Let’s welcome Mrs. Ashley to Barlow. You can find her in the art room as a student teacher. “Everybody here is so nice and welcoming.” So far, she loves working with Mrs. Gibson and the students. She has been working towards learning the art room routines and meeting students. Currently, she has moved on to teaching five full classes a day. Her favorite class to teach is Drawing 2, but personally, she enjoys painting the most.
Mrs. Ashley loves Oregon and was thrilled to leave Idaho behind, including the sunshine, in 2011. She simply likes all of Oregon, especially the rain. Mrs. Ashley is the proud owner of a Torbi cat named Tallie, her favorite color is jade green, and she loves to play video games. She has always fallen in love with art and has a 13-year-old daughter who also follows the artsy desires, so she has enjoyed being able to teach her daughter cool things. Mrs. Ashley’s favorite form of art is painting. One of her favorite pieces of art is a painting she created of a polluted ocean with the skeleton of an angler fish eating a grenade. Art means a lot to her as she can use it to bring light to represent both the women’s and LGBTQ communities through her pieces. To check some of these out, you can find her Instagram #rainbowgdesign or bump into her locally when she’s exhibiting. A silly fact is that her favorite animal is a bat, and she has one tattooed on her foot.
Mrs. Ashley’s big goal is to get her PhD in art history or art education. Her path to this goal is quite unique. She’d like to go to school in Europe so she can use their free PhD programs. To do this, she would need to be a citizen. She is working towards her Italian citizenship card using family connections throughout Europe and family in Sweden. Her great-grandmother and grandma are her connections to citizenship for Europe. This type of citizenship is called lineage citizenship. This will be a lot of traveling in addition to her exciting plans of exploring the country of Japan in 2027.
If you want to meet or learn more about Mrs. Ashley, pop in and say hello or ask her a question during class. She is upbeat, bubbly, approachable, and a very friendly person. She says, “The best advice I could give to a high school student is to set boundaries and stick to them.”
