With Father’s Day just having past, we bring you Mr. Jenkins, the legendary art teacher from Miami Jackson Senior High School, who is retiring after 43 years of service. Jenkins has been a father-figure to many students who lacked a positive male role model at home. We salute Eric Jenkins, a true Miami hero.

Eric Jenkins:                        I have to tell them, look don’t call me Pop. It’s Mr. Jenkins to you. When I was in high school teachers cared about kids, I mean you could feel it, you could hear it. You could see it in their body language. This is gonna be the Miami Jackson Art Gallery. I’m so excited, we’re gonna have it done by maybe the end of the summer.

Eric Jenkins:                        This is a story a lot of our kids can tell, where they’re being raised by a single parent. This kid had no knowledge of where his dad was, and mom had remarried and moved out of Miami. He was living in an apartment. He ended up having no alternative but to ask me to go to Washington with him. We took the trip, had a wonderful time.

Eric Jenkins:                        This is called Pointillism. Where the whole piece is done with a dot method. The closer the dots, the darker and as the dark dots start to separate you get gradation. Dark, medium, and light.

Eric Jenkins:                        I can sit there for an hour and talk about these kids. They work, they work so hard for this school and the community. Every year I take them camping as a reward. This is gonna be our last camping trip together. This piece was done by one of non artists. A young lady that came to me, Mr. Jenkins I can’t draw. Okay, and we took her from I can’t draw to this piece. Art education allows kids to express themselves. A lot of our young kids are always holding things in, all kinds of fears. Art enables them to let things go, let things out. So I think it’s really important that they understand that there is that world of adventure, of experience, of just finding out who they really are and who they hopefully may become through their art education.

Eric Jenkins:                        I’m just humbled that I was able to do it for so long, yeah, yeah I’m humbled.