Marianela Rios had no formal art training when a friend called and asked if she'd be willing to chair the art portion of the Alcuin Auction. She said yes anyway. That was four years ago. What started as an act of friendship has quietly become one of the more distinctive traditions in the auction's life and one of the more meaningful ways a parent has found to weave herself into the fabric of this school.

The work itself is deceptively intricate. Each year, Marianela goes into Toddler and Primary classrooms not as a visitor, but as a collaborator. She reads the room, its tone, its energy, its guides, and meets it there. She brings materials and a loose Montessori-shaped structure: a brief lesson and then space for the children to take it somewhere she didn't plan. What comes out of those sessions is student artwork that she then transforms, with skill built entirely through trial and passion, into something that belongs on a gallery wall. This year's projects drew from books living inside the classrooms themselves, which meant the finished pieces carried the pages of stories the children already loved.

What Marianela has built over four years isn't just a beautiful auction contribution. It's a model for what belonging to a school community can look like. She now knows the faculty, the staff, the changing cast of auction chairs, and the parents who show up year after year. She's grown confident enough in her craft to begin teaching art workshops of her own. The school gave her a place to try something, and she gave the school something it couldn't have planned for. That exchange, a shared passion meeting an open door, is exactly the kind of giving that makes a community feel like one.