We recently connected with Sierra Machado and have shared our conversation below.

Sierra , appreciate you joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

As a child, my siblings and I were encouraged to paint, play music, and roller skate inside the house. My parents were both extremely creative and they built our Swiss Family Robinson style house together board by board over the course of my childhood. I was raised with the belief that art is integral to daily life and the creativity of my parents made me who I am today. We were raised to believe that pursuing creative endeavors was just as important as academic ones. My parents always made me feel that any goal I had was worth going for, and that open-mindedness allowed me to view the world differently than many of my peers.

Sierra , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Sierra Machado and I have been a public school art teacher since 2009. I spent the first six years of my career as a high school teacher in South Carolina and then moved to Oklahoma in 2015. I taught 5th and 6th grade art for six years before heading back to the high school classroom.

I began making art tutorials for my 5th and 6th grade art students when I got exhausted teaching the same lesson multiple times a day multiple times a year. It all started when I drew the same donut with a bite out of it more than twenty times in one week. I felt there had to be a smarter, and more permanent way, to document all the work I did in the classroom. My students were such a great test audience for my video content. If the audio was off or instructions were unclear, I knew it immediately. You can’t get a shaky camera past the keen eye of a Gen Z student. One day I got a round of unprompted applause at the end of one of my instructional videos and I knew I had something.

I also created a website called That Art Teacher to write out my long form lesson plans. When I first started teaching, I would scour the internet for help. Sometimes I just needed validation that I was using a technique or term correctly and sometimes I needed entire instructional units. Teaching art has incredible freedom, which can be terrifying to a young professional. It can be very isolating to be the only art teacher at your school and professional development opportunities can be very limited. I had a desire to reach out to other educators and share what worked (and didn’t work) in my classroom.

I found that my website and YouTube channel helped me feel more connected to other art teachers. I have been very proud to expand my brand from just my own students to teachers and students around the world. I now have hundreds of videos, detailed art tutorials and blog posts helping young artists and teachers navigate the world of art education.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My creative journey is all about fostering the creativity in others. I began my career feeling more like an artist than a teacher, but now I find the most joy in helping others find their creative voice. My main brand philosophy is to share my classroom with any educator, young artist, or person interested in creating art in any setting. I do all my work from my classroom or living room and I believe in creating accessible content for teachers that fits the challenges of a public school classroom.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I believe that we can change our mindset that art or creative pursuits should be secondary to a career that stereotypically “makes money”. I see so many of my students discouraged from pursuing their passions for something more socially acceptable. I think the starving artist trope needs to be dismantled. We can start by not telling young people that certain classes in school are more important than others. If you look at societies and cultures throughout history, all of them have created art. Art is present in every thread of humanity and we should encourage that exploration in our young people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thatartteacher.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thatartteacher/
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/thatartteacher/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/thatartteacher