Trevor Bryan is a K-5 Art Teacher in a New Jersey Elementary School who has two core beliefs about the arts. The first is that the arts foster joy and connection, especially when times or topics are tough. And the second is that the arts help us to make meaning of our human experience.

Trevor is a teacher, author of The Art of Comprehension and co-founder of Four O’Clock Faculty with Rich Czyz for educators looking to improve learning for themselves and their students. Enjoy Trevor’s journey!
You and your family
I grew up in Glen Rock, New Jersey, which is a small town in the northern part of the state about 20 minutes outside of New York City. I currently live down at the Jersey Shore, close to Asbury Park, which is the town Bruce Springsteen helped to make famous, with my wife Laura, and our two children, Johanna (12) and Owen (7).

We live close to Ocean Grove to which is a national historic town that is about one square mile with more Victorian homes than Cape May. My parents have a summer home there. We’re a bike ride away so we visit them often. We love living down near the beach and enjoy the art and great music scene there along with a bunch of wonderful restaurants.
[Source: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:ft848r126]
What it was like when you were a student
My school experience was pretty good for the most part. I wasn’t always the best student but I was decent. I was really good at doing my own stuff but not always that great at doing the tasks that I didn’t find too meaningful. I had some wonderful teachers. I had a really rich writing experience in 6th-grade that ties into my work right now. I was probably one of the first students in New Jersey to go through the Writers’ Workshop model. My art education experience was where I had super art teachers with a lot of support. Because we were only 20 minutes outside of New York City, I had a lot of opportunities to see museums and shows on Broadway.
I loved to make things and was always in my basement where I had access to tools and supplies to make stuff. I also built things outside like tree houses, forts, all kinds of stuff. One of the things that have influenced me the most as an art educator is that one of my childhood friends who moved to town in 3rd grade grew up to be a well-known street artist.  As friends from 3rd to 6th grade, we just made things constantly and explored together. Seeing how he saw things and worked as a child and then how he grew up to become a really successful artist has influenced how I approach art education and how I think about creating. His name is Momo and you can learn more about his work at https://momoshowpalace.com/About

Your journey as an educator
Since high school, I always wanted to be a teacher. As an art student growing up in an upper-middle-class community there weren’t a lot of artists or makers as models. I loved the arts but the only artists I knew were art teachers and my parents were educators so I went into education. I originally thought I was going to bring the arts into the regular ed classroom and studied at Bank Street College of  Education to be a regular ed teacher in elementary school. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be able to do the arts as a classroom teacher. There wasn’t enough time. It wasn’t structured that way, and I didn’t want to do all the stuff that classroom teachers have to do. That’s when I decided to go back to the art room because I missed the environment. I never regret that decision. Thankfully, New Jersey has continued to support art educators. Eventually, I figured out how to bring the arts into the regular ed classroom through my work which has turned into The Art of Comprehension.