Who says kids these days are unappreciative of the people in charge of educating and nurturing them? Not only was one School of the Arts (SOTA) student deeply grateful for her teachers past and present, but she went one step further to present a beautiful, non-disruptive piece of guerrilla art installation that paid tribute to all the teachers who left the school.
The installation? A kind of elegant, silent protest that consisted of all the names of the teachers who left SOTA written on paper airplanes, which were stuck in between concrete slabs located near the Vice-Principals’ offices. It’s unclear what prompted the departure of the dozens of SOTA teachers (there are a lot of paper airplanes), but it must have been pretty contentious — enough to inspire a work of art by a student.
According to a teacher under SOTA’s Faculty of Visual Arts, the student had no intention to offend anyone in her piece, which was done during a performance art masterclass. It was a tribute to the teachers who had taught her personally during her time in SOTA — and it is sad to see so many of them not around anymore, especially since they left such an impact.
But as we’ve noted before, teachers have one of the toughest jobs around, and it’s no different here. The situation may or may not be different for teachers in the arts school, but their fellow educators have been quitting en masse over the last five years. One former teacher even broke down what the Ministry of Education needs to fix to retain its teaching staff.
