Daniel Mendoza makes his own paintbrushes. It may have started out as a way to save money, but it also reflects his aesthetic as a veteran preschool teacher who uses painting to engage pint-sized students.
“The brushes happened out of a necessity of wanting to make things big,” said the child development specialist who is also a painter. “If you’re familiar with preschool teachers, we make super low salaries starting out. I had to stay on a budget.”
Instead of downsizing his plans to teach small children how to create epic murals or Jackson Pollock-style canvases, Mendoza got creative. The brushes became a symbol of his DIY vibe.
“I came up with this mop-style brush,” said the 44-year-old, with customary modesty. “It really allowed me to feel even more connected to this work and a part of who I am and what I’m trying to convey, down to the materials themselves.”
While he started out as a musician and now works primarily in visual arts, he says the leap to education was a no-brainer for him.
“It wasn’t really a stretch for me to move worlds,” said Mendoza, the program administrator for the Placer County Office of Education early childhood education department. “Music and visual arts are so interconnected. Even education is the same in ways. It takes thinking in that creative mindset.”
Much like the preschoolers he spent 10 years teaching, Mendoza embraces big messes. One of the first things students saw when they came into his classroom was a drippy, paint-splattered canvas.
Now, he teaches other educators how to unleash the power of creativity in the classroom. Some teachers are afraid of making a big mess, but he relishes it.
“Art is intrinsic to who we are as humans,” he said. “It’s tied to our identity and our outlook on how we view the world. Think about the aesthetics of art, and how that is tied to everyday life. What we like to wear, eat, listen to … We want to create, it’s deep in who we are.”
Mendoza, who grew up on a pistachio farm, seeing nature as his playground, believes that children are naturally artists. They love to get down-and-dirty, and they often focus more on the process than the product. Sometimes a child will concentrate so hard on a piece they seem to lose themselves in the work, only to run off as soon as it’s finished.
“They love making the art,” he quips, “not putting their name on it.”
Little children think outside the box by default, experts say. The challenge is how to let them grow that impulse even as they grow up.
“Preschoolers live in their creative mindset, all the time. It’s the perfect space for me,” he said. “Art gives children a voice. It opens the door for them to share their feelings, their thoughts, their ideas.”
Having grown up in a low-income immigrant family, Mendoza is passionate about making sure all children have the same exposure to the arts that high-income families often take for granted.
“I was a Head Start kid, I know what it’s like to struggle,” said Mendoza. “It’s sad because when we think about the circle, generational poverty or generational addiction as opposed to generational wealth and prosperity. Some of these children will stay in this lower socioeconomic status as they grow into adults. That’s how they exist. Giving them tools like art, dancing, painting, gives them an understanding of freedom, of expression, of identity.”
Mendoza views teaching as an art form of its own, cultivating his pedagogy with the same depth of dedication as his mixed-medium artworks.
“He approaches his work like an artist — with creativity,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents Statewide Arts Initiative, “but also with an educator’s understanding of how to remove enough limitations to engage in play and art-making both individually and collectively.”
Sometimes Mendoza worries that no matter how much headway he makes in the early years, encouraging children to think for themselves and embrace their creativity, that it all gets lost by middle school, when the intense pressure on achieving high test scores can diminish the love of learning.
“I feel that so many don’t see that connection, the connection art has to culture, individuality and community,” he says ruefully. “It might be a lack of education or awareness, but this conversation is missing. Helping connect what is seen as a ‘luxury’ to those learning goals and foundations that are important to families, gives us an opportunity to show the massive impact the arts have on children’s learning and ability to reach their maximum potential in school and throughout life. We all need the arts, not just children.”
He partly blames the laser focus on numeracy and literacy for creating a more stressful environment for children that also hasn’t moved the needle academically.
“Math scores are down,” he notes. “We have done math all day, and then we did this after-school math program, and now we’re sending math homework home, and that’s still not working. So now we’re going to double down and kids are going to do math on the weekends. I’ve watched a lot of baseball. That’s three strikes right there.”
By contrast, art teaches focus, he says. It demands that you slow your roll, pay attention and then reflect on the nuance. That depth of concentration and perception pays off in all the other subject areas, experts say.
“He has the seamless ability to integrate the arts with other content areas,” said Jennifer Hicks, assistant superintendent of educational services at the Placer County Office of Education. “When children experience art with Daniel, they are experiencing math, they are experiencing literacy, they are experiencing science.”
Mendoza says he almost got arrested once at the old Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas for spending too much time looking at a painting. The lights turned off, and when security guards appeared, they assumed he was up to no good.
“Art is an invitation to have an inner dialogue,” he said. “To examine yourself, what you think, what you feel.”
One of the most noticeable things about Mendoza is his exuberance for art and learning for their own sake. That’s partly why small children often gravitate to him, even when he and his wife are just out shopping at Target, because he radiates warmth.
“Daniel is joyful,” said Hicks. “ His passion for early education is apparent in everything he does. He’s always ready to take on a new project or implement an innovative idea. He has a magical way of communicating with children, teaching them language, expression and how to be good humans.”
While his time is jam-packed with training preschool teachers, painting and teaching about the creative process in children at Sierra College, when he needs to recharge creatively, he always heads back into the classroom to the little ones who are his muses.
“If my tank is low, I go hang out at one of our classrooms,” he said. “The children are always so awesome at refilling that creative tank for me.”
