At the end of the C building hall lies room C 237, and proudly displayed beside it are ceramic vessels intricately crafted by North Hollywood High School’s very own ceramics class, taught by Ms. McLean.
The 2025-2026 school year is the first year that Ms. McLean has taught ceramics at NHHS. She took over the position after Ms. Laverie retired the year prior. As an experienced ceramicist herself, she is happy to uplift her students to reach creative heights and push them towards success.
Ms. McLean may be new to teaching ceramics, but she’s certainly no stranger to teaching art. Ms. McLean has been an AP Art History teacher, Drawing AB teacher, and now teaches Ceramics 1 & 2. Although there is a great difference between ceramics and the other classes she has taught, she had been looking forward to teaching the class even before this school year started.
Ms. McLean says, “I had the benefit of Ms. Laverie (the previous ceramics teacher) kinda showing me the ropes, talking to me about different projects that work, and though I’ve layered in a couple of projects that I think were beneficial to the students, I really stuck to some of the projects that she had already established.” Overall, she really cares about the growth of her students, especially those handling clay for the first time.
To anyone interested in joining the class, she says, “You should do it, it’s a lot of fun!” She explains that an important life lesson students tend to learn through ceramics is being ok with failing and making things better. She elaborates, stating, “oftentimes with ceramics, you try something and it fails, and you just put it back in the recycle bin.” She connects this to the lesson that “not everything is precious, not everything needs to be elevated, some things are a learning process.”
A major part of this learning process is also encouraging students to accomplish their creative vision. This is mainly done through the class’s project-based learning. When reflecting on her experience in Ceramics 1, STEM senior Kimbery Prudencio says “I think for her first year [Ms. McLean] was very good.”
Prudencio found Ms. McLean was very helpful while working on projects, saying “[She] was always around, always checking in on people [and] she even gave us tips as we were working on [projects].” Projects like her most recent one, where she is creating a basket full of mangos for a pottery food potluck.
After nailing her concept down, Prudencio began thinking about the building process and mixing various techniques she learned from Ms. McLean in the past. She explains, “I’ve used a lot of slab building for the basket, and I also used pinch pots to make the mangos themselves… [now] I’m planning to use a coil technique to [make] the handles of the basket.”
SAS junior Jordan Zamudio also took ceramics for his first year with Ms. McLean and got to create something he was proud of. He says, “I think my favorite project was the slab mug,” where he created a mug by rolling a slab of clay, cutting out a rectangle, and shaping it as a cylinder.
This experience, combined with countless other projects, made the class a unique experience for Zamudio, who says, “I do enjoy [making ceramics projects], it’s something new for me, I’ve never done something this artistic…I think I’m really enjoying this class, and I think I’m going to take it next year.”
Overall, the experience of taking ceramics is incredibly different from other classes. “In ceramics, you don’t have to add, you don’t have to read…you can just like, be as creative as you want, obviously within the guidelines that are given to you…it’s just a space for you to be creative, and I enjoy that.”
Ceramics is a class that gives students a unique way to express themselves creatively that falls outside the standard curriculum of high schoolers. Even though the torch was passed from one teacher to the next, the drive and passion to create remains strong amongst Ceramics students at NHHS.
