{"id":13569,"date":"2016-04-26T10:31:10","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T15:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=13569"},"modified":"2017-06-27T09:08:56","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T14:08:56","slug":"tess-little-big-inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2016\/04\/26\/tess-little-big-inspiration\/","title":{"rendered":"Tess Little, big inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Test<\/a>Tess Little\u2019s teaching philosophy is nothing small, but to put simply, she focuses on the development of a student through encouragement and art, and now with her retirement approaching at the end of the semester, she is finding that her students inspire her just as much as they are inspired by her.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou meet the student where they are\u2014you facilitate their development and you encourage them,\u201d Little said. \u201cI promised myself that when teaching became a job and chore, I would go do something else, and I am still here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little started teaching ceramics at Sinclair in the beginning of 1976. She taught part-time for 15 years before focusing strictly on sculpting and became a full-time teacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cI built the sculpture department\u2014I love sculpting. I eat it. Sleep it. Love it,\u201d Little said.<\/p>\n

Little said her job, as a teacher is to meet them where they are and to promote them. She said their goals are just as important to her as they are to them. She teaches a variety of sculpting classes, with a multitude of different students, including different majors, ages and levels.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn art, I have three types of students. I have students who are going to be degree seeking and they want to be in the art field, and then I have students who are here because it\u2019s an elective, and then I have personal enrichment students,\u201d Little said. \u201cI want to help all three of those students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huynh Lee, graphic design student, said the best thing he learned from Little is that \u201cyour mind is your own limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little said artists should be curious people and always staying in tune with their feelings, but they also need to have persistence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really hard and you have to be persistent and you have to love it. If you don\u2019t love it, you should find something else to do,\u201d Little said. \u201cIt\u2019s a competitive field and it\u2019s been a great joy for me, but if you\u2019re not willing to work for it, you wont make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Test<\/a>Cindy Wallace said Little gives her the guidance that needs and constantly encourages her to trust herself when she is working on an assignment.<\/p>\n

\u201cTess is my favorite thing about this class. She works with you,\u201d Cindy said. \u201cI would\u2019ve never done any gallery showings if it weren\u2019t for Tess. She actually changed my focus; her passion for sculpting was so contagious that I changed it,\u201d Christina Calderon added.<\/p>\n

Little\u2019s students are her biggest fans, and their favorite part about her and sculpting classes is that they inspire them to be successful.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe doesn\u2019t just teach us how to make things, but she teaches about what we want to do with our major and how we can be successful as an artist,\u201d Mikaela Bell, art student, said.<\/p>\n

Many other students agree with Bell that Little is the best part of the class. Mary Ahmad said, \u201cshe is the creative inspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Little is retiring from teaching full-time, she isn\u2019t ready to give it up quite yet, so she plans on still teaching part-time at Sinclair. Aside from having a passion for art, she is also the coordinator for REACH across Dayton.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am going to continue to teach on class and I am going to travel and I am going to make art,\u201d Little said.<\/p>\n

Geanna Ampaya, visual communication student said she hopes Little continues to inspire other artists even during her retirement.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s awesome\u2014she\u2019s the greatest,\u201d Calderon said. \u201cShe\u2019s like my muse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little said she loves to make things and loves to teach, and that\u2019s exactly what she did, and is proud to have experienced Sinclair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am blessed to have gotten to teach here,\u201d Little said. \u201cSinclair fits my mission in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabrielle Sharp<\/strong>
\nExecutive Editor<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tess Little\u2019s teaching philosophy is nothing small, but to put simply, she focuses on the development of a student through encouragement and art, and now with her retirement approaching at the end of the semester, she is finding that her students inspire her just as much as they are inspired by her. \u201cYou meet the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[2030],"class_list":["post-13569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-gabrielle-sharp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-3wR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13570,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13569\/revisions\/13570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}