Capo Valley Christian's Artsy Teacher

After 33 years of never picking up a paintbrush, on New Year's Eve 1995, Carol Thompson, sent out a prayer to have art in her life again. On the second day of the new year, Thompson was asked to take over the art department for ’ junior high and high school.

“I heard the holy spirit say, ‘Do it, and I will be with you.’ I said ‘Yes!’ and I had no idea what I was getting into,” Thompson said.

Thompson had painted a lot in high school but became discouraged and gave into self-criticism.

“I laid down my paint brushes when I graduated high school,” she said. After spending eight hours duplicating her favorite Van Gogh painting she found her talent rush back to her.

“Oh, we’re going to have fun! I can paint after all,” Thompson thought to herself.

On her first day teaching, Thompson could hear her doubtful self from her high school years echoed in her own art students.

Thompson saw B students criticizing each other and top A students criticizing themselves. To change this, she taught her students the most important lesson she learned from her own mother: “If you haven’t got something nice to say, don’t say it at all.”

The students were doubtful of their Thompson's art abilities. They knew her as their English teacher. She responded to their suspicions with an anecdote about her high school painting winning the Oregon state contest for National Merit Society and it being hung in the White House.

Because Thompson was familiar with the position the students were in, having low-self esteem, she knew how to reach them; how to dispels the myth of "I can't."

The 23 students whom Thompson taught during her first year doubled to 46 the next year and jumped to 75 the following year. When the art program reached 90 students, Thompson asked the administration to make a waitlist for the course because the classroom ran out of drying shelves.

Thompson’s rules

Thompson has consoled many a student who walks into her art classroom “petrified” by telling them, “You are only expected to come in with a cooperative attitude; it is my job to teach you.”

When students start comparing their own work to others’ talents, the artist hides inside, she said.

“Your bear went into hibernation, and it is your job to bring that bear out. If you don’t feed your bear with good stuff, I’m coming after you,” she often tells her level one students.

In Thompson’s class, students are not allowed to criticize each other or themselves. Thompson continues this encouragement by pointing out the good in their paintings, not the bad. “They just blossom,” Thompson said as she pointed out that every student’s painting hanging in the hallway.

Every year that Capistrano Valley Christian Schools has submitted paintings to Imagination Celebration, some of the paintings are chosen for display at the Laguna Arts Festival Junior Exhibit as a part of Pageant of the Masters.

This year, students from grades 1-12 submitted a total of 50 paintings to a countywide contest called Imagination Celebration, and 41 were accepted. 

Alaska and the garden

Seattle-born, Thompson graduated with an English degree from Eastern Washington State University with her husband of what has now been 48 years.

While Rodney Thompson was traveling around taking courses for his masters, Carol Thompson followed him around from college to college.

Throughout her time at nine different colleges, Thompson never took an art class.

Even now, she rarely picks up a paintbrush herself, although, “the smell of oil paint is one of my favorite all-time smells,” she said.

Thompson has renewed her love for art but has extended her talents into plants and flowers. Thompson has become an avid gardener.

“I paint with flowers,” she said. In 2010, Thompson’s English garden at her San Clemente home won “Best Do-It-Yourself Garden in Orange County” by Roger’s Gardens. Thompson transferred her eye for paint and texture to the art of landscape design. She took four years of night classes at Saddleback College to be certified in horticulture.

Still at it, Thompson expects to become certified in landscape design with two more courses.

Before she built Capistrano Valley Christian Schools' art program up from casual classroom sketches to Pageant of the Masters exhibits, Thompson helped build a Christian school in Alaska, as head of the department of English for 12 years there. After 20 years of teaching English, she moved to San Clemente to teach English at Capistrano Valley Christian Schools.

“Two years later I was handed the art department on a silver platter," Thompson said.

The technique

Students are taught a variety of techniques, such as color theory, still life, landscapes, portrait painting with face and body proportions. Thompson also teaches them how to work with charcoal, pastels and acrylic paint.

“I would put a little bit more of the mint tone about the umbrella,” Thompson suggested as Mariah Meyer, who has been painting with Thompson since third grade, looked at her canvas.

Thompson combines the different class levels and course levels into one class period. This allows the students to learn from each other.

“You are not to judge yourself by the person you are sitting next to.” To motivate the internationally mixed students to work out of their “language groups,” Thompson had students draw numbers that would thoroughly mix up the kids.

“By the time we broke it down and they were all one big family, the students flourished. We are breaking down the barrier of criticism, self-criticism, fear of what the other person is thinking, and once you get fear out of the room, whatever I instruct them in, it just blooms and flourishes and the kids say, ‘Wow, I did that!’”

A credited art program

All of Thompson’s art classes have been pre-approved by the UC system as college credit courses. In Art 3, students study Art History, learning about 35 different artists and how their works and lives influenced what was socially and historically relevant at the time.

Because the students from different class levels are mixed in the same classroom, students in Art 1 and 2 “absorb the information as well.” Students paint copies of artwork by Van Gogh, the impressionists, modern artists and one artist of their own choosing.

“I have to keep track of what everybody is doing on each of the levels.”  Once a month, Thompson has each student bring her an “accomplishment packet” with which Thompson can keep track of whether each student is meeting the class requirements.

Students add color to little town San Juan Capistrano

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of San Juan Capistrano in fall 2010, local high schools were invited to participate in a banner art competition.

“I picked up 'The History of San Juan Capistrano' book, and it was so fascinating,” she said. Kids chose their crayons and started drawing while Thompson read the students a history of San Juan Capistrano.

“We were shocked” when the banner committee called the school and told Thompson that 12 of the 17 drawings chosen for the competition were from Thompsons’ students.

The committee wanted to know what was different about her art program. She responded with “the belief in their own ability, without the criticism that drew forth the creativity.”

Many of the students’ works have been submitted to Laguna Arts Festival Junior Exhibit; most of which will be displayed this summer on the festival grounds. 

In May 2011, the judges for the All District Art Exhibit in the Imagination Celebration’s Countrywide Arts Festival chose 22 works created by of Capistrano Valley Christian School students. The school’s administration announced the success of their students on the school’s website.

“Our students' artwork were chosen from over 6,500 county entries from private and public schools, grades kindergarten through high school,” Thompson said.

The students

Seventh- and eighth-graders paint together, each gaining experience with practice, and just the right amount of advice from Thompson, they said. Most of the junior high students enjoy painting colorful landscapes, following in Thompson’s garden-inspired footsteps.

Andrea Moore, an eighth grader, has been working with Thompson the longest of the students in the class. Since Moore was just a second grader, she has been taking classes with Thompson in the afterschool program and on through the junior high courses.

Thompson teaches an after school art class for grades 1-3 and 4-6 so that students can learn the techniques and build confidence from a young age. The early courses also means that kids can get a head start in preparing for her courses for when they attend the junior high and high school.

One of Rebecca Gilbertson’s recent paintings went up for auction and was auctioned off to a San Juan Capistrano resident, and Imagination Celebration accepted another painting of hers.

Josh Fricks is one eighth grader who doesn’t have a paintbrush in hand. He participates in the class as Thompson’s teaching assistant, cleaning pallets and making transfers onto watercolor paper. He was able to get a taste of painting in his previous year and hopes take the course again and return to painting instead of cleaning.

Thompson’s course has become so legendary in the past 18 years that one of the few regrets seniors have is that they didn’t start taking her courses sooner.

“They don’t want me to retire, and I don’t want to retire, I have just too much excitement going on,” the teacher said.