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T07:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/?post_type=bu-article&#038;p=100049"},"modified":"2023-07-20T10:55:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T14:55:00","slug":"cindy-garza-moore-art-educator","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/magazine\/articles\/2023\/cindy-garza-moore-art-educator\/","title":{"rendered":"A Not-So-Still Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<div class=\"wp-block-editorial-leadin magazine-block-editorial-leadin is-style-side-by-side has-media has-flip has-box has-media-focus-center-middle has-quaternary-theme\">\n\t\t<div class=\"container-lockup\">\n\n\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-leadin-media\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<img width=\"2156\" height=\"2560\" src=\"\/cfa\/files\/2023\/05\/Cindy-Garza-Moore-SilkeWerzinger-scaled.jpg\" class=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/files\/2023\/05\/Cindy-Garza-Moore-SilkeWerzinger-scaled.jpg 2156w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/files\/2023\/05\/Cindy-Garza-Moore-SilkeWerzinger-536x636.jpg 536w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/files\/2023\/05\/Cindy-Garza-Moore-SilkeWerzinger-862x1024.jpg 862w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/files\/2023\/05\/Cindy-Garza-Moore-SilkeWerzinger-768x912.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/files\/2023\/05\/Cindy-Garza-Moore-SilkeWerzinger-1293x1536.jpg 1293w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/files\/2023\/05\/Cindy-Garza-Moore-SilkeWerzinger-1724x2048.jpg 1724w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/files\/2023\/05\/Cindy-Garza-Moore-SilkeWerzinger-842x1000.jpg 842w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2156px) 100vw, 2156px\" \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"wp-block-editorial-leadin-caption wp-prepress-component-caption\">Illustration by Silke Werzinger<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"container-words-outer\">\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"container-words-inner\">\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"wp-prepress-tag\">CFA Alumni<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<h1 class=\"head\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA Not-So-Still Life\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<h4 class=\"deck\">Cindy Garza Moore worked with teens at risk of dropping out of high school. With art, she found a way to get them excited about classes again.<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar magazine-prepress-layout-metabar\">\n\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-date\">July 20, 2023<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-credits\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<ul data-credit-type=\"By\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/magazine\/authors\/molly-callahan\/\">Molly Callahan<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/ul>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-share js-bu-prepress-share-tools\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-twitter\"><span>Twitter<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-facebook\"><span>Facebook<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-action\"><\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-editorial-introparagraph magazine-block-editorial-introparagraph has-dropcap has-dropcap-color-quaternary is-style-dropcap-dimensional\"><div class=\"wp-block-editorial-introparagraph-content\"><p>Cindy Garza Moore was working with at-risk teenagers in a Texas school district when she noticed something that would change her career: the students came alive when they were making art or music.&nbsp;<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThese were kids who were dealing with really adult issues like pregnancy or addiction,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/withlovecindy.com\/\">Moore<\/a> (\u201919). They had chronic absences and faced the possibility of not graduating high school. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t so straightforward for them to just get up and go to school. But I saw right away that many of these students connected with the arts.\u201d Students who previously skipped classes would make time for painting or music, creating a doorway for them to attend other classes. \u201cThey would say things like, \u2018I think if I had an extra music class, I could make my schedule work.\u2019\u201d Sometimes, these extra classes gave students enough credits to graduate. Other times, it was the motivation they needed to get back into their other classes throughout the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moore knew at that moment she had to throw herself into art education. But while she had worked in schools, she didn\u2019t have a degree in teaching, and had no art experience. That didn\u2019t stop her. She went back to school and then launched a nonprofit to make art programs available to her community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"has-magenta-color has-text-color\">Engaging Students in the Artistic Process<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Moore grew up in Weslaco, Tex., a city of 40,000 just north of the Mexico border that she describes as \u201ca little hole-in-the-wall place.\u201d She doesn\u2019t remember having many art classes as a kid, except for one class in middle school that was a graduation requirement. Just before her freshman year of high school, she moved to Lewisville, a city almost three times as populous that\u2019s closer to Dallas and Fort Worth.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moore \u201clived a whole life\u201d before starting her job with at-risk students in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lisd.net\/\">Lewisville Independent School District<\/a> in 2011: \u201cI got married, got divorced, moved to California, moved back, got remarried.\u201d When she moved back to Texas from California, she was recruited to work for the school district. \u201cI\u2019m bilingual and had a lot of people and tech skills due to working since I was 15,\u201d she says, qualities that made Moore an ideal candidate for a pilot program designed to reenergize students at risk of dropping out of high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moore worked in the program for two years as its risk director, building relationships with teenagers who were close to dropping out, then working with them to design a schedule that would enable them to graduate instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI started to realize, wow, the arts have this really huge, profound effect on the students,\u201d Moore says. She was inspired to pursue a career in art education. Without any formal art training, Moore enrolled at Texas Woman\u2019s University (TWU) for her bachelor\u2019s degree in art education and her teaching certification, where she was plunged into art and education.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI remember my professor asked how many of us were confident in our artistic abilities? And, like, 90 percent of the class raises their hands while I\u2019m sort of looking around, just sweating it out. I didn\u2019t know what I was capable of.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moore needn\u2019t have worried. The professor\u2019s lesson that day was that it\u2019s more important for art educators to be passionate about engaging their students in the artistic process. Moore had that covered.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI always loved the facilitation. Doodling around with kids in the at-risk program, and telling them that I just started drawing too. Those were really special moments.