DANVILLE – Tierany Lyons has felt a calling that may eventually alter the scope of her professional life, but for now her focus is directly on expanding the awareness of her art students at Danville High School.
Lyons is a fourth-year teacher at the school where she graduated in 2012.
“Even if students don’t come in loving art, they see how their lives interact with art,” she said. “I think art changes the way people see life. When they engage with art it impacts their lives in many ways, including the way they decorate their homes or express themselves on social media. History and other cultures are all documented visually.”
Lyons earned her degree in art education from Mount Vernon Nazarene University in 2018. She teaches four high school courses: beginning art, intermediate, advanced and ceramics. She also teaches a mandatory nine-week course for seventh-graders. Over the course of the year she will interact with about 125 students.
“I try to talk to every student every day. I love these kids,” she said.
Principal Jeanette McCann said Lyons’ skills are complimented by her demeanor.
“Kids enjoy her classes because they feel so welcome and safe,” McCann said. “They get to create and freely express themselves through art without being criticized.”
While most students may not move on to art-related careers, some will. Junior Mary Ann Troyer will graduate a year early in May to enter BYU-Idaho University where she will study landscape and animal painting. Senior Preston Owen will attend Mount Vernon Nazarene University to study graphic design.
“I think it is important to learn how to make things,” Lyons said. “We do a lot of self reflection and peer critiquing – critiquing, not criticizing. How can I assess what I’ve done myself? What do I like about this? What could have been done better?”
Lyons participated in November’s Ohio Art Educators Conference in Toledo. She exhibited works of her own during the show there and came back with ideas to incorporate into her instruction. Currently, her ceramics studies are charged with creating human figures that show emotion without facial expression.
Last summer Lyons taught a summer workshop for grades 5 and 6 at the Columbus Museum of Art. This summer she will return for a grades 3-5 workshop. And in the spring of 2025 she and other adults will lead a group of juniors and seniors to Italy.
While managing a household that includes four kids ages 3, 5, 10 and 13, Lyons is enrolled online at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in St. Paul, Minn., where she is pursuing a masters of art in theology and the arts.
“I felt like God was calling me to seminary study to see how art interacts with religious images, how we interpret the Divine,” said Lyons, who serves on the art committee at the First Church of the Nazarene in Mount Vernon.
“There is no specific focus on studio art but the intersection between visual art and theological understanding within historic and contemporary culture. The college offers the opportunity to submit traditional research but also art pieces for consideration. I plan to submit both.”
So where will the masters degree take her?
“My pursuit is based on curiosity and knowledge,” Lyons said. “Honestly, I don’t know what I will do.”
For now, Principal McCann and dozens of art students are glad she is right where she is – teaching in the very building where her career took root.
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The Knox Educational Service Center partners with the Danville, Centerburg, East Knox, Fredericktown and Mount Vernon school districts, as well as the Knox County Career Center, to develop, implement and operate cooperative, shared educational services.