Rin Clough and Bilal Psarly also contributed to this article.
Rolling into the 2026 school year, Malden High has expanded its art department. One of these new art teachers is Gina Yu, who teaches digital art as an elective alongside her Introduction to Art classes.
Yu is a Korean-American raised in Southbridge, Massachusetts; she attended Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts (SMFA). Before beginning her teaching career, she worked at the Institute of Contemporary Art, an art museum in Boston, and completed both her undergraduate and graduate studies in Somerville, where she eventually decided to stay.
While working at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Yu was responsible for creating their social media posts. When Yu attended, it opened her eyes to something new: digital art. “I just learned on the job because I worked alongside the graphic designer there and learned all the software on the spot,” Yu mentioned.
“Since this is my first year teaching on my own, it’s been a little overwhelming; I’m learning a lot about Malden specifically and about teaching in general, so I’ve had to get used to and adjust to many new things,” Yu shared.
You can see students collaborating on MacBooks in the Digital Art class and creating posters on Photoshop apps. In contrast, the students in the Introduction to Art class learn to create realistic three-dimensional shapes using shading and values with just a pencil and an eraser.
“She’s really chill, music playing, calm, quiet, making sure that she’s going around, checking in with everybody, but also giving them the space to be able to collaborate,” said nearby art teacher Michaela Ilebode, who is also new this year.
While Yu’s students themselves are collaborative, Yu herself collaborates with the other teachers in the art department. “We’ve done a lot of collaboration on our studio classes and sharing notes of things that are working and aren’t working for each of our classes to see what we can bring into our classrooms,” Ilebode stated.
Another positive response came from Courtney Gould, another new art teacher. “Ms. Yu has been really helpful because our rooms adjoin, so whenever we need something from each other, it’s nice to have a neighbor next door. When I taught at the elementary school level, I never had that camaraderie with another art teacher right next door, so it’s been really nice to be able to work off each other and have each other for support,” said Gould.
Yu looks forward to meeting many students and creating new bonds. She finds joy in their humor and looks forward to attending school events. Some things that Yu appreciates about MHS are the free lunches and the diversity Malden provides. Yu said that she “was able to relate more to students.”
Yu’s classroom can be found on the third floor of the Holland building, the room featuring a giant computer painted in front of it, H309.
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