Shannon Turick walked between desks and made her way to an array of paint bottles set up at the front of her classroom.
After dispensing globs of white, blue and black onto a paper plate for one of her students, she printed a reference photo for another before sitting down on an ottoman.
As some two dozen students worked on canvases scattered around her English class at Buchtel Community Learning Center, Turick flipped through photos of those same teenagers, who previously spent quiet moments reading novels. Those moments inspired paintings they continued to craft as the end of the school year neared…