Featured image taken by Emily Baginski.
Coloring outside the lines has never looked so good for Suzanne Teesdale, an art teacher at Timothy Ball Elementary School. She inspires creativity in her students by encouraging them to be makers and doers – and to grow through the creative process.
For Teesdale, creativity is about more than just producing finished work. It’s about exploration, trial and error, and building confidence.
“My passion really is having kids make and do, because it turns them into critical thinkers,” she said. “They work hard, and it’s because I really drive them to do that. I always tell them, ‘I love it if you love art,’ but I just want the kids to be makers and doers.”
Teesdale has been teaching art for 23 years, but she has been an artist her entire life. This year, she was named the recipient of the 2025 Artsonia Art Education Leadership Award, which honors pioneers in the art education community who inspire their peers and engage with their students.
She has used Artsonia since 2012. The platform allows students to create online portfolios and share their work with family and friends across the country.
“I got hooked on the small, incremental successes,” Teesdale said. “Being an art teacher, I’m really interested in kids becoming makers and doers.”
While she hopes her students develop a love for art, her top priority is helping them build critical thinking skills. Making and doing, she believes, helps develop their brains.
Teesdale teaches kindergarten through fifth grade, but she didn’t always plan to become a teacher. She grew up in Hersey, Michigan in the Lower peninsula, and then went to Marquette in the Upper Peninsula when she enrolled in Northern Michigan University as an art major. She stayed in the community following graduation -- she was both an artist and raised her boys there.
“It’s a college town, but a very strong artist community,” she said. “There were a lot of homeschoolers, and so I just happily gave art lessons and showed my art at galleries.”
Her teaching license came after years of creating and teaching informally.
“I had sort of tried teaching classes and found that when I got in classrooms, I was very shy. I always tended to be a shy person,” she said.
Still, her need to create outweighed her nerves. Before her interview with the Crown Point Community School Corporation, she was so nervous that she decided to stop studying and just make something instead.
“The interview was at 2 p.m., and I went down to my basement. I knew I was going to wear a scarf for the interview, and I made myself a scarf clasp out of this willow bark paper,” she said. “I soldered it and did this whole thing so that I could wear something that said ‘hope’ in it to the interview and boost myself up. I had to quit studying and make something.”
Teesdale’s love of hands-on art has evolved over time.
“I really love drawing and painting – they were my go-to – but I found that as I get older, I like mixed media art,” she said. “I found this little vintage game piece in a box the other day, and I set it aside and thought, ‘I have this idea.’ Assemblage and mixed media art would be really what I do now.”
She also coaches robotics, blending art, and STEM in new ways.
“Just that sort of synthesis of being a maker, however it comes through, is so good for kids,” she said. “So many of my robotics kids have also been some of my best artists over the years. It’s about the need for making.”
Teesdale often reminds her students to trust the process.
“I want them to love art, but I would say overriding that, I just want them to be doers,” she said. “I want them to try and fail and try and fail and try and grow during that process.”
She and her family chose to live in Crown Point partially because of the city’s strong commitment to education and the arts.
“When we moved to Crown Point, it was because of the schools,” she said. “I really like the support for education that is authentic, and the community involvement in doing things for the kids. Even at the schools that maybe don’t have as much as others, our parents are so involved and excited about their kids’ learning. Their kids grow. I think this is a wonderful community.”
Teesdale continues to read, make art, and channel her creativity whenever she can. Her greatest passion remains helping children become confident, capable creators.