A devoted photography teacher and yearbook advisor, Linda Brooks is retiring to have more time to work on personal art projects. After 27 years of teaching at St. Paul Academy and Summit School, Brooks feels lucky to have worked here and will leave with numerous good memories from her time.
“It has been just a wonderful pleasure. I’ve enjoyed every day that I’ve been here working with the students,” Brooks said.
Brooks teaches all photography classes—beginning levels through advanced, independent study, students, and honors senior art seminar classes—and she also instructs and advises Graphic Design and Publications, the class that produces the Ibid yearbook and Art & Literature magazine.
Throughout her years of teaching middle school art all the way up to graduate school photography at the University of Minnesota, Brooks has discovered an interest in teaching teenagers.
“They learn to trust their own responses to the world rather than mimic what art is supposed to be,” she said.
“It has also been fun to learn from the changing technology and grow with the students,” Brooks said.
She feels that SPA is unique because there is an exceptional interest in art: “I feel that the arts are very valued and supported. There is a recognition and a support of the arts here that you don’t see elsewhere; that’s really what makes the school so special,” she said. “Everyone here acknowledges the important role that art plays in students’ lives, and it’s a privilege to have been a part of that,” she said.
Brooks’ dedication to her own art has been demonstrated through her many completed and ongoing projects. She has had multiple solo exhibitions, her latest in the Drake Gallery called, “sky.water.food.nourish” in April 2016.
Brooks has enjoyed the hard work she has put into her job as an instructor, and she is excited to be able to focus on her photography post retirement. “I have been and always will be an artist, and one does not retire from being an artist,” Brooks said.