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Victoria Stetts of Montoursville Area School District in PA. She has been teaching for 26+ years: 4½ years at the elementary and middle school level and the 20+ years at the high school level.

She has extraordinary interaction with her students and works very closely with her Special Need students.

“We just created a ceramics class in our curriculum this year. We have taught ceramics in our classes, but now we have a class dedicated to only ceramics.”

Last year Mayco was in the Pennsylvania for a Professional Development event, using projects to demonstrate the properties of Mayco glazes and how they canbe applied. Vickie took the projects into her classroom and created lessons around them.

”First, I showed my students the giraffe box (that I made in your African-inspired clay boxes workshop in State College, PA). I used Mayco glazes on the giraffe."

"I told them that they didn't have to make African animals, they could do any animal that they wanted. Student first chose an animal and then they printed off a photo of their animal that they found on the Internet. Using the reference photo, the students made a sketch of their animal."

"The students chose which shape they wanted to make their box: square, rectangular or round.  Using paper, students created patterns for their pieces. I worked with them individually to figure out what size to make them."

"Next, they rolled out a slab of clay. I know that you like that rolling pin and stick thing.....but my students rolled their clay out using our wonderful slab roller!"

Students cut out the pieces for their box. We used a hair dryer to dry them out a little bit to get them stiff enough to hold their shape so that they could assemble the box/container section of their animal. This is approximately how far the students got in one 40 minute period.

The following class periods were used to create heads, wings, legs, arms, tails, beaks, etc. for their animal. Depending on the animal, some students put the heads on the lid or on the side of the box. After the bisque firing, the students glazed their projects with Mayco glazes. The projects are turning out really cool!"