Earlier this year, guests of the Portland Art Museum had the opportunity to vote on finalists for the 2025 PDX Jazz in the Schools Poster Contest. When the votes were tallied, one of the two winners was Andre, a student at Tillamook School District’s Trask River High School.
Trask River serves youth at the Oregon Youth Authority’s youth correctional facility and transition program. Over half of all youth in OYA facilities have received special education (compared to roughly 15% in public schools). These young people have attended school inconsistently and are often credit deficient, which adds up to a poor sense of themselves as learners.
Educators, then, explore creative ways to help youth believe in their ability to learn and achieve. For Trask River’s Lisa McCready, one way of doing that is this poster contest.
McCready has woven this contest into her classroom for several years, pairing it with lessons about the history of jazz. She says contests matter because they show her students that their work belongs in the wider world. “Sometimes they get the feeling they’re in a prison school and nobody cares,” she said. “But contests show them they’re just like all the other kids out there.”
That message is especially powerful when a student wins, said McCready. And for most people, Andre isn’t a justice-involved youth: he’s just, “some high school kid making beautiful art about jazz.”
Actually, Andre’s piece reflects his love for another genre: the blues. Andre plays guitar and is learning bass guitar and has long thought of music as “my art.” Visual art, by contrast, never came easily. He still recalls his grandmother sitting him down as a child to draw a cartoon character. “I really butchered the drawing,” he said with a grin, and he avoided drawing for years afterward.
His siblings never stopped encouraging him, though, insisting creativity was “in the genes.” Andre mostly brushed them off, until McCready’s assignment gave him the chance to try again. This time, he invested real effort and saw results. “I got something that was really cool,” he said. That shift—choosing to approach art with the same energy he gives music—made all the difference.
The contest also tied into McCready’s larger teaching philosophy: using art and music as vehicles for learning. She often blends history lessons with music of the time, drawing connections her students might not otherwise see. Few of them arrive knowing jazz icons like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong. But once she links those traditions to the genres and artists youth know better, the connections spark curiosity. “Art and music are the way to get to most of our students,” she said.
Andre’s winning poster is no longer in the Portland Art Museum, but you can see it online alongside past winners from across Oregon – tangible proof that he can do more than he initially thinks. For McCready, it affirms that creative outlets can open new possibilities. Contests aside, that is the truest victory any educator or learner could win.
This article is also featured in the Tillamook Headlight Herald.