Nadja Fitchhorn Paves the Way for Her Students to Achieve at Buckingham Collegiate Charter Academy

Nadja Fitchhorn is committed to providing a pathway for her students to learn and achieve, in spite of the challenges Buckingham Collegiate Charter Academy is facing with virtual teaching in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. As their Visual Arts Department Chair and Digital Media Teacher, she is paving the way for student success by ensuring that all courses within the Visual Arts Department provide a variety of instructional techniques to move students toward a stronger understanding of how their courses apply toward future careers.

“Many of my graphic design students come from engineering backgrounds and use their design skills to learn the importance of form as well as function,” she said. Teaching across curriculum at the school located in Vacaville, California, students learn to apply 3-D art skills to modeling skills and sketching skills towards the ideation phases of both engineering and design courses.

By facilitating students’ ability to build on prior knowledge, Fitchhorn encourages students to be independent learners and problem solvers, a valuable skill set that has been most recently employed by her upper-division CTE Graphic Design course.

As part of their capstone project, students in the course gain hands-on experience, to produce everything from website branding and logos to social media campaigns. Each student creates a hypothetical business and storefront, and produces a complete business plan, mood board, logo, packaging design, and process manual to present to the class.

This year, students will have the opportunity to work with a real-life client, CPM Architecture, to design the campus’ interior graphics and environmental designs.

Former projects have included rebranding the entire Vacaville School District’s logo designs, a project led by one of Fitchhorn’s student designers, Logan Arcilla. While learning virtually, Arcilla created a branding guide for the school district.

Through curriculum supporting presentations, FIDM College Representative Roseanne Johnson has shared how what they are learning in the classroom can be applied to careers in digital media, graphic design, and visual communications.

“It never ceases to amaze me just how engaged they become,” Fitchhorn commented, referring to the FIDM presentation Applied Arts: The Art of Promoting a Product, “especially the videos of real-life FIDM Alumni with their real-life super cool accomplishments, and the in-class activities that accompany the presentation.”

Fitchhorn’s teaching strategy is rooted in bridging achievement to professional success, a goal made possible by integrating teaching strategies as well as educational resources offered through FIDM.

She has been an official FIDM Fashion Club Advisor for the past five years. Last year, one of her students, FIDM Fashion Club President Trinety Benjamen, won the FIDM Fashion Club Senior Scholarship Competition and now attends FIDM.

Her CTE Graphic Design students are currently scheduled to take the Adobe Certification AI exam in the spring to prepare for careers in design upon graduation.

Fitchhorn explained, “I still want my students to learn everything my students had the opportunity to do last year.”