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  • Allison Gamlen’s journey from actor to arts educator

    Allison Gamlen’s journey from actor to arts educator


    Allison Gamlen’s drama class forms a power circle.

    Credit: Courtesy of Allison Gamlen

    Allison Gamlen has always believed the show must go on. During the depths of the pandemic, when schools were shuttered and many children were suffering from fear and isolation, the arts educator fought to keep her students engaged. 

    When she realized some kids were turning their cameras off and playing video games during her Zoom drama class, she decided to hold some rehearsals in person, in the park. It was important to her that her students keep learning about the arts, but it was even more important to give them a space to connect. These outdoor rehearsals were entirely optional. Students kept their distance and wore masks, but they still found great comfort in that bond.

    “It was a hard time for the kids, for all of us really,” said Gamlen, visual and performing arts coordinator for the San Mateo County Office of Education. “I just wanted to give them some people to connect with. I could cry right now just talking about how moving it was. We made a community, and I wanted to keep that community intact.”

    Gamlen, a 45-year-old single mother, brings a chipper, can-do attitude to her work, particularly the need to be there for young people amid the escalating youth mental health crisis. Giving children a chance to voice their deepest, darkest feelings is at the core of the therapeutic powers of arts education. That’s a key reason Gamlen and other arts educators are cheering the advent of Proposition 28, which guarantees funding, roughly $1 billion this year, for music and arts education in TK-12. 

    “The need for arts education has never been greater,” said Jill MacLean, the director of American Conservatory Theater’s Young Conservatory. “I’ve witnessed many times over, especially these past few years, the transformative power of even the simplest theater-based experiences can be a lifeline to a child. For those who are struggling with anything from discovering their identity and interests to dealing with trauma – having a medium that celebrates uniqueness and grants permission to be creative while rewarding collaboration and focused effort – is exceptionally beneficial. The very foundation of acting is connecting to another human being, to share stories as a way to find meaning and relationship to others in the world.”

    Like many in the teaching arts field, Gamlen is an educator, but she’s also an artist. She first fell in love with the theater at age 3 when her grandmother took her to a Japanese puppetry version of “Macbeth.” Some little kids might have been intimidated by the Scottish play, but she was entranced.

    “I remember this intense feeling,” she said. “I remember the colors, red and black, and I remember feeling like there was no disconnect between me and the performers. I felt immersed in it, and it was so terrifying and so exciting and so unlike anything I had ever seen. I knew that was for me. That world.”

    She cut her teeth as an actor and dancer. In addition to her work in the schools, she also teaches musical theater at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater’s youth conservatory. She also recently appeared in the company’s campy revival of “The Wizard of Oz.”

    In traditional showbiz fashion, she paid her dues waiting tables, auditioning for parts and barely scraping by, until one fateful day in LA, watching her toddler, Anna, flap around the backyard in butterfly wings, tall green boots and a bug antenna. She found herself confronting the reality that she needed a stable income and health insurance to raise her child. Being a starving artist wore out its welcome.

    “I couldn’t even go buy a cup of coffee. I had negative money,” she said, in a typical light-hearted quip about a heavy subject. “There were definitely times I was on food stamps, to be honest with you, for the early part of my life. Diapers alone will kill you.”

    That day, Gamlen decided to move back home with her parents in the Bay Area, go back to school and pursue a teaching credential in arts education. Everything fell into place after that. She considers her current role as visual and performing arts coordinator for San Mateo County to be her dream job.

    “Arts education access is a student right,” she said. “I love getting to work with students, teachers, and school leaders to improve student outcomes through increasing arts equity.”

    That may be one reason Gamlen radiates optimism. While some in arts education circles have focused on the complications of implementing Proposition 28, which will put the arts back into classrooms after decades of cutbacks, she prefers to keep her eye on the upside. For example, there will soon be thousands of new jobs for arts educators, many of whom, like Gamlen, have long struggled to get by as artists. 

