On a recent in-service day, Lindsey Finnan sat in her art classroom holding her three-month old son Atlin Tate. As he gurgled and chattered in the background, Finnan talked about her family’s move to the Chilkat Valley two years ago.
Finnan and her husband Austin live at mile 25 of the Haines Highway and the commute to the school to teach art to K-12 students is both nothing new and a refreshing change.
“I’m originally from Texas. So I would drive on I-35 like 45-minutes one-way, flat land,” she said.
Finnan attended Tarleton State University in Stephenville Texas and studied Art Education. She was an art teacher for eight years in Texas. Then when COVID-19 hit her workload doubled.
“I had 72 classes all of a sudden, because I had 36 originally. Then they split half in person and half online and I got burnt out,” she said. “So I took a nanny position in Juneau and I took a leap of faith. I sold my house in Texas and I moved up here and then I met my husband Austin [Finnan].”
Austin has been living in Haines since a friend who served in the Army with him recommended that he visit the community. He moved to the Chilkat Valley and works for Kensington Mine.
Finnan said she’s known she wanted to be a teacher from a young age and she found a focus on art in high school.
“When this position opened up, I was just so excited. I love teaching art. I don’t know if I could really teach anything else,” she said. “There’s something about art you get to help the kids that are maybe struggling in other subjects or with who they are as a person, and then art just helps them through it.”
This year, Finnan said she is excited to do a sewing project with third and fourth graders where they make stuffed creatures. “Usually we follow that with a comic book character,” she said.
In high school, she’s looking forward to doing ceramics with her students.
“I’m also getting this plaster that’s already on fabric. So you wet it. It’s basically what you make a cast out of it,” she said. “It’s so much better than paper mache. They get it wet and put it on their form and it dries almost immediately. I’m looking forward to doing that with the kids too.”