Angélica Xavier ~ Colouring Her Student's Lives

One of our Woman’s History Month spotlights has fallen on Angélica Lanzini Xavier (COLOURlovers user: angelicallxx), an Influential Woman of Today who lives and teaches in the Guarapuava, State of Paraná, Brazil. She is a graduate of music with a post graduate degree in Teaching Methodology of Art. Now a teacher of the State Education Network, she is leading the next generation toward a more colourful future with her innovative teaching methods and passion for art in all its forms.

This is no small task. With 14 classes and as many as 30 students per class with ages ranging from 11 to 17 years old, Angélica has her work cut out for her. To top it off, her curriculum includes a mix of visual arts, music, theatre, and dance, plus art history. Angélica tries to cover a bit of each genre, while also seeking the most effective method of deliverance for her students.

In an effort to combine art theory with hands-on experience, she turned to COLOURlovers as a teaching tool. As Angélica says,

“I decided to add the COLOURlovers in my classes after I read about the creation of the site as a pedagogical tool, and saw something that would be viable, interesting and a new evaluation tool.”

A very excited class headed to the computer lab for their first introduction to COLOURlovers.com. Angélica had each class start by creating personal profiles and then moved on to either patterns or palettes, depending on the class being taught. “English is also something we have learned,” she says, and has students use Google Translate to decipher unknown English words on the site. This is not a perfect system by any means, but “it is what serves our needs more quickly,” she explains.

[update 2011/03/18: this photo was removed per parent request]

Angélica sees a lot of potential in using COLOURlovers in the future. “I intend to explore all that is possible on the site. For example with colors: hot, cold, neutral shades of the same color,” she says. “I'll have to read more about COLOURlovers to see what more I can add.” She also believes in working with figure and background first, and then perspective, before designing the pattern.

Angélica truly seeks to inspire her students to think outside the box and realize the limitless possibilities this world has to offer through color and a little imagination.

A peek at Angélica's work...