I am Anthony Lawton Davis.
I have been interested in art since I was a child. Some of my earliest memories are of watching my father draw and of us sitting together laughing and doodling on scraps of paper left over from his work. The first recognizable objects I could draw were cars and motorcycles. As a child, this fascination drove me to better my drawing techniques and to really look more into the design aspect of automobiles. It inspired me to attend design lectures with my father at his alma mater. It had me holding discussions about vehicle and house design and what I would do differently or how the designs impacted the world around them. And most importantly, this fascination had my technical skills steadily progressing as well as attuned me to how important it is to have an engaging and supportive teacher.
My desire to help others and to have a positive impact on the lives around me came mostly from my experiences in boy scouts. Scouting gave me the opportunity and the structure to volunteer and work within a group as a leader. In school, if I finished my work early, I enjoyed helping my classmates who were having trouble. When I reached high school, I enrolled in every art class I could, and was very fortunate to have a calm, composed, and unflappable guidance of a teacher by the name of Mr. Griffith for a ceramics class. I had always had an interest in helping others learn. Mr. Griffith saw this and pushed me to help my fellow students even more. His student centered teaching style and ability to manage a classroom full of students who were often trouble in other classes is what inspired me to strive to be a teacher.
I enrolled at Eastern Michigan University after high school and became involved on campus in various ways. I volunteered with Circle K, the collegiate level of Kiwanis International. I was a Resident Adviser in charge of a floor full of freshmen students during the 2008-09 school year. I participated in intramural sports during various years. I also am a part of the Intermedia Gallery Group (IGG) which is a student organization that staffs, and plans events in the student galleries on campus. I volunteer to help foreign exchange cohorts visiting EMU with transportation and various other things necessary to provide the best experience for visiting students.
My progress in education has been very much an adventure. In August of 2011, I left America and spent a year in South Korea teaching English to rural school children through the TaLK (Teaching and Learning in Korea) program. During that year I was solely responsible for my curriculum design and lesson planning. This experience was very challenging, exciting, and rewarding as I got to see the children work through the curriculum and meet the objectives I had set as well as having them rush up to me in public to show their parents what they had learned and how well they could converse in English. My experiences in Korea left me even more sure of my path and of my goal to become an educator.
In the summer of 2014 I took a job at Littleton Elementary School District teaching technology. I jumped at the opportunity to have a 3D printer in my classroom and to broaden my abilities as a teacher by developing curriculum for a subject I am very familiar with, but had not taught yet. During my year at Quentin Elementary School, I thrived in the technology position. Getting students excited about something they tend to take for granted gave me a new outlook on what was possible in teaching. I hope to continue teaching either art or technology for a very long time.
In 2015, I accepted the Art Teacher position at the Country Place Leadership Academy within the Littleton District. At CPLA, I worked to develop a comprehensive art curriculum based around the elements and principles of art and design. I also coached multiple sports, started and helped guide the 100% student lead art club, and advocated for the students and my fellow coworkers as a liason to the Red For Ed movement in 2018.
In 2015, I accepted the Art Teacher position at the Country Place Leadership Academy within the Littleton District. At CPLA, I worked to develop a comprehensive art curriculum based around the elements and principles of art and design. I also coached multiple sports, started and helped guide the 100% student lead art club, and advocated for the students and my fellow coworkers as a liason to the Red For Ed movement in 2018.
In august of 2019, I headed off to O'Hare airport on my way to South Korea a second time. This time with EPiK (English Program in Korea), a government program that expands on the TaLK program by placing native English speaking teachers in public school classrooms to help supplement their daily English instruction. For the first two years, I was placed at the Jeonju English center, an English immersion field trip destination center designed to increase engagement, interest, and excitement in learning English. I was able to take a single lesson and teach it repeatedly, allowing me to refine the differentiation, scaffolding, props, and activities to perfection, an experience most teachers don't get. The third year I was placed in 3 elementary schools, co-teaching with each schools' Korean English teacher and planning my curriculum around supporting and supplementing their curriculum.
All images and text copyrighted by Anthony Davis 2013