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Touch, Create, Experience!

Valuable exposure to field trips to local art museums and workshops with visiting artists help students comprehend the cultural and historical basis of art as well as contemporary art movements. Students record their feelings, thoughts and ideas in a sketch book/journal and produce a professional portfolio which includes works for exhibition, competitions as well as entry and acceptance into specialized art schools. The goal of the visual arts program is to have students experiment and develop unique approaches to visual problems, find self -confidence and creativity in the communication of beauty and form and to create expressive works that will further their studies in advanced arts programs.

Our Teachers

Gerald-Obregon E-MAIL

Gerald Obregon has been a teacher in the Magnet Art Program at Norland Middle School since 1999. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. After earning his BFA, he worked in various fields doing clerical work on Wall Street for a CPA, doing graphics design for small press printing companies and running a comic book and collectibles for seven years.

While working in the comic store, many of his young customers would often bring their renditions of Wolverine and Spider-Man or other super heroes. He would always take the time to praise their work and show them how to improve on what they had done. It was during this time that he realized that what he was doing was being a teacher to these kids. He decided then to continue his education and pursue a degree in art education.

In August 1998, Obregon graduated from Florida International University with a Masters of Science in Art Education. Working with Mrs. Linda Atkinson, they continue the tradition of advanced college level art instruction at the middle school level. It is the philosophy of the Magnet Arts Department that students will work up to expectations is the bar is set at a high level. That philosophy has resulted in tremendous success on a local and national level.

Linda Draesel–Atkinson E-MAIL

Mrs. Linda Draesel–Atkinson is a product of the Miami-Dade Public School System. She attended Norland Middle School and went on to graduate from New Worlds School of the Arts. She earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts in painting and Bachelors Degree in Psychology at Florida State University. While in Tallahassee, she volunteered weekly for three years at the Head State Program.

Returning to Miami, she became a substitute teacher while she earned her Masters Degree in Art Education from Florida International University. Her plans were to become an art therapist. She interned at Miami Northwestern’s Magnet Art Program. Following the internship, she realized her dream of becoming a teacher at Norland Middle School. For two summers she taught underprivileged students at New World and Hialeah-Miami Lakes, sponsored by the Division of Life Skills.

Mrs. Draesal-Atkinson began to teach at Norland in 1998 when she implemented a college level art history curriculum that covers a different time period each nine weeks. Her philosophy is to set high standards for the students at Norland Middle School.