In The Patriot Spotlight: Ann Cerv
Launch the media gallery 1 playerEach week a Clarkson High School student or Clarkson Public Schools staff member will be randomly selected to be "In the Patriot Spotlight." This week’s Patriot is Mrs. Ann Cerv. Mrs. Cerv is the art teacher at CPS. She is married to Adam Cerv, and they’ve been together for 22 years. They have two daughters, Cully (19) and Maddie (20).
Mrs. Cerv’s favorite part about her job is that she gets to talk about her passion every day. She also gets to talk about the process of creating art pieces. When she is on her way to school, she looks forward to seeing the kids because she loves seeing how much they’ve learned, and she loves hearing what they did over the weekend.
Mrs. Cerv teaches the kids the names of the artists, so they can go to the Joslyn Art Museum. She teaches them with a story or a song, so they can remember them better. When she was in college she was having a hard time remembering the artists, and she knew it would be even harder for the kids, so she came up with a fun way to learn them. She chooses to go to the Joslyn every year because it’s been her “home” for the past 20 years because she used to go with her daughters every year. She loves seeing the kids light up when they see all of the 88 pieces of art that they know
Mrs. Cerv said that her favorite class in high school, besides art, was band. Their band director wanted them to look professional by making sure they brought up their instruments together and keeping good posture. Because of that, band made her want to do the best on everything she had to do, like when she was one act coach and at art competitions.
Mrs. Cerv attended Doane University for four years. When she was in college, she didn’t think she was going to be a teacher, but her advisor, Dr. Duddle, brought it up, and it stuck ever since. Mrs. Cerv’s inspiration is Dr. Duddle because he took her class backpacking in Mexico, and that’s when she knew she wanted to travel the world.
If Mrs. Cerv wasn’t a teacher, she would be a food critic in New York or Paris because she would get to eat delicious food from different places in the world. Mrs. Cerv is the advisor for the travel club because she gets to see places that she thought she could never see. She also was excited to get to go with the students that also wanted to travel. She didn’t know it was even a thing until Michelle Held at Leigh Community Schools asked if she wanted to do it. She knew she couldn’t turn her down.