Nidia Morales: ‘A Sense of Aliveness!’
The Right Balance
Last week I had the opportunity to take some photos of Nidia Morales in her afterschool classroom at Morris Jeff Community School as she and her students cleaned up a visual art project they had been working on. Nidia gently guided the students through the cleaning process which took several minutes of reminders to focus. Once that was done, they circled up to talk about what they were grateful for.
As an artist, one thing Nidia is grateful for is having multiple streams of income, a situation that can be scary and not feel stable. But after being a full time arts educator for a while, Nidia decided being a Teaching Artist with YALA was the right balance for her. As she says, “I get the better version of me when I can do art and create art as well– I love kids and teaching but I'm a better teacher if I do art myself.”
Nidia Morales grew up in Palo Alto, CA immersed in theater, visual arts, music, and cultural diversity, including her own Mexican and El Salvadoran American communities. She now is a Louisiana Wolf Trap trained Teaching Artist who brings a wealth and variety of arts integration expertise to children of all ages and conditions of care, including incarcerated youth.
Last month I sat down with Nidia for an interview. Our conversation revealed the complex journey of a YALA Teaching Artist who grew up far from New Orleans in the Bay area and went to college in southern California. Her artist roots go back to her childhood, enjoying an education where arts were holistically integrated into her curriculum. Once, she said when her class was studying the work of the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet, they went out to a park in full costume for a real picnic in the grass.
It is this passion for the arts that Nidia has brought to her teaching as well as her work as a comedian, theatermaker, and improv artist. Growing up, Nidia was a “choir nerd” and assumed that she would continue to study as a singer in college. She found that she was not prepared, so instead, she studied visual arts including photography.
After graduation, Nidia was struggling to find a career. Everything she wanted to do required 4-5 years of experience and internships are often unpaid. Plus, California is expensive, so not everyone can do internships or other gigs that don't pay. For a while she found herself in L.A. working at a hotel. And as an artist, the worst part was wearing uniforms!
From there, she taught art in a residential community center to a mixed group of people, youth and elders, where she taught her first photography class with a box of low cost digital cameras she came across there. This experience led Nidia to realize that knowing more about how to teach would be helpful. For this she needed credentials. Also, she felt that as far as her career was concerned, she’d hit a plateau. She was on a quest “to find something like art community, community building and kids.”
She chose a graduate program in arts education which led to school residencies and eventually to teaching full time. But something still wasn’t right. As Nidia put it, “I was feeling in my spirit, in my body, and my heart that I needed to be somewhere else. I thought to myself ‘you could go somewhere else–maybe if you change your scenery you’ll grow more into yourself and grow more in general.’” That change of scenery was New Orleans–six years ago.
Study Abroad: New Orleans!
Nidia jokingly describes New Orleans as her “study abroad” because she never did one, and she regrets it: “My older sister told me to do it but I never did it–New Orleans is my pseudo version of that.”
And compared to LA and the Bay area, New Orleans offers such a different culture and is farther away than the border with Mexico in southern California.
“It was also like a big deal because I'm the baby of the family.” Her siblings wanted to know, “‘why is she going the furthest away though?’ I told them ‘because I’m not finding anything here’. I felt like I needed to grow up a little bit too and be on my own more so I came here and it’s been great.”
At first, Nidia had a placement in a school in New Orleans through the program she had finished. She was teaching a lot, full time, and had her own art classroom. There she had the opportunity to teach art and special education "which I studied which meant I got to teach large groups–but essentially I got to make a big leap.”
But as many teaching artists know, full time work for Nidia meant teaching the whole school: “It was a lot of work and overwhelming. I had 400 students in three days and I have to just power through instead of enjoying them.”
“Teaching full time took the wind out of me. It was really hard. I wasn’t writing songs, performing or making art, not photographing as much, and when I would (make art), I would get emotional because it was actually feeding my soul. I thought, ‘I should be doing this more. It feels good.’ I was depriving myself a lot. Work is a lot.”
It was because of the Covid lockdown that she was able to make the change that allowed her to be the teaching artist she has become. After leaving the school and working at YALA, she began doing comedy and improv. In a way, she is grateful for Covid: “If i hadn’t given myself more time to be the artist I wanted to be I would have started later and it would have looked different. Leaving school and trying something new was the first time in a while that I really took a chance on myself. So I still teach and I do Afterschool,which I really love and that [schedule] gives me time to be the artist I want to be.”
Re-Discovering Performance Through Wolf Trap Training
Encouraged by YALA staff to expand her teaching chops, Nidia’s next bit of training came with her decision to become a Louisiana Wolf Trap trained Teaching Artist. Of course, as Nidia notes, “Wolf Trap training doesn’t use as much visual art–we’re not painting with the four year olds. But performance art is something I studied and was involved with.”
For Nidia, this training offered another stream of income, but more than that, it offered her a new teaching relationship with performance.
“When I started with YALA I was also starting with comedy, storytelling and improv. YALA knew that with Wolf Trap I’d be doing more theater. YALA’s former Director of Education Renee [Benson] knew and saw through her imposter syndrome. Now Nidia really enjoys teaching theater. “I taught it last year and I enjoyed it and didn’t know I could do it. Sometimes it takes someone else to see what you can’t. ”
All of us were in a week-long intensive training where we had to teach each other. This was uncomfortable for adults to practice on other adults. But we really needed that feedback we got and we really bonded during that time–like a full time gig! Teaching to each other consistently for three days, I was discovering that I miss theater and hadn’t done it in a while. “ I’m naturally animated and I love to play. Play for adults is hard–we grew up. When I was younger I used to say I wanted to be like Peter Pan and never grow up–it’s boring!”
“I love to play and I like the Wolf Trap method because it is so alive–you’re using books in tandem but it’s such a fun way to learn and learning should be fun. But we have to spend so much time in classroom management it can take away from fun. I learned a tighter system. I’m still unlearning this regimented classroom management style. Wolf Trap training taught me that you could sing to clean up. You’re counting down and singing and having fun doing it. That’s what learning is.”
For Nidia, smaller classes also resonate. “I feel this guilt as an educator complaining about the class size. But students are frustrated and are so packed in and get no individualized time for growth, support, or scaffolding.”
Echoing the interview I had with Eddy Villalta Guillen, Nidia notes how the health of the teacher matters. “I went through a lot spiritually and mentally and it was hard to teach large numbers of students. With Wolf Trap early learning workshops, the children are younger and in smaller groups, and I have a more flexible schedule. Plus I’m healthy too. The health of a teacher can impact the health of the class.”
Remembering ‘A Sense of Aliveness’ From Her Own Education
Nidia now feels privileged about her arts integrated curriculum growing up, one which she says “was very alive like Wolf Trap can feel.” As she recalls, “a lot of my education was holistic–learning not just math but also to interact with different people and different cultures. I remember a sense of aliveness–which is how kids feel–they should feel alive.”
She was also raised bilingual, speaking both languages and eventually reading in Spanish without consciously learning to read it: “Both languages were present everyday and allowed me the ability to pick up on it and read in both languages. I wasn’t [formally] taught to read Spanish. Learning multiple languages helped me better understand things.”
She also remembers a moment in high school when her teacher gave everyone an assignment to memorize a piece of poetry. A memory exercise. Though it was hard, Nidia remembers, “it was nice to have poetry at the tip of my tongue.”
“I had alive and positive experiences in my learning and arts enrichment adds to that–to understand humanity and seek connectedness with one another. It makes your soul move, body move, left brain move, all essential to make people enjoy their education.”