We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sno (They/Them) a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sno, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I had been working as a preschool teacher in La Jolla, Ca. for seven years when a billion dollar company bought out the school. When I challenged the HR department during a staff onboarding meeting, asking if we would finally be making a living wage, I was immediately shut down. It’s common knowledge that teachers in general do not earn what they are worth but it is not common knowledge that preschool teachers earn much, much less- both financially and in regards to respect. Employees became what felt like just a number on a clock-in card and small privileges were snatched up and collected by this corporate Grinch. The staff deserved better so I set out to find ‘better.’ My greatest opportunities bloom from being pushed into a corner and me starting my art education business was one of these major, uncomfortable life events.

At this school, I witnessed several visiting teachers who charged a separate tuition for their classes (dance, gymnastics, music) and as all teachers do, they were hustling their talents but unlike all teachers, they seemed to be charging lucrative rates, had the freedom to provide services at several locations and were not limited to the repetitive one-room-every-day life.

I planned my escape.

I wasn’t yet referring to myself as an artist, though I had always created, and my degree was a useless out-of-state Early Childhood Education degree so, I, as many teachers do, gaslit myself into believing that I could not do better. Later on at a different preschool where I ran their art program and taught as a sub, a director told me as much in attempts to keep me from leaving and once again finding ‘better.’ I think that leaders who punch down on educators do a real disservice to the field of education, their communities and the mental health of their educators.

I left that initial corporate-owned school and became a substitute making minimum wage.

This is the financial corner I was backed into and I was scared as hell. The discomfort pushed me through the gaslighting of anyone, myself included, and I reached out to those traveling teachers. I asked them about how to set up a business and they answered. This is punching up, lifting up. This is how to be a mentor. So, I followed their advice and the one trick I had up my sleeve was art. Again, my self-worth was low but the fear of not being able to pay rent was much higher. I used my substitute position to hunt for schools that wanted bonus art education and I quickly found one.

I focused on open-ended art education that revolved around Howard Gardner’s ‘Multiple Intelligence Theory.’ The unique approach set me aside from the largely non-existent competition but I still felt that my squashed confidence in myself as an artist was holding back the program.

Having a business called ‘Autumn Sno Artwork’ after my own name not only expressed to me that I provide art education services but informed me that I should probably start creating my own work as well. I found local group art shows with fun themes and pushed myself to be a part of these shows every month. I had been guiding my students to paint and participate in our art shows but I had never really practiced myself until this moment.

I drew and inked as a child but paints terrified me. The fluidity is difficult to work with compared to the rigidity of my favored mediums but how could I ask my students to take the risk if I couldn’t ask it of myself.

Initially, this kind of fear felt the same as that created from financial insecurity. Instead of letting this new fear push me to take a rash, blind leap into the wild, which I absolutely recommend once in a while, I rationed it and became a little less afraid of each painting, every month.

Now, I have ran my art education business for eight years, had my own solo art show, have gotten my students into the SDMA, am creating eLearning courses and studying Instructional Design, am writing and illustrating my first children’s book, volunteer for Creators, Assemble! and am bringing my art program to the San Diego Unified School District.

I can’t be entirely mad at the road blocks, at the punching down, at the societal structure that devalues the arts and educators. They push me. They exist to push me. They exist so that I can work to make sure that they don’t exist as strongly for my students, my fellow educators and artists. Because even if these people don’t realize it yet, they deserve better and I know our worth.

Sno, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

The first time that I felt that I was really good at something was when I would bike. We’re talking flying down hills, no-hands coasting, and multiple flights of stairs conquered. I went off a six foot drop which I had no idea how to land and nearly broke my wrist. Wind knocked out of me, tears, crushed under the weight of my Huffy, the whole thing.

So, I thought, ‘Maybe I should focus on drawing instead. Less dramatic outcomes.’

I had been drawing human-like cats and designing their clothing. I’m guessing one of my parents suggested that I should draw the first true love of my life, Garfield the Cat.

These free-handed drawings were precise. Exact. And they soon felt much like flying down flights of stairs just like I did on my Huffy. I couldn’t find enough cartoon friends to free-hand. (I’m an only child. Don’t judge.)

Later that year, I attempted to get into an arts-based magnet school in Baltimore but got rejected. The coolest artist in the fifth grade, me, rejected. I likely bombed the interview because what neurodivergent, excruciatingly shy and situational anxiety-ridden ten-year-old wouldn’t bomb an interview like that? This was the 90s- I couldn’t exactly Google or YouTube: ‘helpful interview tips for children.’ Which, by the way, shouldn’t even be a pressure kids face in the first place.

I immediately moved to a football town where art wasn’t cool so I gave it up. I didn’t realize that I was giving up on myself as well.

