Miss Illinois 2019 Ariel Beverly, a former art teacher at Glennwood High School, competed in the Miss America pageant this week.

There are many fine teachers who have earned fame for accomplishments outside of the classroom. One of these is Ariel Beverly, a former high school art teacher from Illinois who was crowned Miss Illinois 2019. This week, the educator competed in the Miss America 2020 pageant.

Ariel has long been passionate about arts education. During her college years, she taught art classes at Infinite Heart Studios in Bloomington, Illinois. She worked there from 2014 to 2017. “This was my first teaching position during which I created and taught art lessons for long-term weekly courses, as well as week-long summer camps,” Ariel described. “I became comfortable with several art medias, as well as teaching many different age groups, spanning from second grade to early high school,” she continued.

To refine her instructional skills, Ariel earned a Bachelor’s degree in Art Teacher Education from Illinois State University in 2017. She completed her student teaching at Evans Junior High School and Central Catholic High School, both located in Bloomington, Illinois. She also worked for one semester at Central Catholic as a substitute teacher.

After earning her teaching credential, Ariel accepted a position at Glenwood High School in Chatham, Illinois. She taught there for one year, and then resigned to return to Chicago. But she hasn’t lost her fervor for arts education. Currently, the young beauty queen is focused on advocating for arts education. “Currently, over 80% of Illinois schools do not require students to take a single course in the arts in order to graduate,” Ariel points out. According to statistics, declares Ariel, lower socio-economic students who attend schools without any art program are five times less likely to graduate from high school than students who have access to art education. To combat this inequity, Ariel has collected and donated over $10,000 worth of art supplies to school art programs.

Ariel did not begin to enter pageants until her sophomore year in college. She garnered the title of Miss Illinois 2019 last June. With that title, she became eligible to compete in the Miss America pageant this week.

To learn more about Ariel and her work in the classroom, see this link from Media Release.