Elementary Art Teacher Makes a Dress Featuring Hundreds of Her Students’ Drawings

Did you ever have a teacher who really inspired you? I remember one teacher in middle school who gave me some great tips on a writing assignment. I’d always loved to write, but she helped me connect my love of writing with my creative writing assignment in class. She happened to be a long-term substitute teacher who was filling in during our regular English teacher’s medical leave.

For art students in Texas, their favorite teacher very well may be Rebecca Bronner. One thing that sets many art teachers apart is that they are creative people who love inspiring creativity in their students. However, all art teachers may not be as brave as Mrs. Bronner.

Bronner recently made a white dress that she planned to wear to her students’ art show. She took the dress to school and left it on a table. Her students were each supposed to draw a picture on it. Yes, she had all of her 580 students who range in age from 3 to 11-years-old draw pictures on her dress.

We don’t let our little kids play with permanent markers. The idea of encouraging little kids to draw on something we would later wear in public makes us a little nervous, but Bronner certainly knew what she was doing.

The dress truly looks like a whimsical masterpiece. Bronner even posed for a few pictures in it. Her daughter, Charlece Lake, who is currently in college studying to become a teacher like her mom, posted the pictures on Twitter and was truly surprised at the huge response. The post has been retweeted over 12,000 times.

Bronner said that she allowed her students to decorate her dress as a way to get them “excited about art.” She added, “I’m not worried about being famous or anything like that but I do think it’s great to promote the arts, because elementary art is not everywhere.”

Lake posted the pictures because she was proud of her mom and thought she looked especially cute. As she wrote on her tweet, “my mom is the cutest art teacher ever!! She made a dress and had every one of her students draw one thing on the dress for her to wear. This was her at her student’s art show tonight. IM SOBBING.”

Lake is also very surprised at the number of retweets and comments this post is getting. She wrote, “ok i was NOT expecting the tweet of my mom to get THIS MANY LIKES😂 Now it’s on instagram meme accounts? I’m DEAD HAHAHA, but glad the word is getting out there about my amazing mom.”

Would you let little kids draw on something you were going to wear? Did you ever have a teacher that did something outside-the-box like this to inspire you?