This art teacher has a message for students about perfection

When LaNia Roberts stepped into her elementary art classroom in Louisville, Kentucky, she came with more than a lesson plan — she came with a message.

Roberts is a full-time artist, author, speaker, educator and content creator who believes deeply in community engagement. So when she was asked to volunteer for an after-school art class at Brandeis Elementary School in the West End of Louisville, she didn’t hesitate to say yes.

The lesson plan was titled “Self(Love) Portraits.” Roberts knew for many of the girls in her class, this would be their very first self-portrait. So before any paint touched paper, she wanted to send a message: Perfectionism has no place here.

“I walked into a classroom full of little girls who looked just like me at their age, and who came from the same neighborhoods I grew up in,” Roberts said. “The West End of Louisville is where I’m from, a predominantly Black area of town where hardship is more familiar than I’d like to admit. Perfectionism there isn’t just a mindset; it’s a survival mechanism.”

Roberts saw reflections of her younger self in the students sitting in front of her. By the time she was their age, she said she had already begun to develop the kind of perfectionism that would later cause her deep pain throughout her teenage years and early adulthood.

“I wish I could have gone back and said to my younger self the words I spoke to that class,” she said.

“When I reminded those girls, ‘It’s just a painting,’ it wasn’t because I wanted them to lower their standards,” Roberts said. “It was because I wanted them to breathe — to actually enjoy the process of learning something completely new and difficult. To have the kind of freedom that creativity needs in order to truly take root.”

By the end of the class, Roberts said the girls had plenty to be proud of.

“Not because it was perfect,” she said, “but because it was theirs. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.”

Watch the video above to see Roberts' full inspiring message to her art class!

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