Paxon Teacher Selected for MOCA's 2008 Memphis Wood Excellence in Teaching Award
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is pleased to recognize Mai D. Keisling from
Paxon School for Advanced Studies with this year's Memphis Wood Excellence in Teaching Award. A ceremony will take place at MOCA honoring Keisling and presenting her with the award on Wednesday, March 26 from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
Mai Keisling teaches 3-D Art and Advanced Placement Art History at Paxon School for Advanced Studies in Jacksonville, a high school that stresses high academic, college preparatory achievement. Her challenging experiences in her younger years helped to shape Keisling's life and led to her career as an art teacher. When she was 17, she fled Vietnam with siblings in a tiny fishing boat with 54 other people. After her harrowing escape and the challenges of integrating into a new place, language, and culture in Jacksonville, she resolved to live her life with a passion, and to communicate that passion to others through art.
Her enthusiasm for learning includes not only visual arts but academic subjects such as mathematics, the sciences, and history. This appreciation leads her to adopt an interdisciplinary approach in her teaching, constantly infusing these subjects in her art classroom. She was recognized in 2007 by the Florida Art Education Association as Florida’s Outstanding High School Art Teacher of the Year, University of North Florida’s 2007 Gladys Prior Award for Excellence in Career Teaching, voted the 2005-2006 Teacher of the Year at Paxon School for Advanced Studies and was a finalist for the 2006 Teacher of the Year for Duval County.
Aside from being an excellent educator, Keisling uses her artistic talents to enrich the community of Jacksonville. She recently teamed up with United Way to have students paint murals with professional artists for the Hammond Senior Center. She also serves as a mentor for University of North Florida interns and new art teachers at Paxon, and is an inspiring role model for adults and youths of all ages. “Mai is a leader in her classroom, her profession, and her community. Students model her integrity, her creativity, and her character,” says Allison Graff, Art in Public Places Program Manager of the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville.
The Memphis Wood Excellence in Teaching Award is presented annually to a P-12 educator from Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau, or St. Johns County who is either a practicing art educator or a teacher of other subjects who values and uses the visual arts in their classroom practice. The award presents the selected educator with a $1,000 honorarium, a guided tour of the Museum for 30 students, and a decorative glass award.
Known as Jacksonville's First Lady of Art, Memphis Wood made an astonishing contribution to art and art education in Jacksonville that is still felt today. As a one-woman force in building an appreciation for the arts, Wood taught and influenced many of Jacksonville’s most successful artists. As an educator, she taught art at the former Landon High School (now Landon Middle School) for 33 years, and until her death in 1989, Wood had worked for over 60 years in Jacksonville as an artist in many media—painting, pottery, sculpture, jewelry design, printmaking, and imaginative fabric collages. Memphis Wood’s connection to MOCA Jacksonville was long and personal, both as one of its founding trustees and as a longtime studio art teacher fulfilling the Museum’s educational mission to the community.
MOCA believes that the visual arts are a vital component of P-12 education. It is important not only as a distinct discipline, but also as a means of promoting student learning through integrating into other academic disciplines. MOCA offers the annual Memphis Wood Excellence in Teaching Award to a First Coast educator who effectively uses the visual arts to positively impact the lives of their students. Building on Wood’s devotion to art, art education, her community leadership and her conviction that art should be accessible to all, MOCA is proud to offer this annual award in her honor.
The award ceremony is open to the public. Admission is free, but advanced reservations are required. For reservations, call 904-366-6911, ext. 208.
MOCA Jacksonville is one of the largest museums of contemporary art in the Southeastern United States. For more information about MOCA
including programs and hours, please visit
www.mocajacksonville.org.