Graduating high school and creating minimally across the years, I thought that teaching art could be fun. I had no desire to work with children but then again, I had no desire to work with adults either. (The developmental plagues of my ten-year-old self were still very, very present.) I studied Psychology. I studied Criminal Justice. My mom became terminally ill so I found the idea of teaching art comforting at a time that comforted me none. But my college didn’t have an art education program. Early Childhood Education was the closest thing.

I moved to California, something my mom and I looked forward to doing together, though only one of us made it here.

My degree was deemed worthless by the state public school system so I ended up in private preschools.

I had gone from the rigid public school way of lesson plans and unit plans to a play-based and collaborative way of learning and it flipped everything that I was taught about and experienced in education on its head.

Preschools weren’t affording me the finances that I needed to survive, so, as most teachers do, I needed an additional job.

Why not make my own?

Preschools did afford me the ability to use open-ended and play-based education confidently.

Only, I hadn’t been confident about my own abilities as an artist since shortly after the Huffy incident of ’93.

I started a business to bring art education to kids and I slowly worked on my own paintings.

I’m proud of allowing students to create in an open-ended manner. Which is just a fancy way of saying that I teach them about an artist, show them the artist’s work, give them the materials and let them create anything that they want.

We all had that class in school. The class we thought of as fun.

I think for a lot of us, that was probably gym class. Not me- don’t let the Huffy stories fool you. I dreaded sports and still do. But, I’m guessing, people find gym fun because there is not one exact way to go about it. It has the potential to go differently each time due to several moving parts and many factors. A hint of ‘open-ended.’

The way that my art classes build on that controlled chaos is that instead of competing against a team or even having to score goals, the students can connect with each other without competition and sometimes instead of set goals, one student’s project may look like the works studied and another student’s may look like something completely alien and from the planet Septillion. Is Septillion a real planet? Who knows, maybe that student just invented it.

And that’s what open-ended education leads to: invention. That to me is true fun. True creation.

Adults have the habit of looking at a kid’s work and defining what they see for the kid, as if that kid doesn’t have the ability to create something intricate. Even an adult saying, ‘What a great robot!’ can lead to a yes-kid agreeing and placing value in the adult’s words. Never mind that the structure that the adult was referring to was actually a lost satellite that landed on Planet Septillion one hundred years from now that has alerted the inhabitants of the planet that a chain of events linked to their long awaited prophesy has begun.

Dramatic outcomes are encouraged!

Let the kids invent. That is what I do.

I have a Patreon where families can sign up for eLearning Lessons, early access to social media posts and class info. My website highlights additional areas of my business that I am very proud of- free lesson guides that cover some of my diverse art lessons where we’ve studied 40+ Artists of Color, my ongoing venture into Instructional Design, my upcoming kids book that I am writing and illustrating and my store where my artwork (paintings and prints) is for sale. My in-person classes are limited to the SDUSD school where I am teaching at for the moment but Patreon Patrons will be informed of any upcoming, in-person classes that pop up when my schedule allows.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’ve been an educator for 15 years and have never had a summer off. That’s one of the perks of teaching, right? Time off? Summer break, winter break, spring break… Not in private preschools. Two days off for Christmas, one day off at the end of summer to get your classroom ready for the new year. It’s a broken system that leads to high burnout rates, physical and mental exhaustion and absolutely no chance for a retirement, let alone an escape from living paycheck to paycheck.

My business was going well pre-Covid. Combined with subbing, I was making a living wage. Still, no adequate time off or ability to rest, but I could order sushi for myself once a week without having to worry if I had to re-budget for the month.

My art classes and my subbing position got axed due to Covid regulations and for a few weeks I got to rest. What a terrifying yet liberating time for a beyond-exhausted, momentarily financially stable, germaphobe.

I had 60 students at the time and all of their families had just paid Spring tuition. That income was crucial to my business and I needed to adapt. Quickly.

This has shifted in the past two years but being a preschool teacher doesn’t involve much technology.

No desk. Not even an adult-sized chair in the room sometimes. And computers are mainly used for creating a random Powerpoint doc that you hand out at open house that likely isn’t read. Tablets can be used to take pics and upload them but the lag time makes for blurry pictures and uploading is a nightmare if the WiFi is slow or not working at all.

Cut to present day and I’ve gone from teaching that whole spring and summer via Zoom and past the eventual fallout from the Zoom exhaustion. In-person classes have my germaphobia in high alert from making sure supplies are clean for my students to wearing a mask in 90 degree weather. But the tech- the need for tech has shifted in me.

Knowing that I have no retirement options in the ECE field and recently coming out as a Transgender person experiencing at times severe gender dysphoria has led to an active search for a stability in the field and tech is the answer.

I had to adapt to teaching young kids online and I did it well. What other tech options are there?

I found Daphne of Teacher Career Coach and began her course on how to become a ‘transitioning teacher.’ (This is very different from being a Trans person, but I’ll get to that in a moment.) She described what it is to be an Instructional Designer, what the pay is (amazing) and from there I found Devlin Peck on YouTube. I spent this past summer learning eLearning and ID developing programs like Storyline 360 and Camtasia and I reached out to the company that I volunteer for, Creators, Assemble! and built them an interactive learning course to help their business needs. I started building my own art lessons into interactive eLearning courses.

