Jackson Elementary teacher Becky Balestrieri combines genres to
excite her young students
When she’s not in the classroom, Jackson Elementary school teacher Becky Balestrieri is still working to improve her students’ education.
Most recently, she spent hours after school creating Egyptian costumes for her 20 pupils to help them get excited about learning about the ancient culture and become interested in history.
“She did such a wonderful job, they’re so authentic,” said parent Cassandra Morgan. “We think she’s a really special teacher, having the kids learn so much about history in the first grade and making it fun for them.”
Jackson Elementary School Principal Karen Tavares said she is impressed with Balestrieri’s projects.
“Each of our teachers at Jackson provides unique experiences, but her talent happens to lie in artistic venues,” she said. “The opportunities that she provides for her children are very unique. We celebrate the experiences our children have in her classroom.”
Balestrieri’s creativity does not stop at the end of her workday. Over the years, she’s been involved with a number of projects, including an art business with her husband and a wedding design business with her daughter.
“I’ve always loved the arts, even as a young child,” she said.
It was that love of the arts that drove her as a teacher to share it with her students. She began her 11-year teaching career in the late 1970’s at Machado School in Morgan Hill, then taught for a short time in Gilroy before taking a break to be home with her children. Before going to Jackson, she taught part-time at a small school – six teachers – in Tres Pinos. There were no art or music teachers, and she was determined to create a curriculum.
“It’s great to have this to look forward to in January,” she said. “After the holidays, January is like the doldrums. The kids are in the groove, which is good, and we bring this project in, which is kind-of a subtext underlying everything we do.”
This year, her classroom project focused on Egypt. She had the children participate in a fashion show she titled, “The Nile Collection.” Next year, she’s planning something different.
“After being totally immersed in the project each year, when we finally put it aside, I’m finished with it. I don’t want to think about it again for a while,” she said. “Then, in four years, when I pull it all out again, it will seem fresh and new, and I’ll get excited.”
When Balestrieri first began creating her projects, she intended to cover all of the periods in art history, from “caveman to Picasso,” she said. So she settled on four that she would focus on.
“Cave painting was the first, and what I originally had in mind was just teaching students how to draw using basic shapes,” she said. “I had them outline an animal and distort it, and we created a giant mural.”
When her class is doing the cave painting project, she said, they have a night for parents at the end, with the student artwork on display and a reception featuring food that would have been available 30,000 years ago.
For her Egyptian project, students also create a mural, learning to draw Egyptian figures by using basic shapes. They also learn about the culture, and, this year, they took a field trip to an Egyptian exhibit at a museum. The fashion show was fun for the students, Balestrieri said, and a lot of work for her, but it was a labor of love.
“To see it work out as I had imagined, to see how much they enjoyed it, that was the best part,” she said. “The costumes are very authentic. I did a lot of research, except for possibly the materials, and the kids were so excited to dress up.”
Two other projects Balestrieri rotates out with the Egyptian theme and the cave painting project are a Western, “Salute to the American Cowboy,” and “Little Red Riding Hood, The Opera.”
She created projects that combine various aspects of the arts, meeting California teaching standards, but in an ingenious way. Each project becomes part of the classroom’s daily life for several months, beginning after the winter break in December.
Balestrieri credits her master teacher, Peter Demmi at Franklin McKinley Elementary School in San Jose, with her classroom savvy.
“He was an incredible master teacher,” she said. “I went to San Jose State and asked them to let me work with him in a tutorial program, and they let me do it. So almost every day, I was there when he set up in the morning, until the end of the day. He was so skillful in explaining things. Of course his practices were good, but he was able to tell you the reason behind what he did.”
But spending time with a master teacher was not a new experience for Balestrieri. She came from a family of teachers.
“I grew up in the back of a staff room from about the time I was 5,” she said.
Balestrieri said she enjoys teaching first graders and has always known that she wanted to teach the lower grade levels.
“They are my absolute favorite,” she said of her first graders. “At this age, they are so enthusiastic about learning. I like to say they have one foot in reality and one foot in fantasy, and they don’t always know where they are.”
Marilyn Dubil covers education and law enforcement for The Times. Reach her at (408) 779-4106 ext. 202 or at md****@mo*************.com.
