For my historical educational lineage, I created a cyanotype. I love the process of creating a cyanotype, the idea of seeing an image come to life after washing the paper is very magical and feels very representative to me and my educational lineage. Cyanotypes are really one of a kind and no two are ever going to look the same, I found that concept very fitting in showing my life and is why I chose to create a cyanotype. 
 
In my cyanotype I created a tree using flowers and let the larger flowers signify the teachers that I felt impacted my life and led me to where I am now. The first flower I want to talk about is my first impactful teacher who wasn’t even education teacher, my dance teacher. I danced for 15 years of my life and dance was and still is one of the things that has probably shaped me the most throughout the years. I started dance when I was very young, my mom had signed me up for just one ballet class and I fell in love with it. I continued to dance completely throughout my life until college and the teacher that I would credit that too is Mrs. Gayle. My dance teacher Gayle had taught me from the beginning and continued teaching me throughout high school and was one of the people I would go to for help when school was seeming to become impossible. She also reached out to me and continued to talk to me throughout college and was one of the biggest inspirations into going back and becoming a teacher. 
Continuing on the tree to my next flower was my elementary art teacher Mrs. Doyle. She was a huge impact on who I am today. All throughout elementary school I loved art. Even now looking back at some of the old books we made, I always said I wanted to be an artist and I believe I owe the majority of my path to her. She always made art so fun and relaxing for me. During this time, I was able to have art in two art shows and I think that really boosted my confidence in art and helping me to excel in art. 
After that I went on to middle school, when thinking about middle school I couldn’t really remember anything significant from the years and couldn’t even remember a single teachers name. So, I just represented those years with little flowers. 
I then moved to high school, high school for me was some of the best and worst years of my life and it all really started sophomore year. I started that part of the tree with a big part of a rose bush, if you look down the stem you can see the spikes and that is because in my high school, the school pushes you to take honors and AP classes. For me they made me take an honors English class and AP US History which really ruined the first semester of my sophomore year. I was struggling to understand what was going on and my teachers were understating of me, I would talk to them just made me feel stupid for not understanding the material. This caused me a lot of depression and anxiety, I would come home crying to my mom and would just miss school because it was so terrible for me to go. Finally, around November my mom met with the district and was able to get me out of those classes. However, they still really negatively affected me and after that I went on to a psychologist and was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. Continuing on was my second semester of my sophomore year and that was when I found the art hallway. The two big flowers in the center represent my two art teachers Mrs. Ramin and Mrs. Andrusiak they were my photo and AP Art teachers. They helped me get through the rest of high school. I spent all of my free time taking art classes and hanging out in the art hallway. They pushed me to enter my photos in Scholastic and helped me realize that I could go to an art school and pursue photography. I truly believe that if I didn’t have them as teachers in high school, I would be doing something completely different right now. Even though I always knew I wanted to do something in the art field most of the teachers in my high school made it seem like art was only a hobby and without those two teachers I probably would have thought the same way. They still continue to be huge influences on my life today and why I want to be an Art Education teacher, so I can impact kids the way they impacted me. 
Following down my tree I continued on to include my time at College for Creative Studies with more flowers. After graduating I realized how much I grew from being at CCS and how much it impacted me and felt it was important to my lineage. Throughout my years at CCS I had many great teachers. Two teachers that impacted me the most were the only two woman teachers in the photo department. Both teachers helped me see my images and my power of being a woman photographer in a totally different way that I never really realized until my senior year. They really helped me shape the way I think about photographing in a totally different way and impacted my thesis work immensely. I truly believe that they fully helped me realize who I am as a person and an artist. They were the final branches on my tree, and they solidified my desire to be a teacher. I want to help people realize who they are and what they can become. While also showing them what message they can be sharing using art. It took me until the end of my senior year in college to realize all of that and I only hope to help others figure that out sooner.