And then I started applying. …Talk about a pivot.

The last time that I needed to apply to a company was years past and in an educational language that I understanded. Instructional Design is just like the education that I know, but for adults, and all of the terms and learning theories are a bit different.

The amount of teachers who have had enough and are looking to leave the classroom for work-from-home options are staggering. So much so that out of 50 resumes sent out, I got one interview back because we all have the same idea: The ship is going down- SAVE YOURSELF! Saving ourselves is a concept most teachers do not understand, so the fact that so many of us are finally deciding to take care of ourselves first, really speaks to the system and not to an imaginary need to desert our students.

Some teachers applying to ID probably had a leg up on tech over me and my ‘What is Excel even?’ former preschool educator self.

A job that is education-based and allows me to creating learning courses from home is not just a desire for my company, for myself, it’s a need.

I have chronic illness, chronic exhaustion, sensory processing disorder and a gender dysphoria that will require gender affirming surgeries. My recent coming out as Trans really alerted me to the fact that not only do I need a job that will afford me a living and a retirement but I need time off to recover from surgeries. This cannot be done at a job where unlike other educators, you don’t have summers off. This cannot be accomplished when you work in-person with children- this is physical work, every single day. If I had chosen a career where I did not live from paycheck to paycheck and had Covid not bled my company dry, I would have had a shot at time off. At least for one of the two surgeries.

But alas, another pivot awaits!

The ID jobs never came so I reached out to all of my families and fans via email to ask how my business could help them. A vice principal responded.

I was ready to leave in-person teaching for a while and set aside that aspect of my business but I found out that an art teacher position opened up at a local elementary school.

And that’s where I have landed as of right now.

Two and half years after being drained but stable, to Covid, to going virtual, to learning tech, to applying for months and now back to in-person teaching at an elementary level- what I had originally wanted to study in college.

The key to surviving a pivot is knowing that you may not survive a pivot. Accepting the chaos and dancing with it, not fighting it, may lead to it dropping you on the dance floor but hey, at least you got to dance.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn education right after I received a degree in education.

I survived the public school system and I made it through college. I studied Early Childhood Education and endured the hellish student teacher experience. I’m talking writing lesson plans until 1am and being woken up by an alcoholic roommate at 2am, only to wake up at 6am, teach all day and then come home to do that again. Every day. For a whole semester. What fun!

Even after all that, there is only so much you can learn from a college education.

What do you do when you have a kid knock another one out with a wooden block, a kid is trying to escape out one door and a kid is crying at another door and oh yeah, a parent is screaming at you over losing a kid’s pair of ridiculously priced tights. (All true stories.)

What book was that in? The chapter on ‘How to Not Pull Your Hair Out: The First Year of Teaching is Hell.’

All of those circus technicalities are what I still had to learn.

I had to unlearn instruction.

My first teaching job was at a Reggio-inspired preschool. Reggio was based off of a place called Reggio in Italy that, after a war, had no school supplies or teaching materials for their students. They learned through nature. They learned through play.

I had just learned how to use books and lessons to teach a reading lesson when all of a sudden, I had to pretend that I had none of those things.

And it was brilliant.

We constructed letters out of leaves. We voted on what to learn about and we learned about it until we didn’t want to anymore.

Can you imagine that? In your job, just focus on what you actually want to do and just do that until you get bored and then do something else that you also really want to do?

No unit plans needing to be collected by a due date. No mandatory testing.

Just existing as a group and vibing with dinosaurs for a month because: open-ended education.

I was easily persuaded but some of the very affluent and demanding parents needed some convincing.

So I took what I liked from my ECE training, specifically Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory, and was able to tie in a learning theorist. Adults love fancy theories. Thankfully, it’s a remarkable theory that shows adults that children can be intelligent in many ways. It shut down the parents who were, no lie, expecting their three-year-old to be reading already, by showing them that their child was intelligent in SEVERAL areas. Reading and math are important, but after you have to prep elementary students for state testing which can be so crushing for some of them, you really value a theory that looks for their strengths outside of two limiting subjects.

This is the basis for my art education business:
Multiple Intelligence Theory- check.
Open-ended education- check.
Diverse curriculum- check.

Had I started my business straight out of college I would have been so rigid in my thought process in creating my art lessons. I also wouldn’t have had any idea how to deal with a wooden block-door escape-door crying-screaming parent scenario either so it’s probably a good thing I got some time in when I did.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.autumnsnoartwork.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/autumnsnoartwork
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AutumnSnoArtwork
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/autumn-sno-waldron-autumn-sno-artwork
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AutumnSnoArtwrk
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/autumn-sno-artwork-art-classes-san-diego
• Other: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/AutumnSnoArtwork

Image Credits
Corbin Waldron ig: @korbin2055