Photo of Mom Goes Viral After Daughter Shares Snap of Her Wearing Dress Decorated by Students

Paula Liu
By Paula Liu
April 1, 2019People
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Photo of Mom Goes Viral After Daughter Shares Snap of Her Wearing Dress Decorated by Students
Two girls drawing. (Pixabay)

One teacher’s inspiring idea to get her students excited about art went viral when her daughter posted pictures of her project on social media.

Rebecca Bonner, an art teacher at Mcauliffe Elementary School in Highland Village, Texas, wanted to inspire her students to be creative. She got an idea from a private Facebook group made up of elementary school teachers.

“I got fabric markers and sharpies, I laid out my dress for two weeks and just let them doodle on it,” Rebecca Bonner told Good Morning America.

Bonner teaches a total of 580 students, all of them ranging from ages 3-11, and allowed them to be creative and decorate her dress as they saw fit. On the day of the student art show, she wore the dress that her students had decorated.

“I think it’s really important for kids to have that outlet, to have that place to create, and that freedom to create,” the art teacher said.

The art teacher said that her catchphrase is “turn your mess up into a dress up.”

Her students were delighted to know that she was wearing the dress they all helped to decorate, and it seemed like they weren’t the only people who got to see Bonner in her students’ masterpieces.

Bonner’s daughter, Charlece Lake, 20, took pictures of her mother and posted it on Twitter, where it went viral.

“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,” Lake wrote. “This was her at her student’s art show tonight. IM SOBBING.”

The tweet had since got more than 12,000 retweets, more than 109,000 likes, and 251 comments.

The post received numerous replies, ranging from praises to comments about the drawings on the dresses. One user, Raisa Crespo, said that her art teacher was the reason why she fell in love with the arts.

“Your mom is doing wonderful, I hope she knows how amazing she truly is,” Crespo wrote.

A former educator commented on the twitter post, writing, “as a retired middle school educator, I’m thrilled to see the enthusiasm and love of teaching this amazing woman exhibits! The best is that her daughter will be an educator too! Lucky students and staff whose lives are positively influenced by art!”

Another user, Becky Patten, praised Bonner, saying that her students were lucky to have her.

“Teachers like your mom inspire me every day to be a better teacher. Her [students] are lucky to have her,” Patten wrote. “It’s obvious that she loves her job and cares about [students]. What a great connection this activity makes.”

Bonner said she was shocked to learn that the tweet had gone viral and reached so many people.

“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,” Bonner said.

Lake described her mother as being very passionate about showing how important teaching is, as well as how important it is to learn the value of art in school. She also had no clue that the tweet would blow up so virally—she only posted the pictures thinking that it was a very cute picture of her mother.

Lake is also in school pursuing a career in education, saying that it was watching her mother inspire creativity in students that pushed her to pursue a career in teaching.

“I think she just inspires students to be creative and just make their mistakes into something beautiful,” Lake said.

 

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