Connecting students to history

Ryan Jones ’04 teaches sixth-grade reading and writing at the innovative Epiphany School in Boston, but he is equally famous as “that art guy.” School walls are decorated with his striking monochrome pencil and charcoal portraits of role models ranging from Chadwick Boseman to Ray Charles to Barack and Michelle Obama.

“I’m using my art to inspire the kids,” said Jones, a former UD football player. “I want them to know we are all capable of doing great things.”

“I’m using my art to inspire the kids. I want them to know we are all capable of doing great things.”

His most recent project for his school — “March On,” a 10-by-20-foot outdoor color mural celebrating civil rights leader John Lewis — is garnering statewide attention. The Boston Celtics recently honored Jones as one of the team’s “Heroes Among Us,” with a citation lauding him for “using art to connect students to history.”

Jones has loved drawing since his childhood in Newark, Ohio. “When I am drawing, I have to set an alarm to remind me to eat and drink,” he said. The prospect of creating his first mural proved somewhat daunting, but Lewis’ death last year motivated Jones to take a chance on a new medium. “He should be so much more than a news cycle,” Jones said.

In “March On,” Lewis gazes solemnly at a colorful scene depicting Black Lives Matter activists marching across the Bunker Hill-Lenny Zakim Bridge in Boston — an intentional link to Lewis’ historic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

After graduating from UD, Jones was recommended for a teaching fellowship at Epiphany School by an alumnus who was a member of his fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi. Jones discovered his passion for teaching at the school, which is tuition-free for its students. “We give low-income kids in Boston the equivalent of a private education,” he said.

The “March On” mural, he hopes, will reinforce classroom conversations about current events.

“Being around kids makes me want to be a better person,” Jones said. “Every year I see them becoming more inclusive and oriented toward social justice. I tell my kids every day that they are the ones who are going to change the future.”