    “I am so stoked,” she said.  “I know we’re hearing there’s a lot of questions and challenges, but it’s phenomenal. It’s so fantastic. So I can deal with the waiting. I can deal with the uncertainty.”

    Like most arts educators, she sees her work as an avocation rather than a job. She believes in the power of the arts to elevate the educational experience and many say that commitment shows in her work.

    “She is one of our newest and most active county arts leads and has made a great impression on me,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents’ statewide arts initiative. “She is very energetic and engaged in her work supporting arts education in her county, and very collaborative in her interactions and contributions to our network.”

    She’s also a practical soul, often encouraging students to pursue media arts so they can snag a high-paying Silicon Valley tech job if they want to afford to live in the Bay Area. 

    “What makes Allison stand out, aside from her own skill set and artistry, is her keen interest in providing students with concrete tools they can take with them for their future experiences,” said MacLean.

    There’s certainly a treasure trove of knowledge and nuance to be mined in a comprehensive arts education. Theater classes combine learning the craft of the actor with a deep understanding of how to best interpret the text. Actor training often taps into disciplines as diverse as history, literature and movement in order to make the leap from page to stage. If you are studying a scene from Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold … and the Boys,” for instance, you must take a deep dive into the legacy of colonialism, race and apartheid as well as the art of ballroom dancing.

    “Allison’s knowledge about the process of acting, and her ability to break it down and make it accessible to young actors, is a gift,” said MacLean. “She understands the value of creating scaffolding to build a strong foundation when working with students. From a teaching standpoint, we are only as strong as our ability to effectively communicate the tools of trade.”

    The lessons Gamlen hopes to impart go far beyond acting, however. She also hopes to help create a nurturing environment for a generation of students living through tumultuous times. 

    “It’s our job to create a safe space for them,” she said. “Students in this generation are living through the craziest times I can remember. I was there with them for that spooky orange sky day, and the insurrection and the inauguration too. The arts absolutely can be a place to process those things.”





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  • For preschool educator, kids’ paintings give them a deep brush with themselves

    For preschool educator, kids’ paintings give them a deep brush with themselves


    Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Mendoza

    Daniel Mendoza makes his own paintbrushes. It may have started out as a way to save money, but it also reflects his aesthetic as a veteran preschool teacher who uses painting to engage pint-sized students.

    “The brushes happened out of a necessity of wanting to make things big,” said the child development specialist who is also a painter. “If you’re familiar with preschool teachers, we make super low salaries starting out. I had to stay on a budget.”

    Daniel Mendoza uses art as a way to spark engagement in preschool.
    Credit: Daniel Mendoza

    Instead of downsizing his plans to teach small children how to create epic murals or Jackson Pollock-style canvases, Mendoza got creative. The brushes became a symbol of his DIY vibe.

    “I came up with this mop-style brush,” said the 44-year-old, with customary modesty. “It really allowed me to feel even more connected to this work and a part of who I am and what I’m trying to convey, down to the materials themselves.” 

    While he started out as a musician and now works primarily in visual arts, he says the leap to education was a no-brainer for him. 

    “It wasn’t really a stretch for me to move worlds,” said Mendoza, the program administrator for the Placer County Office of Education early childhood education department. “Music and visual arts are so interconnected. Even education is the same in ways.  It takes thinking in that creative mindset.”

    Much like the preschoolers he spent 10 years teaching, Mendoza embraces big messes. One of the first things students saw when they came into his classroom was a drippy, paint-splattered canvas.

    Now, he teaches other educators how to unleash the power of creativity in the classroom. Some teachers are afraid of making a big mess, but he relishes it.

    “Art is intrinsic to who we are as humans,” he said. “It’s tied to our identity and our outlook on how we view the world.  Think about the aesthetics of art, and how that is tied to everyday life. What we like to wear, eat, listen to … We want to create, it’s deep in who we are.”

