What is your favorite part of teaching?

I think my favorite part about teaching is the kids because there is such a wide variety of personalities, opinions and reactions to this subject and that makes every day different, fun and exciting.

What is your favorite part about teaching art history?

What I love about art history is the fact that we are looking at objects made by people from other places, usually from people long ago, and they’re still communicating to us today. You look at something and you keep looking at it and you see more and more. Every time I teach something I see something new in it. That’s why they are great works of art. They have all these secrets that reveal something new and different every time. There seems to be an endless reservoir of ideas.  With a work of art it reveals itself in so many different ways, so many different facets, so that you can teach something every year for 10 years and every year it can seem like a different work and it takes you to a different place.

What is your favorite focus area or unit to teach?

Well the new curriculum took Medieval Art and Renaissance art and just shrunk it. This is fine for students because most don’t really care for medieval art. I try to do a little bit more than the curriculum, but it’s impossible. I wish I had time to flesh those out because I think students would really appreciate going to Florence and Germany and France and understand. I used to go into great depths with Medieval India and Early China but there just isn’t time anymore.

What is one interesting fact about you?

I like to do genealogy. I also paint and do a lot of artwork. I travel a lot. My favorite place that I’ve been to is Italy, hands down. Why Italy? The food, the people, the weather, the scenery, the art (that should come first) the clothes and everything about it. I love Italy.

If you were not a teacher, what would you be?

If I wasn’t a teacher, I’d really like to be an architect. And I’d really like to flip houses. Take houses and renovate them, you know, like all those TV shows. I’d love to do that. I know it’s really frustrating and it’s not nearly as easy as it looks on TV. I still might do that.

“He is passionate about his subject and wants his students to succeed. He likes to connect current issues to the art and subjects that we learn about.” – Serena Press, senior

“Mr.Darracott is a very engaging teacher. He approaches each piece we cover with enthusiasm as well as giving us a broader context to better understand the cultural significance of the art. It’s definitely one of my favorite classes this year” – Emma Riley, junior

“He’s very enthusiastic about art and art history and holds respect for art around the world, not just European or American. He teaches his class in such a way that he emphasizes learning and understanding the info rather than just focusing on preparing for the AP test. For example, instead of individual quizzes like most classes, he would put a quiz on the overhead in a PowerPoint and we take it as a class to inspire discussion on the possible answers. This helps us immensely as it serves as a mass study group in which everyone can share what they know about each artwork in question, so that quizzes help us learn new things as well as review learned information.” – Nelson Lee, senior