By Maile Winterbottom ’21
This fall, the Pingry community welcomes Ms. Xiomara Babilonia as the new Middle School art teacher. She teaches sixth and seventh-grade art, introductory art courses where students are able to learn new techniques using different materials. Before coming to Pingry, she taught art in the Camden school district for fifteen years. She received her B.A. in sculpture at Rutgers University and then went on to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia where she got her M.A. in ceramics. In the spring, she plans to be the assistant Middle School softball coach. “I love softball; I played in high school and my daughter plays little league,” she adds excitedly.
When speaking about why she became a teacher, she said, “I’ve always loved to share my knowledge and inspire excitement in other people.” During her time teaching in Camden, she taught a class for local high school students at the Tyler School of Art where she helped them find out if art was a path they wanted to pursue. “It was kind of a program for them to feel it out,” she adds. Ms. Babilonia loves Pingry so far, describing it as “a very cool environment– there’s a lot of support from the teachers and staff.”
One other thing Ms. Babilonia did before Pingry was help run a project called the ‘Claymobile’; “it was a van filled with all types of supplies for ceramics, and we would go to different schools, and do ceramics projects with the students.” She says that this program led her to discover that she wanted to be a teacher. Her main goal for this year is to try to expand the Middle School ceramics program – in the future, she hopes that more attention can be brought to Middle School ceramics, and even plans to advocate for the creation of a Middle School ceramics studio.
The first project she did with the students this year was, unsurprisingly, a ceramics project. Right away, the students “started getting dirty and creative.”
One of her main interests outside of school is traveling. She also says that she is a big foodie, and loves to combine these passions: “Wherever I travel, I love to find really good eats, places that are off the beaten path.”
She has an eleven-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son. Ms. Babalonia also runs a party entertainment business where she does henna, face paint, and other exciting art forms. Ms. Babalonia is “excited to get [her] feet wet and learn the ins and outs of Pingry!”.