Twenty Years of Making, Teaching, and Growing: A Conversation with Jennifer Dietrich Fernandez

For twenty years, Jennifer Dietrich Fernandez has brought curiosity, craft, and a deep commitment to student voice into her K–5 art room at Tinc Road Elementary School. In this conversation, she reflects on the principles that guide her teaching, the artist residencies that left a lasting mark on her school community, and what it means to keep growing alongside her students.

Tell us about yourself! What do you teach, where do you teach, and how long have you been an arts educator?

I am a K–5 visual arts educator. I teach at Tinc Road Elementary School and I have been doing so for the past 20 years.

How would you describe your approach to teaching the arts? What principles or values guide your work in the classroom?

My artistic practice is continually evolving, grounded in a daily commitment to creating. I find both solace and purpose in the process, and I am driven by a deep passion for sculpture across a range of mediums. I am particularly drawn to hand-building with clay, as well as quilting, fiber art, and glasswork. My work explores how these materials can interact to form cohesive, dynamic pieces. Texture is central to my approach, along with the interplay of contrasts, dark and light, hard and soft, opaque and translucent, smooth and tactile.

Tell us about a program, project, or initiative you have developed or been a part of. What inspired it and what does it look like in practice?

While going to school for my MA+30, I attended the Teaching for Artistic Behavior Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. The workshop focuses on fostering student-directed artmaking, pedagogical development, and building sustainable studio habits. Student choice and voice is at the heart of my creative process, and I feel it is an important mindset that I bring into my teaching. I encourage students to experiment freely; cutting, weaving, assembling, and reimagining materials. Through fiber arts such as weaving, finger crochet, knitting, and felting, I introduce them to diverse techniques and artists, fostering curiosity, self-awareness, and building self-esteem through creative risk-taking.

How have you seen arts education impact your students? What moments or outcomes stand out to you?

My school had the opportunity to host two artist residencies, Kathy Casper, a mosaic artist, and Caren Frost Olmsted, a mural artist through PTO as well as a PRIDE grant from NJEA. The mosaic focused on character education, and the mural encompassed historical buildings in Mt. Olive as well as a focus on our curriculum and the activities we offer in our school. Students and staff were involved in both experiences. Students created clay tile figures and quotes that were included, and teachers created a tile of their favorite book characters to include on the mosaic panels. Students were a part of the process from the beginning to the end, and both experiences had a lasting impact on our school community.

What does showing up for your students through the arts mean to you?

Continued learning is essential to both my artistic and teaching practice. By expanding my skills, it allows me to bring new energy and inspiration into the classroom. By creating alongside my students and sharing the evolution of my work, I model artistic thinking before their eyes. I believe every student can connect with art when given meaningful opportunities to explore, guided by curiosity, experimentation, and exposure to a variety of art processes. I recently was awarded the Windgate Foundation’s Art Educator scholarship to attend a class at Peters Valley Craft Center and will be taking a class called Alternative Surfaces, taught by ceramic artist Sana Musasama. I always share my experience through photos of my workshops, share the knowledge attained, and the art pieces that I created with my student artists.