Jim Coulson isn’t sure what he’s going to do with all his ties. For over two decades, he’s been greeting his students at the Rancho Middle School Art Room door, holding one of his many art-print neckties out so they could get a good look at it as they walked past: “Who’s the artist? What’s the name of this painting?” he would ask. A daily ritual soon to be officially retired.
After 25 years, Coulson will lock his classroom for the last time at the end of the 2024-25 school year, placing the finishing touches on a career that is itself a work of art.
Engaging your Inner Artist
Starting in the fall of 1999, Coulson has taught a full caseload each school year, bringing the total number of former students to over 3,000. Some of them began the school year eager to explore the many artistic mediums covered by his curriculum–pencil sketches, watercolors, clay, glass, and tin foil to name a few. Many, however, sat in the art room on the first day of school feeling apprehensive. It’s why he’s kept the following words on his whiteboard: “Don’t tell me that you can’t. Tell me that you’ll try.”
Like many teachers, Coulson believes that every student is capable of learning and improving. But it’s the unique ways in which he puts his beliefs into practice that have won over so many through the years. Whether it’s insisting that someone passing through his room has to pay the toll of drawing something on the whiteboard, or pulling out a step-by-step instructional sketch page in answer to another teacher’s request to quickly “draw that one cartoon character for me,” he never misses an opportunity to engage a person’s inner artist.
Through his carefully crafted units, Rancho students have developed the artistic techniques of perspective, color matching, and shading. But it’s words of encouragement such as those recounted on a recent congratulatory Facebook post by Ryn Pruitt, who took Coulson’s class in 2003, that have inspired: “My art teacher who always taught me to ‘draw it bigger!’”
For more than two decades, Jim Coulson’s classroom has started each year filled with students, but it has ended each year filled with artists.
Developing Talent
For those who either come to his class graced with innate talent or see their skills develop quickly, Coulson offers additional artistic mentorship.
The Santa Clara County Office of Education hosts the annual Santa Clara County Young Artists Showcase. Students from schools all over the county are invited to submit works of art that evoke the year’s selected theme. For nearly a decade, Coulson would encourage students to enter the contest and would offer guidance and critique as they created their pieces. Each year, at least one Rancho Don was named a winner.
When he was given the chance to design an Advanced Art class for the middle school, Coulson organized a symposium-style course in which students would rotate presenting their art to each other in order to receive peer feedback. Walking through the classroom, one could have easily mistaken the atmosphere and dialogue for a college seminar.
Fondly recalling her two years spent under Coulson’s tutelage first in the exploratory art class (2011-12) and then the advanced course (2012-2013), Athena Marie Garcia shared “I loved having him as my art teacher…even though he’d always tell me to ‘stop drawing cats.’”
These same Advanced Art students were expected to exhibit their work to an audience outside of school. In partnership with the Milpitas Library, Coulson arranged for a showcase at which each student displayed multiple works and was expected to be on hand to answer questions posed by the public.
His influence was recently extended to the elementary level, following a collaboration with a fellow Milpitas Unified teacher who was working on developing a robust art program for her elementary school. From Coulson’s perspective, it’s never too early to start shaping your world through art.
Shaping the Campus
Over the years that Coulson has taught at Rancho, a stroll through the campus has become an art walk. What started as a series of mounted 4’x4’ paintings highlighting various academic and artistic disciplines led to recreations of famous MC Esher tessellations, which were also mounted on an outdoor wall. The gymnasium became an art gallery of sorts as annually a cloth banner designed as part of a project in art class was hung to mark the year. Coulson facilitated a two-year, student-created project that culminated in a professional two-story mural celebrating the cultures represented in Rancho’s student body.
Coulson designed another multi-year, student-assisted project as a September 11th remembrance. Each year, he marks the day by erecting the 20 foot art display as a way to instruct students both in the importance of the date and the ways that art helps people heal.
Not content to inspire only through art, over the years Coulson has hosted fundraisers. With several different advisory cohorts, after showing them the movie Pay It Forward, he would initiate a fundraiser. His students would go around to other advisory classes collecting money for a selected charity. With his encouragement, groups of students raised hundreds of dollars for victims of wildfires and to purchase turkeys for Thanksgiving for the Milpitas Food Pantry.
His desire to expand students’ understanding and appreciation led him to start an annual trip abroad. Thanks to his work fundraising grant money, organizing the trips, and chaperoning, Rancho students have visited England, France, Italy, and Japan.
Thankfully, this year another teacher took over the travel abroad program as Coulson began slowly stepping back from the many projects, traditions, and responsibilities he’s taken on as a Rancho teacher. In so many ways, Jim Coulson has shaped the culture and atmosphere of the school.
Every long-serving teacher who retires leaves a legacy behind, but his legacy is truly exceptional.
Written by:
Brenna Dimas
