Mary Beth Matthews is a local arts educator making change, one student at a time, at the Max S. Hayes Vocational High School in Cleveland. With her innovative approach to education and student empowerment, she's been selected for the Northeast Ohio Arts Educator of the Year. You can keep up to date with the lastest news via her blog at http://mbmatthews.blogspot.com.

When you boast to people outside Cleveland about Cleveland, what’s on your list? Mary Beth: The lake. I can see Lake Erie each day as I look out my classroom window, and I believe that there is nothing that can soothe my soul more thoroughly than a walk along the beach. I also love the local neighborhoods; each one has its own personality with places to go and things to see that are unique. The industrial valley is especially interesting with its tough beauty of steel mills, train tracks, warehouses, and the factories pushed up against the shores of the river. It sometimes saddens me when I read about the imminent end of the industrial age of the city - the need to abandon that era and move into the future. I am a romantic at heart and I can’t help but feel that much of Cleveland’s spirit was formed in the industrial valley. What’s your vision of how Cleveland should look and feel? My vision for Cleveland is one of a bustling city: lots of jobs and lots of action, lots of things going on. For that to happen, it is imperative that the revitalization of this region’s economy is given a priority.

As we look towards economic revitalization, we also must remember that it goes hand in hand with educational reform. We cannot attract businesses to the region without a trained workforce. The region's largest school district is hemorrhaging students, with Cleveland's student population numbers over 70,000. The district's graduation rate is only 38%. It's important to realize that means 62% of those 70,000 will not receive a high school diploma - that is HUGE, and the implications are staggering. Those who discuss revitalizing the region without considering Cleveland's education crisis are like physicians trying to treat the symptoms while ignoring the cause. As a community, we cannot keep ignoring the problem, or categorizing it as purely an education issue. It has festered for too long, become too big, and it will continue to grow.

What are your passions and how does it manifest itself in your life?
My passions fall into three categories: my relationships, my quest for learning, and last (but certainly not least), having fun. An obvious manifestation of all three is my chosen career. Teaching high school is constantly about relationships. What does this kid need from me? Some students require just the basics, and others will grasp at your heart. Then there are the ones who will suck at your soul, with one guarantee: there will always be drama. Occasionally their stories are tearjerkers, sometimes they are goof-ball comedies, but most often, my job resembles the green room of the Jerry Springer show. I'd also say that I have a passion for learning. As teachers, we often teach the things we wish to learn. Teaching art keeps me focused on creativity. It also gives me the opportunity to observe people; my students, my colleagues, and other artists. I like to find out what motivates people, what inspires them, to watch what they do, and understand how they think. I try to apply this understanding to my own life, rejecting the negative and embracing all the good stuff. And lastly, every day I have fun and everyday I laugh. My job is constant entertainment...mind you, pretty lowbrow entertainment. After all, the population of my building is over 80% teenaged boys; I guess it's a good thing that my sense of humor hasn't matured as rapidly as my age would indicate.

What has your best contribution to Cleveland been?
That would be the work I am doing right now at Max S. Hayes Vocational High School. Trade schools are traditionally for the academically disinclined, and Max Hayes has been struggling to overcome its reputation as "Last Chance High". I was initially hired to teach sign painting back in 1998 to a student body comprised of mostly boys studying welding, construction, auto tech, machining, and diesel. I convinced my principal that sign painting was obsolete in this age of technology and asked him to let me teach art. I was amazed with the facility, the shops, the equipment, and the technical abilities of my students. This was a sculptor’s paradise - too bad, I was a painter. To remedy my lack of 3-D expertise, I sought local sculptors for residencies and began writing grants to pay for them. I began establishing relationships with the various arts institutions in the city as well as individual artists and independent galleries. I also became interested in creating public art with my students and received major funding to accomplish that goal. We are now involved in several public art projects with nationally and internationally renowned artists, and we keep looking for new ways to continue our collaborations with the community, develop new talent, and change a few lives.

