Giant Steps Teacher Wins Grant, $1,000 for Art Supplies

Edo Rosenblith is known around Giant Steps school to have an even temperament.

Giant Steps, in Maplewood, is a school for children in the autism spectrum, and Rosenblith teaches art there.

“Since they can be so easily excitable, and they’re always going through so much emotionally, it helps to have an even keel,” he said. If you get too worked up about it, it doesn’t help, I’ve found.”

Rosenblith, 25, applied for a grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation for a three-day conference on art education in Washington, D.C., and was accepted along with 20 other art teachers from around the country.

The group talked art education, went to the Smithsonian museums, and on the final day each teacher was given $1,000 to use for art supplies.

“Suddenly my art budget quadrupled,” Rosenblith said. “Now I just have to figure out what do I need and what materials and projects I can do. I feel like the sky is the limit.”

Rosenblith started teaching at the Giant Steps summer camp when he was 16. He was on the staff for two years before being hired fulltime. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in painting in 2011.

“If you asked me in college what I wanted to do, I don’t know if I would have said I wanted to be an art teacher,” he said. “I think because I have a sibling with autism, and I’ve been around it my whole life, and I’ve been working at this school since I was pretty young.

He also has a studio downtown at the City Museum, where he goes each day after school to work on his own art practice.