Excerpts from full testimonials
“Ms. Lee has the amazing ability to understand and accommodate the needs of middle school students. She’s able to push and drive students to excel to their fullest potential … My skills in discipline and self-efficacy were developed, and this has helped me when I led the creation of a mural in high school … She uses a Socratic way of teaching, pushing me to think critically and creatively for myself … [and] forms an environment where questions and discussion are encouraged. She always exhibited care and acceptance of me and other students, regardless of background. Ms. Lee was and is a passionate and deeply caring teacher to me. She not only taught me the fundamental skills to execute artwork, but also taught me the criticality and discourse that was essential to my own artistic vision.“
Read full testimonial here.
— Annie Pang (Malaysia)
Incoming Student at Cornell University, Bachelor of Architecture ’31
12th grader at VIS@betterworld lab Education Institution (Taipei, Taiwan)
Under the tutelage of Ms. Lee between 5th-8th grade
“Ms. Lee has greatly impacted me not only in art, but also in my everyday life– changing my perspective and skill on how I approach a challenge or issue. Her mentorship emphasizes exploration and critical thinking … encouraging me to embrace mistakes, and helping me grow through them. Her teaching gave me confidence to challenge myself and apply the skills I learned from her in reasoning and analytical thinking across future work … which has significantly assisted me in the day-to-day schooling system and how I comprehend information from different school subjects.”
Read full testimonial here.
— Athena Gao (Taiwan)
8th grader at Eleanor Murray Fallon Middle School
Under the tutelage of Ms. Lee between 5th-8th grade (Present)
I was a middle school student in Mrs. Lee’s art class, where she consistently encouraged students to explore different art styles and work across a wide range of mediums … Coming from an Indian cultural background, my approach to visual expression and form often differed from what felt familiar in the classroom. She welcomed that difference and encouraged me to experiment freely … That confidence has carried directly into my work today. As a college student studying Industrial Design, I continue to draw from the mindset she helped instill, approaching form, material, and process with openness and curiosity. I’m comfortable working across disciplines and mediums, and I attribute much of that adaptability to her emphasis on experimentation and personal expression at an early age.“
To Ms. Lee: “I had so much fun reflecting on my time in your classes and writing this testimonial! It was honestly really fun looking back on that time and realizing how much it still influences the way I think and create today.”
Read full testimonial here.
— Rohan Khadilkar (India)
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Industrial Design ’26
Under the tutelage of Ms. Lee between 5th-9th grade
“[Ms. Lee] has truly fostered my passion, exploration, and commitment to the arts … The ways in which she describes and critiques artwork is incredibly passionate, eye-opening and invigorating … She also inspired my experimentation with the rich artistic heritage of history and culture … [and] has led me to pursue curatorial and interpretive career pathways … Her project and theme-based teaching really allowed me to be explorative with what I make, and appreciate art for its philosophical advents. Creating art became not about the completion, but rather about the ways art can be engaged in critical thinking, foster spaces of care, and reflect cultural celebration … My appreciation for how she has introduced the arts only deepens as I navigate my professional art practice today. Ms. Lee’s joy, passion, and kindness is truly infectious, and has genuinely deepened my appreciation for the world around me.“
Read full testimonial here.
— Vivian Ji (China)
Junior at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Under the tutelage of Ms. Lee between 5th-12th grade
[Ms. Lee] has taught me to value art for the experience it creates, and the process of self-reflection and experimentation it can facilitate … With an interdisciplinary approach, Ms. Lee recognized the literary depth in my subject matter and urged me to push beyond my comfort zone and experiment with animation and mixed media to realize the full potential of this project … She is one of the few art teachers I have known to be able to deeply connect with her students’ artwork and enrich their concepts with her philosophical reflections and life experience … Ms. Lee is truly an outstanding instructor. She possesses a singular passion for artistic creation and an ever-growing wealth of artistic knowledge. Her radiant and humorous temperament often brightened my mood and allowed me to judge my artworks with clarity and without fear of failure.
Read full testimonial here.
— Serena Yang (China)
The Pratt Institute, Communications Design with an emphasis on Illustration
Under the tutelage of Ms. Lee between 10th-12th grade
“Ms. Lee remarkably balanced individualized attention with a cohesive learning environment … [and] knows how to make complex foundational concepts for art digestible for younger students. Her unique curriculum firmly built for me the foundations of what makes a piece stellar, and helped me capture that for myself … [She] guided me to make work I am proud of to this day, and together we realized pieces I never dreamed I could make on my own … Her care for my college preparation was even sacrificial at times, even staying up late on nights when she didn’t have to, to provide feedback.”
“Professors at my institution [The Pratt Institute] have been surprised by my solid artistic foundation, even complimenting specific skills I learned from Ms. Lee. In just 2 years, her class shaped how I look at, speak about, and create art—I can only imagine the skills and depth I’d have developed from starting her class in middle school. The adventurous spirit and confidence in my artistic journey that she fostered in me have also prompted me to study overseas.“
Read full testimonial here.
— Rachel Zhang (Hong Kong)
Sophomore at The Pratt Institute
Under the tutelage of Ms. Lee between 11th-12th grade
“As the parent of one of Ms. Lee’s long-term students, it is our good luck and great pleasure to have her instruct and help my daughter over the past 9 years … She set up progressive learning strategies and comprehensive goals, and also routinely communicated with us as parents on Vivian’s artwork, achievements and next step objectives, and just as importantly, about Vivian’s future life goals and any struggles she has encountered … During Vivian’s classes, Ms. Lee also established a very detailed work plan with carefully refined levels to fit Vivian’s schedule and commitment. She also taught Vivian better time management skills and an efficient way to implement a broader knowledge base from different types of instruction.”
Read full testimonial here.
— Jun Ji
Father of Vivian Ji, Ms. Lee’s Art Student
“I have observed Ms. Lee’s classes and found her to be particularly patient, caring, and wise. She is keen in identifying the characteristics and aptitudes of individual personality and performance, as well as their intellectual levels and aesthetic ability. She then teaches each child accordingly. I observed that Ms. Lee does a wonderful job of managing the classroom dynamic by addressing multiple students’ individual needs at the same time. When she finds that a student’s learning style and attitude is not conducive to learning and is hindering his or her learning in any subject, she not only immediately adjusts her teaching method to guide that child but also spends time and effort helping that child develop a more efficient learning style. She makes sure that students understand how important it is to them. I have witnessed that Ms. Lee puts her heart without reservation into the lifelong welfare of her students. … She uses encouraging and inspiring language, which greatly promotes the students’ incentives in learning and gratifies their sense of accomplishment. This has kept my children’s interests in painting and art increasingly high. She also actively builds the children’s confidence … Ms. Lee is the most caring teacher I have ever met who cares about the holistic development of children so much so that I myself later followed her to study drawing…”
Read full testimonial here.
— Qiuyun Shao
Mother of two of Ms. Lee’s students
