Lea Bierman will be the first to tell you she was not the most talented artist in school . She liked art — always had, from as far back as she can remember — but the talent wasn't just there waiting to be unlocked. She had to work for it. Before committing to an art education degree at Northern Illinois University, she took community college art classes in high school just to test herself, to see if she was good enough to keep going. She was. And that experience of earning her skill rather than being born with it has shaped the way she teaches.

Now in her 11th year as the art teacher at Byron Middle School, Lea works with every sixth, seventh, and eighth grader in the building. Art is a required rotation class here — students spend a trimester, roughly 12 weeks, cycling through art, agriculture, and STEM. That means nearly every one of the school's 300-plus students sits in Lea’s room at some point during the year, whether they consider themselves artists or not.

She doesn't pretend otherwise. "I like to tell my sixth graders that was not me," she says of the kids who walk in already drawing effortlessly. "I always liked art a lot, but I was pretty average." What she tells them — and shows them — is that being good at art is something you build. It isn't innate talent so much as practiced attention.

The projects look very different depending on the grade. Sixth graders, who are still learning foundational skills, are currently working on charcoal owls — an exercise in composition, value, texture, and how to make something appear three-dimensional on a flat surface. Lea walks them through each concept, explains the rubric before the project begins, and lets the work guide the learning. Eighth-graders, by contrast, are expected to drive the process themselves. Their most recent project involved creating artwork on a plaster mask — but what went on that mask, the subject, media and concept was entirely up to each student. Some painted. Some used collage. Some worked with clay. "I'm structuring all of it and guiding it," Bierman says, "but they're really determining what their learning looks like."

The results line the hallways. And the grades, she notes, tend to be strong across the board — not because she's easy, but because students engage. "I don't have to do a lot of encouraging to get the kids to do the work. They're pretty self-motivated." Art class, it turns out, doesn't feel like a chore to most 12-year-olds. It feels like making something.

That, Lea believes, is exactly the point — and it's bigger than any single project. When she addressed her eighth-graders on their last day with her, she told them she hoped they'd learned something beyond composition and color schemes. "Being a creative thinker and being a problem solver is so valuable," she told them. "And it is not just valuable in whatever career you might go into, but just in life." Creativity, she argues, isn't a personality trait you either have or don't. It's a muscle. The more you use it, the less you flinch when a difficult situation asks you to figure something out.

Lea says she feels genuinely fortunate to work in a district that treats middle school art as essential. She credits the art teachers at Mary Morgan  Elementary and Byron High School, noting that kids arrive in her room with a real foundation already built, and leave ready to go deeper if they choose. The three programs function as a pipeline.

This year carries an extra dimension. Lea’s son, August, is a sixth grader currently in her class, and her daughter, Gwen, just finished eighth grade with her. She describes having both kids as students as "amazing" — a chance to team  not just her own children, but all of their classmates. "As a teacher, it was hard to get to the parties when they were in grade school," she says. "But I feel like this was the payoff."

After class, the art stays on the walls. The skills, Lea  hopes, travel further than that.