The abundant smell of paint and oil pastels float down the hallway of the art room as the students file into their seats to begin class for the day. The quiet hum of conversation mingles with the faint scratch of pencils on paper and the swirls of paintbrushes in colorful water. As the teacher gives the first instructions of the day, the room buzzes with energy.
Amy Koch, an elementary school art teacher, is retiring at the end of the 2025 school year. Koch has taught for the Revere district for the past 25 years. As her chapter at Revere is closing, she took time to reflect on her career and people who helped her get there.
For many young students, art class is the best part of the day—a place where they can be themselves and let their creativity run free. That is exactly what art teacher Amy Koch wants for her students.
“I don’t like to say that [art] has to look a certain way. . . . I tell my students there is no wrong way to do it. There are limitations on, let’s say, how much of something you can use or material, but I do not tell them how it should work,” Koch said.
Koch believes that art is personal and that kids need to feel safe expressing themselves. As her students transition to middle school, there is a time when they start to close off and feel judged by their peers, but Koch helps kids focus on their expression through the art itself.
“Something that is important to me, especially for kids at this age, you have to remember what we’ve got in our imagination. And when you get that out on paper, it’s very scary to have people all of a sudden see what you’re thinking or feeling. . . . So you’ve got to be setting up your classroom to be respectful of each other.” Koch said.
Her students not only learn how to make art, but how to express their creativity and own it. Elementary school kids still have a creative and wild imagination, and there is no fear in showing their creative side.
Kerrigan Stanoch, a junior A.P. Studio art student at Revere High School, had Koch as an art teacher in elementary school. She talks about how Koch helped her expand her mediums and creativity.
“I remember [the] projects were really fun. I grew up basically being an artist, so she helped me grow and figure out what I wanted to do.” Stanoch said.
The transition from elementary school art to a high school A.P. art class has many changes, but Koch teaches students the basics that stick with them for many art classes to come.
“We did watercolor in this last class, and my kids that are usually not on task are totally absorbed in the process of just watching the paint absorb into the paper or watching the paint as they rinse the brush. It’s just such a tactile thing that some kids enjoy or hate,” Koch said.
Even students who do not always focus on other subjects find themselves getting lost in their art. Her projects help kids stay engaged and want to come back to art class.
Dan Fry, the Bath Elementary School (BES) principal, talks about how Koch transformed the school’s representation of art to help with student engagement, while continuing to get the students involved throughout the school year.
“She had a big mural of the old school that the kids helped her make. She was awesome. She designed it and planned it, and she incorporated the kids’ work into it,” Fry said.
Koch would use her own art as decorations throughout the old BES building. The new BES building opened at the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year. It has increased space for specialized classes like art, gym, steam, and helped to update the previous building that opened in 1923. Each year she would create something different with a new group of students. With every group of students she teaches, it is a new technique or a new blending of colors that students can incorporate into their piece of art.
Koch’s love for art started early and only grew stronger over the years. In college, she had a professor who encouraged her to be original and creative without barriers. She teaches techniques that carry into middle school and even high school art standards.
“My favorite professor, Mark Sopland at the University of Akron, was the only professor that I ever had who didn’t expect me or anybody else to make art the way he did. . . . He was very open-minded, and he would set some sort of goal for us. And then we had to go about it any way we wanted,” Koch said.
Koch uses her past experiences to drive her motivations to teach her students with compassion and focus more on being a positive adult role model than an instructor.
“I started drawing, I started doing artwork around age four. I started designing 3D stuff at that age as well. I always liked miniature things. I made little people, little houses and little stuff, and I’d go outside and build things,” she said.
Starting small, Koch engages herself in ways a child would play or create items. Some children tend to grow out of their hobby at a later age, but Koch’s talent and love for art grew as she had positive role models in her family to keep encouraging her. Her grandma was a member of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was a program that was started in the Great Depression by artists who helped to bridge the gap between the federal government and American society.
“My grandmother was the first female fabric designer in America. She did Radio City Music Hall, and all the fabric flooring, the chairs, and all those designs. . . . There are things [of hers] in museums, but she also did so many different things, not just fabric. She was a Fulbright Scholar, either the first or second ever. She was part of a Works Progress Administration program just for artists.” Koch said.
Koch’s love for hands-on art started when she was young and was heavily supported by her family. Art from the WPA can range anywhere from $300 to $12,000. With her mom and her grandmother’s art history, she fell right into place when she took the art teacher position at BES.
“There was a young lady who was taking ceramics and there was a pottery studio [where I lived]. In the summertime, when all the students were gone, I had nothing to do. And I wandered over to a barn full of kick wheels, and she taught me how to use a kick wheel to make pottery at age nine. This [was] in 1969 and I loved it,” Koch said.
Koch’s love for pottery began early. That experience sparked a lifelong passion she would later pass on to countless students. Now, as she prepares to leave, her absence will be deeply felt.
“She is a special person and an amazing teacher and we will miss her very much. . . It is going to be really, really, really hard to replace her,” Fry said.
Now, Koch is using all that experience to inspire young artists. She encourages kids to be themselves, explore new techniques and never be afraid to make mistakes. With that mindset, her students learn more than just art—they learn confidence, creativity and self-expression, one project at a time.