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moore\u2019s art education at TWU ran the gamut: she learned about oil paints and papermaking. She fell in love with watercolors\u2014she can still lose a whole day painting in the medium. And she grew as an artist; when she looks back at some of her earliest work, she sees rudimentary skills\u2014and a whole lot of heart.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI would show my students my [early] work, and they would be shocked,\u201d she says. \u201cI told them that it just goes to show that if you practice, practice, practice, you <em>will <\/em>get better at something. One day, you\u2019ll make something you\u2019re really proud of, and no one can take that feeling away from you.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During her four years at TWU, Moore volunteered with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/teachingartistnetwork\/\">Teaching Artist Network<\/a>, an organization that brings the arts out into the local community. By her senior year, she was voted its president, and she quickly ramped up the organization\u2019s outreach efforts, bringing free arts events and programs to a wider audience in Lewisville and beyond.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moore, who describes the early part of her 20s as somewhat rudderless, had found her passion\u2014using art as a way to connect with people and to help her community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-bu-pullquote magazine-block-bu-pullquote alignwide is-style-pop has-quaternary-theme\"><div class=\"wp-block-bu-pullquote-inner\"><blockquote><div class=\"container-lockup\"><div class=\"container-icon-outer\"><div class=\"container-icon-inner\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"container-text\"><hr\/><div class=\"quote-sizing\">I hear from students who tell me that I changed their lives, or that they felt seen and cared for in my classroom. That\u2019s the best. That\u2019s all you want, as a teacher.<\/div><footer class=\"caption\"><br\/>Cindy Garza Moore<\/footer><hr\/><\/div><\/div><\/blockquote><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"has-magenta-color has-text-color\">Changing Lives through Art<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>After graduating from TWU, \u201cI felt like I was halfway there,\u201d Moore says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not one to do anything halfway.\u201d She enrolled in the master\u2019s in art education program at the CFA\u2019s School of Visual Arts to round out her schooling. The online program allowed her to stay in Texas, where she was raising her daughter, Ella.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moore says she was drawn to the advocacy curricula in her classes. She wasn\u2019t just learning how to teach students art, but how to engage with them and their communities at the same time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI just fell in love with the professors at BU,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was such a nurturing environment, and I felt like I was part of a community. They gave us autonomy to complete projects in a way that spoke to each of us as artists, and that was so formative for me. I didn\u2019t feel like there was only one right way to do things. I try to give my students that same autonomy and foster that same curiosity in them.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Halfway through the two-year program, Moore created a nonprofit organization, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativesunite.org\/\">Creatives Unite<\/a>, that married her activism and her art. She and a group of volunteer artists, musicians, and creative problem-solvers sought ways to bring art to people and do some good.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At one event, she and other volunteers created watercolor portraits of pets at an animal shelter\u2014anyone who adopted a pet got to take home a custom portrait. The shelter cleared out in a day. Creatives Unite volunteers also hosted workshops to teach teenagers how to use their creative talents in a job setting\u2014kids who love music and audio learned how to create podcasts, for example. Every year, organizers would raise money to buy art supplies for children in the local children\u2019s hospital. And sometimes, the organization hosted events that were related to creative fields in more tangential ways, Moore says. They taught people how to fill out financial aid forms for college, or how to manage their finances as freelancers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moore graduated from BU with a renewed sense of purpose. She taught at an elementary school by day, and poured herself into Creatives Unite by night.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps most rewarding, though, is hearing from former students in the at-risk program all those years ago.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI hear from students who tell me that I changed their lives, or that they felt seen and cared for in my classroom,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s the best. That\u2019s all you want, as a teacher.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Moore is preparing for another reinvention. She and her family are moving to the Big Island of Hawaii, to be closer to Moore\u2019s in-laws. She and Ella have been learning as much as they can about the history and culture of the archipelago state, and Moore is already dreaming of how to build a new chapter of Creatives Unite in her new home\u2014the first of a network of chapters she hopes to create for the nonprofit. While Moore is still in the earliest stages of imagining what an expanded Creatives Unite will look like, the goal, she says, \u201chas never been about the money. It\u2019s always been about the impact we can have on people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-end-of-article\">\u201cI\u2019ve had some time\u2014in between packing up our entire lives\u2014to reflect on everything we\u2019ve done [with Creatives Unite], and it still boggles my mind. We\u2019ve been able to reach so many people, all with this idea of: What are we good at? How can we help? It doesn\u2019t take much\u2014just someone to care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThese were kids who were dealing with really adult issues like pregnancy or addiction,\u201d says Moore (\u201919). They had chronic absences and faced the possibility of not graduating high school. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t so straightforward for them to just get up and go to school. But I saw right away that many of these students connected [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14125,"featured_media":100051,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[],"bu-publication":[191],"magazine-article-category":[372,379],"magazine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[396],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/100049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100049"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/100049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101130,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/100049\/revisions\/101130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100049"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=100049"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-article-category?post=100049"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=100049"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=100049"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=100049"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=100049"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=100049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}