• In his 27 years teaching at SVHS, his students have earned increasingly higher numbers of honors for their work.
Adam Guild, an art teacher at Star Valley High School, has been selected as a regional winner of the National High School Heart of the Arts Award. The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) selected Guild as one of eight regional winners, and one of those winners will go on to be the national winner.
Nominated by Rob Erickson, who serves as Assistant Principal and Athletic Director at SVHS, Guild is surprised and honored to have been chosen as a regional winner. In an interview on the SVI Radio Network, he humbly acknowledged that the award is “cool” and promptly redirected the focus to his students and their accomplishments. “They are what makes me happy and makes teaching worth it.”
The award recognizes individuals who “exemplify the ideals of the positive heart of the arts that represent the core mission of education-based activities,” according to the award nomination form. Winners must possess a “high level of integrity and ethics.”
Guild has been teaching at Star Valley High School since August of 1997, and has also served as an assistant wrestling coach during many of those years. He has held leadership positions at the state level with the Wyoming Secondary Art Educators Association (WSAEA), including President in 2003. In 2006, Guild was nominated by his fellow art teachers in Wyoming as the Secondary Art Educator of the Year.
Since 1998, Guild has taken many of his art students to the annual Wyoming High School State Art Symposium, where hundreds of his students have earned ribbons and high honors. That first year, his students brought home 25 ribbons from the Symposium. Over the years, that number has steadily increased. This year, in 2024, they brought home 131 ribbons.
As part of the nomination, Erickson spoke of Guild’s students who have earned significant scholarships, and who have had many of their art pieces “selected in the top 25 Congressional Art Awards.” His students have also had several pieces of artwork selected by the First Lady of Wyoming to hang in the state capitol building. In 2023, a piece by one of Guild’s students, Jentry England, was selected as the best piece at the 2023 Symposium. England traveled to Washington D.C. to be honored by Congresswoman Harriet Hageman, and her work was hung in the US Capitol Building.
Additionally, Guild’s Advanced Placement Art students consistently score with a three or above on their AP exams, which is significant.
“Adam has a unique, special way of working and connecting with his students,” said Erickson. “They work hard for him, and the results are evident.”
When he began teaching at SVHS 27 years ago, Guild did not expect to learn so much from his students. “Every day I go in there and my goal is to help them, but almost every single day, they teach me something.” He believes that some of them are becoming better artists than he is as a professional artist.
Guild loves that the art classroom fosters a culture of deeper relationships between teacher and student, acknowledging that art teachers interact daily with each individual student, helping them solve problems and recognize small ways they can perfect their work. As a result, each graduating class takes a piece of his heart with him when they go.
The most important thing that Guild hopes to instill in his students is courage. “I want them to know that they can accomplish anything. People don’t think it takes courage to do art, but you walk in, and you have a blank canvas. It’s blank. It’s white. You have to have the ability and the confidence in yourself to say, ‘OK! I’m going to create a masterpiece on this blank canvas!”
