Clara Kelly: Funding her classroom one creation at a time

School districts throughout Delaware provide minimum funding for teachers to purchase yearly supplies. Instructors in the art department are required to purchase a vast amount of expensive resources, without a proper amount of funding to account for all materials.

Clara Kelly, a specialized art teacher at East Millsboro Elementary, has found an innovative way to bring funding back into the art program, while transforming her student’s artwork into usable keepsakes for families.

Kelly has years of experience with teaching art, dating back to 2014. She originally taught Art 1 and graphic design courses at William Penn High School in New Castle. She migrated downstate in 2018, where she began teaching at East Millsboro Elementary. During her second year of teaching at East Millsboro, she attended the Delaware State Arts Conference in Dover. It was there she discovered Artsonia. 

Using the website, Kelly scans her student’s artwork and uploads it. Each student’s profile has a fan club, and these fans can purchase keepsakes of their student’s artwork. From magnets to coffee mugs to ornaments, there are countless ways to transform and preserve the artwork being created inside the classroom. Twenty percent of the purchases under East Millsboro Elementary's page are used to purchase more resources for the art program.

Since the 2019-20 school year, more than 32,000 pieces of artwork have been posted to the platform, and this number will continue to grow.

With six grade levels on six-day rotations, Kelly teaches 36 art classes every year, varying from 18 to 32 students in each class at a time. These students dabble in a variety of art mediums and projects, such as paper sculptures, tempera paint and oil pastels. Using the revenue she gets back, Kelly works to provide more of these materials for the 850 students who step into her classroom each year.

Kelly has worked to help her students be creative and share their art in the community. These online portfolios have helped family members and other locals construct their own pieces of art.

Nancy LaFontaine’s granddaughter Addison had Kelly as a teacher from kindergarten through fifth grade. LaFontaine purchased quilt pieces from the Artsonia website and created a quilt out of her granddaughter’s artwork. LaFontaine showed Kelly the quilt in person because she wanted her to know how valuable she is to the teaching community.

Kelly plans to add more pieces of art to this digital time capsule to not only help fund East Millsboro Elementary's art program, but also to preserve the creations of students for years to come.