Longtime journalist Sean Roney shares his creative talents to get children excited about learning and art.

Sean Roney considers himself a “hopeful teacher,” but before going back to his dream of being a teacher, he has worn different hats throughout his life, including a journalist, photographer and father. Roney shares his enthusiasm online about everything he does, posting photos and videos about painting, cycling and teaching.

He has lived most of his life in South County.

“I remember going to Hartnell College and wanting to be a history teacher,” Roney recalls. “I thought for some reason I wanted to teach at college, but then growing up, I ended up becoming a journalist.”

He is well-known in South County from covering graduations, sports, city councils and more for the King City Rustler, where he has worked off and on since 2002.

After a long hiatus from school, he went back in 2016 and pursued a humanities and communication bachelor’s degree called English Subject Matter Preparation (to teach English in high school) at CSU Monterey Bay.

He is transitioning from journalism to education. “I’d like to try to use my talents to teach the next generation,” he says, noting he taught different grades in the K-12 system and different subjects including art, English and math.

He has worked as a substitute teacher in various schools in South County including San Lucas Union Elementary School District, where he started a project using art to help students visualize their ideas during recess.

The project was so successful that it eventually became a full-blown art program. Students learned how to use different mediums including acrylics, spray paint and watercolors. Roney and his students had art shows in San Lucas and at Sol Treasures in May.

Roney’s next steps as an educator are to work on his certification and diversify his YouTube channel (@megaspaceduck) where he can help kids thrive.

Weekly: What made you decide to become a teacher?

Roney: That was about a decade ago. I was kind of reviewing, ‘what can I do as a career, and what feels fulfilling? Do I want to do this for more decades to come, and does it feel fulfilling?’ And the answer I kept arriving at was no. I wanted to do something where I could use my talents to share and help bring up other people’s talents, give them some pointers, whatever it is and then I realized: ‘Wait a minute, that sounds like an educator,’ so I started looking into education as a career field.

How was your first time in a classroom?

My first time in front of a class in an educational capacity, I was not the educator, but I was a guest lecturer at CSUMB. I talked to my journalism professor [Estella Porras] into letting me guest lecture twice a couple years back. Her specialty was interviews and writing. But I said, ‘Can I teach some tips on photojournalism?’ So she said, ‘Yeah.’ It was great, because they were all attentive, and they all had a bunch of different ideas from their own different backgrounds. There were lots of questions. Lots of attentiveness. Now, the first time in front of children, I think [I] was teaching middle school. I was teaching English, and that was interesting. Middle school is a whole different environment than either high school or elementary school. People think teaching kindergarten is easier than teaching middle school, but teaching middle school is the roughest. We have a mixture of energy and kind of defiance and attitude.

You’ve taught kids in a multi-grade classroom. How does that work?

As a mixed classroom group, it’s tough to split your lessons through three different grade levels.

I like creating custom content based on the needs of the students, or based on their abilities too. I find that a lot of modern teaching books, especially for math, are written for the students who need the most support so it kind of delays everyone else.

Which painting medium is your favorite?

I gotta say spray paint. Spray paint, which seems like it would be the messiest and most uncontrollable medium, has actually been a lot of fun for me because of the chaos and you get to reign it back in. It almost feels like teaching. When you have an idea of what you want to do, and then you get in the classroom, everything just goes wild. No plan ever hits the floor as expected, and then you just adapt and roll with it.

SPRAY PAINTING CLASS. 10am-noon Saturday, July 5. Sol Treasures, 519 Broadway St., King City. $30 ages 8 and up. 386-1381, soltreasures.com.