Do you have favorite quotes or sayings you live by?
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts. - Richard Bach

Even if one is not actually guilty of mischief, he should appear as if he could be. - Oscar Wilde

No good deed goes unpunished. - Clare Boothe Luce

What’s the best learning/experimenting you’ve done in the last 5 years?
About 5 years ago a student of mine began exhibiting the symptoms of mental illness. As is so often the case with schizophrenia, most people who knew this young man began to avoid him and even fear him as his symptoms began to manifest. At the age of 18 he was kicked out of his house and expelled from school, living at St Herman’s House of Hospitality, and decompensating rapidly. He called me, and I was taught (and I believe), that when you are asked for help, if you have the ability to do it, it’s a sin not to. The task of finding help for someone who not only could not help themselves, but at times even resisted help, was beyond draining. To this day, my own fortitude amazes me. I have a very close friend in the mental heath field, and with her guidance, I learned to navigate the maze that is the system of social services and psychiatric facilities. I never imagined that my teaching career would lead me into the locked wards of mental hospitals and the dining halls of homeless shelters. During that period I discovered things about the human mind and spirit and its strengths and frailties that I would never have learned any other way.

Who’s on your list of most admired & why?
Being an educator, I suppose it’s not surprising that my list of most admired people includes teachers who influenced my life:
Sr. Mary Michael Paul, my high school art teacher at Notre Dame Academy. Her unabashed love of art was contagious, and I caught a pretty bad case of it. Mr. Bill Berger, my 9th grade earth science teacher at Kenston High School. I’m not sure if I liked him because his irreverent style and caustic humor reminded me of myself, or if I became irreverent and caustic to emulate the teacher that I admired.
Mrs. Vivian Starr, my sixth grade science teacher at Kenston Middle School. More than thirty years have past since I last walked out of her classroom door, and I can still look out at the night sky and name the stars, I can identify every tree in the woods and the wildflowers in the fields. She was one of the most elegant and fascinating women I have ever met.

What’s the best advice you’ve been offered?
I went to college on an art scholarship, and was a painting major. My mother, fearing that she would never experience the empty-nest syndrome if I had to support myself as an artist, urged me to take an education class. I soon discovered that I liked working with kids, and went on to earn my teaching certificate. I've been teaching art now for more than twenty years.

What was a significant failure in your life and what did you learn from it?
My student teaching assignment was eighth grade art at Glouster Middle School located in southern Ohio, a depressed coal mining town, buried in the Appalachian foothills. Back in those days, the student teacher came in, worked with the cooperating teacher in the classroom for a few days, then the cooperating teacher took off to the teachers lounge, and the student teacher was on her own. It was to be my very first day teaching classes alone. I said goodbye to my Co-op teacher at the door of the lounge and headed to my class. When I walked in the door, there was the entire class in a crowded circle at the center of the room, yelling at two big ol’ boys trying to beat each other senseless. I grew up with brothers, so I thought it was no problem. I convinced a few of the bigger kids to pull the combatants apart. I then put on the meanest, craziest face my 21 year old self could muster, grabbed a heavy wooden chair by the teachers desk, slammed it up against the wall. I pointed them and said, “You! Sit there.” To my surprise, he sat. I grabbed a second chair, and slammed it into the wall next to the first. The second boy, a hulking 16-year-old, crumpled to the floor weeping. “My foot! You hit my foot!” I wasn’t going to fall for that ploy. Remember I had brothers. “Get up, you big baby. You're not hurt. Go to the office!” The boys limped off, everybody sat down, and I started class. That afternoon the principal knocked on my door and he looked very serious. “Miss Miles, there was a fight in your class this morning?” I nodded. “We had to take Billy to the hospital. He has a broken foot.” All my mind could do was scream ”SSSSHITTTT!!!!!!” Four years of college down the drain! The student's father wanted to speak with me, and he looked like a tattooed mountain wearing a wife-beater undershirt and a ZZ Top beard. "Now listen" he said, and grabbed my hand, "if that boy gives you any more trouble you just go ahead and break his other foot. You got my permission." His face broke into a big smile and he pumped my arm in the heartiest handshake. I can recall standing there for a long time, amazed and bewildered by what had just happened. I had always considered myself lucky, but this went beyond being lucky, to the realm of the bizarre. My career has maintained that tenor throughout the years. I have received somewhat twisted satisfaction in the knowledge that as long as I continue to teach, I will never be bored.

Where are you most likely to hang out in Cleveland?
I don’t really hang out anyplace in particular...I might be found anywhere. I live on the East Side, and work on the West Side, so I feel comfortable and at home on either side of the Cuyahoga. I like to explore new shops, restaurants, and galleries. I take classes, attend lectures, visit museums and go to parks; all the usual stuff.

How do you think Cool Cleveland can continue being successful?
Keep marketing yourselves. Expand your readership. There are still a lot of people out there who have never heard of you. (:divend:)