Everything must change at some point, and the same goes for the ceramic classes. During the school year of 2025-2026 the ceramics class underwent changes, which have had a significant impact on the class and the students who are in it.

“We recently expanded the program from ceramics, to ceramics and expanded media,” ceramics teacher Lauren Boggs said. “This started because last year was the first year for AP 3D art for seniors as an option. And that kind of led to the need for kids to have a foundation of other skills beyond just clay. So we expanded to include fiber arts and also arts with recycled materials to kind of better prepare students for that AP course.”

These changes allow for new ceramic techniques including recycled materials like cardboard, plastic bottles, other art supplies and 3D art styles to further express the mood and theme of the art pieces students create.

“Each level, kids focused on only clay skills, hand building and wheel throwing, which we still do. It’s just structured in a different way so kids have more experiences,” Boggs said.

With expanded ceramic opportunities and techniques, students can now express their creativity in more ways than before and try out different techniques to find out what works for them.

“With the ability that the kids show to just come up with their own kind of creativity and take on the more expanded media lesson. So it also makes it more interesting here because kids get to pick things that are of more interest to them,” Boggs said.

This allows students to take on newer and more exciting challenges that push their creativity even further and discover new art techniques and find the one that suits them the best.

This makes sure that students can make more meaningful art pieces that express a variety of ideas in many different ways.

“A lot of kids are experiencing art styles and techniques that they otherwise wouldn’t have experienced. So I think that it has become a really good thing for the program and it helps us expand a little bit beyond just clay,” Boggs said.

These changes leave the question of if the ceramics unit will expand even more in the future, introducing even more ways for students to express themselves and to do an art style they enjoy.

“I’m sure we will continue to have more changes based on students’ interests and what kind of things will best suit the needs of the kids,” Boggs said. “But also all the changes that we kind of have going on in the program. I think they are positive ones. So if there are more changes, I think that those changes would be for the better.”

In the long term, the changes to ceramics now and in the future will expand students’ ability to be creative and expressive, resulting in the creation of more masterpieces with lots of variety.