Bianca Phoenix
Mrs. Rice is one of the main Media Arts pathway teachers and has been since the pathway’s creation in 2018. She covers the entire graphic design sphere of the pathway, teaching the classes Digital Imaging (Photoshop) and 2D Media Design (InDesign and Illustrator), along with being in charge of two Atherton primary publications: The Torch (Yearbook) and The Aerial (Journalism).
Rice has been teaching for 19 years. She started at the Teenage-Parent Program, where she taught all girls that were either pregnant or had babies in the school’s daycare. After 8 years of teaching, she decided to switch to a larger high school.
“I wanted the big high school experience so I came to Atherton as a freshman English teacher my first year, and I had one class of junior English,” she says.
When asked about why she chose Atherton specifically, Rice said, “I grew up in Indiana, and so I didn’t really know anything about JCPS high schools. I went to the person at the district that was in charge of all the English teachers and said, ‘what schools do I go to?’ And she said, ‘I think you should make Atherton your number one choice.’…she gave me some other schools but when I interviewed here, I really just felt at home. I felt comfortable.”
Outside of school, Rice runs a photography business, Blue Box Imaging, which she runs with her yearbook advisor from high school. Some of her primary hobbies are photography, traveling, and riding mountain bikes with her husband.
Mrs. Rice’s biggest piece of advice for students in high school is to do what you love and stay motivated to do that:
“I see so many kids get into something and I don’t know how or why, they lose their motivation. Like, I don’t know what knocks them down…sometimes you’ve got to take things that happen negatively in your life and make it a challenge and choose to be a survivor instead of a victim of whatever that situation is. Figure out how to overcome that and still stay passionate with whatever you love.”