Weston Wednesday: Meet MHS Art Teacher Brienne Kvetkus

This is the latest in our “Weston Wednesday” series, spotlighting the winners of the 2024 Judy Weston Awards for Inspired Teaching. Follow along each week to learn more about the impact these educators are making in the Montclair Public Schools. 

In the words of one of her Weston Award nominators, Brienne Kvetkus opens students up to “a whole new way of seeing the world, which is the biggest gift an education can provide.”  As a dedicated art teacher in the district for decades, and the lone AP Art History teacher at Montclair High School she teaches students life-lasting lessons through art.  

Ms. Kvetkus finds ways to make the memorization of 250 pieces of art not only fun, but meaningful to each student. She helps students draw connections between art and their lives, using a wide range of tools, including documentaries and museum visits. She stretches her students to see the deeper meaning in the art that they are studying and instills confidence in them to make their own meaning of what they are seeing. Simply put: Ms. Kvetkus makes art history come alive.

She has gone above and beyond the curriculum to teach students about equity in art and art history, encouraging them to discover artists that might not be included in the AP set. She continues that learning by dedicating time to an after-school art equity club.

Brienne Kvetkus, MHS art teacher, and Eleni Zapantis, Glenfield Middle School English-Language Arts teacher.

Ms Kvetkus has converted countless formerly reluctant museum-goers into eager visitors who are now exuberantly teaching their family members about the art on view. One parent wrote: “[My daughter] cannot walk by a bank without expounding on the type of columns out in front."

This material is challenging and unfamiliar to so many students, and many say that it is one of the hardest classes that they take at Montclair High, but Ms. Kvetkus makes it accessible. She meet students during lunch, hosts after-school study sessions - complete with pizza - and makes each student feel like art is their jam.

Ms. Kvetkus, for igniting an enduring interest in art in each of your students, YOU are an inspired teacher.