As a child growing up in the small town of Montoursville, Pa., Melinda Garner would sit for hours with her mother before a large piece of white paper.

“Together, we would draw a picture, usually farm scenes,” she said.

As a result, Garner always wanted to pursue an art career.

At first, she considered a career in commercial design, but her father didn’t think she could find a good job in that field.

So, instead, Garner chose a career in teaching. For the past 10 years, she has been sharing her passion for art with the second- and third-grade students at John Cotten Tayloe School.

“I’m glad that it worked out the way it did,” she said. “When I have parents tell me how much this class means to their child, I know I made the right decision.”

As the school’s art teacher, she provides visual-art education for some 650 students at the school on a range of topics, meeting with each student once a week.

Her classroom is filled with glue, colored pencils, posters of famous artworks and maps so that her students can get a feel for where the works of art they are studying originated.

Her students also may take advantage of new Smart Board technology to trace the lines on various works of art and get a feel for how great works of art are created.

One recent lesson for Garner’s second-grade students involved weaving mock kente cloth – a fabric made of interwoven cloth strips native to Ghana and the Ivory Coast – with paper strips. Another recent second-grade lesson included creating the appearance of different textures in student drawings of castles.

Her third-grade students, meanwhile, created Chinese-style watercolors.

“I try to keep things interesting,” she said. “And most of the children usually fall in love with whatever we are doing that week.”

Garner came to Beaufort County Schools after serving as a middle-school art teacher in Roanoke Rapids for a little more than two years.

During that time, Garner, who had served as a student teacher in elementary and high-school settings, discovered that she preferred working with younger or older students rather than those in middle school.

“After teaching in a middle school, I wasn’t sure that was the group I wanted to work with,” she said, adding, that younger students are more adventurous. “They are willing to try a lot more and I love that.”

In times of tight budget cuts, many school systems across the country are targeting arts-related programs such as visual arts and music for elimination.

Garner said these programs help teach real-life skills to students.

“I feel like art fosters creative thinking and creative problem-solving, and that’s what employers are looking for these days,” she said. “Schools that don’t have arts are losing out on teaching these skills.”

Garner also works to apply real-life lessons in her art classes and integrate what students are learning in their other classes into their art projects.

For example, in a lesson about American painter Wayne Thiebaud, whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries and slices of pies, Garner incorporated a lesson about fractions. The results of that lesson can be seen on the wall outside her classroom, where student-drawn cakes are displayed.

Besides a life-long love of art, Garner has always loved horses. So, in her spare time, she can often be found in the ring practicing dressage maneuvers and competing in horse shows throughout eastern North Carolina.

“It’s something I have always wanted to do,” she said. “I have loved horses ever since I was a child.”

That’s why the farm scenes Garner used to draw with her mother always had horses in them.

Featured teacher: Melinda Garner

Age: 35

Place of birth: Frankfurt, Germany

Family: Husband, Lin Garner, owner of Garner’s Painting in Greenville; stepdaughter, Hannah, 11.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in art education, with a minor in psychology, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1999.

Professional activities: Art teacher at John Cotten Tayloe School and member of several school committees, including the School Improvement Team, a technology trouble-shooting team, N.C. Window on Student Education team, also known as the WISE team. Garner also serves as one of the webmasters of the school’s website.

Hobbies: Art, particularly work with colored pencils.

Other activities: Dressage competition with the Eastern Dressage and Combined Training Association.