    Mendoza, who grew up on a pistachio farm, seeing nature as his playground, believes that children are naturally artists. They love to get down-and-dirty, and they often focus more on the process than the product. Sometimes a child will concentrate so hard on a piece they seem to lose themselves in the work, only to run off as soon as it’s finished.

    “They love making the art,” he quips, “not putting their name on it.”

    Little children think outside the box by default, experts say. The challenge is how to let them grow that impulse even as they grow up. 

    “Preschoolers live in their creative mindset, all the time. It’s the perfect space for me,” he said. “Art gives children a voice. It opens the door for them to share their feelings, their thoughts, their ideas.”

    Having grown up in a low-income immigrant family, Mendoza is passionate about making sure all children have the same exposure to the arts that high-income families often take for granted.

    “I was a Head Start kid, I know what it’s like to struggle,” said Mendoza. “It’s sad because when we think about the circle, generational poverty or generational addiction as opposed to generational wealth and prosperity. Some of these children will stay in this lower socioeconomic status as they grow into adults. That’s how they exist. Giving them tools like art, dancing, painting, gives them an understanding of freedom, of expression, of identity.”

    Mendoza views teaching as an art form of its own, cultivating his pedagogy with the same depth of dedication as his mixed-medium artworks.

    “He approaches his work like an artist — with creativity,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents Statewide Arts Initiative, “but also with an educator’s understanding of how to remove enough limitations to engage in play and art-making both individually and collectively.”

    Preschool teacher Daniel Mendoza with some of his students.
    credit: Daniel Mendoza

    Sometimes Mendoza worries that no matter how much headway he makes in the early years, encouraging children to think for themselves and embrace their creativity, that it all gets lost by middle school, when the intense pressure on achieving high test scores can diminish the love of learning.

    “I feel that so many don’t see that connection, the connection art has to culture, individuality and community,” he says ruefully. “It might be a lack of education or awareness, but this conversation is missing. Helping connect what is seen as a ‘luxury’ to those learning goals and foundations that are important to families, gives us an opportunity to show the massive impact the arts have on children’s learning and ability to reach their maximum potential in school and throughout life.  We all need the arts, not just children.”

    He partly blames the laser focus on numeracy and literacy for creating a more stressful environment for children that also hasn’t moved the needle academically.

    “Math scores are down,” he notes. “We have done math all day, and then we did this after-school math program, and now we’re sending math homework home, and that’s still not working. So now we’re going to double down and kids are going to do math on the weekends. I’ve watched a lot of baseball. That’s three strikes right there.”

    By contrast, art teaches focus, he says. It demands that you slow your roll, pay attention and then reflect on the nuance. That depth of concentration and perception pays off in all the other subject areas, experts say. 

    “He has the seamless ability to integrate the arts with other content areas,” said Jennifer Hicks, assistant superintendent of educational services at the Placer County Office of Education. “When children experience art with Daniel, they are experiencing math, they are experiencing literacy, they are experiencing science.”

    Mendoza says he almost got arrested once at the old Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas for spending too much time looking at a painting. The lights turned off, and when security guards appeared, they assumed he was up to no good.

    “Art is an invitation to have an inner dialogue,” he said. “To examine yourself, what you think, what you feel.”

    Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Mendoza

    One of the most noticeable things about Mendoza is his exuberance for art and learning for their own sake. That’s partly why small children often gravitate to him, even when he and his wife are just out shopping at Target, because he radiates warmth.

    “Daniel is joyful,” said Hicks. “ His passion for early education is apparent in everything he does.  He’s always ready to take on a new project or implement an innovative idea. He has a magical way of communicating with children, teaching them language, expression and how to be good humans.”

    While his time is jam-packed with training preschool teachers, painting and teaching about the creative process in children at Sierra College, when he needs to recharge creatively, he always heads back into the classroom to the little ones who are his muses. 

    “If my tank is low, I go hang out at one of our classrooms,” he said. “The children are always so awesome at refilling that creative tank for me.”





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