Centennial Middle School Arts: Kaydren Kitchen

It’s fitting that Centennial Middle School Kaydren Kitchen’s classroom decor and art speaks volumes about her as an art teacher.

Large, flowing shapes with bold edges swim color blocks swirling into stretched paisley across the walls, vibrant, buzzing, mellow, grounding. Musical posters and stickers in a mix of styles drift around her desk, small signals that she meets students where shared interests might intersect.

Her room balances structure and exploration, convention and reinvention. Similarly, in Kitchen’s class, every student is invited to engage, collaborate, and push boundaries—to learn the rules, bend them, and discover something new in the process.

“I know there’s a very small percentage of students who will go on to be artists,” Kitchen says. “My goal isn’t to create professional artists. My goal is to teach creative problem-solvers.”

Art, in this context, thrives within structure—rules, techniques, and limitations aren’t barriers but tools, challenges to think deeply about. Students learn to push against form, lean into constraints, and, in doing so, carve out a perspective that is wholly their own.

At the start of each semester, for example, her students design their own sketchbook covers. For Kitchen, it serves as a glimpse into their evolving perspectives, a visual dialogue between what they bring to the page as well as quick assessment they might need work this year– a roadmap of where they’ve been and where they might be headed. 

And their growth over the year often surprises Kitchen: “By the end of the semester, It’s cool to see them combine different methods and make things their own,” she says. “That’s the best part—watching them develop creative confidence.”

Some strands of the curriculum focus on technical ability, but others are about engaging with the community, learning to interpret and critique art, and understanding how creativity extends beyond the studio. “We don’t have standardized testing in art,” she explains, “so I can really tailor what we do. Some lessons are about building skills, but others are about learning how to communicate, how to break down what we’re looking at, and how to give and receive feedback.”

Her classroom, then, is built on the idea that art is a language—one that helps students communicate, interpret, and understand both themselves and the world around them.

Kitchen’s projects, while rooted in standards, pushes students to think critically and explore who they are through their work, and recognizing who others are, and how they view the world through their lens. “With this notebook design project, we have a base structure that we do all together, and then I love seeing how they put their own spin on it,” she says.

“I look forward to giving an opportunity for choice in every project since mine prioritizes project based learning. I love seeing things getting individualized more and watching them execute creative problem solving. That’s the funnest thing for me to see. I get to see it every project.” It’s a good reminder that art, like identity, is never one-size-fits-all.

“Middle school is hard,” Kitchen says. “There’s pressure to act a certain way, dress a certain way. One of the best things I hear from students is that they feel like they can be themselves in my class. That’s what I want—for them to be confident, weird, whoever they want to be.”

Through art, students push past the techniques she teaches and surprise her in their approach to a project. “At least a couple of times a semester, a student figures out a different way to do something that I haven’t thought of before,” she says. “It’s fun to see because art is problem-solving.”

That mindset—the ability to experiment, adapt, and push beyond what’s expected—is what Kitchen hopes students carry with them. “Art teaches you how to think differently, how to experiment, and how to be okay with not having the right answer right away,” she says. “That’s something you take with you, no matter what you end up doing.”

These are lessons that extend past art. Kitchen is offering lessons in perspective, in finding meaning through process, in trusting that creation is as much about exploration as it is about skill. We thank Kaydren Kitchen for not only teaching art, but for making space for students to see themselves within it.

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