Nica Operchuck Rumion

I am a product of LBUSD K-12 schools. Upon graduating from Stanford University in 1998 I intended on coming home for a year before making my next move and I was hired by the district. I quickly realized that this was what I was meant to do.

The first 18 years of my career were very language focused. I worked in a variety of bilingual, newcomer, and literacy settings. While I was working as a first grade literacy teacher at Stevenson a room became available and I set up a co-op art room for our staff with differentiated lessons by grade level. After two years, with the assistance of the Miller Foundation, I became a 60% art teacher, and eventually a 100% art teacher writing my own curriculum and sharing with other schools and teachers. I have helped several schools open art rooms, and I have done a variety of district trainings from Color Theory art curriculum to Ballet Folklorico for elementary students. I have also worked with the math elementary office to create art integration lessons for their curriculum guides and translated all of the work for DI schools. Our work at Stevenson has been published twice in School Arts Magazine. Two years ago I decided to pursue an Art Education MA to strengthen my art knowledge and my art teaching strategies.

This year I added a creative playroom to our Stevenson campus. This space is dedicated to dramatic play and choice-based creative learning.

Interestingly enough I found my own voice through the arts, dance. I started dancing at 4 years old and I have been the artistic director of a nonprofit folklorico dance group for 23 years. I definitely found my leadership voice through arts advocacy in the nonprofit arena and district elementary art dreaming.

My approach is the interconnected thinking of general education and the art room with a focus on process over product. I have been the only elementary art teacher for LBUSD for a few years and I am ecstatic that art is becoming a core experience for so many more elementary students district wide.