About Miss Kiara

Hi! Welcome to my portfolio site, my name is Kiara Liwag. I am from Marlboro NJ and grew up there with my parents and younger brother. I went through the Marlboro Township school system and graduated from Marlboro High School in 2017. I then went on to college at Ramapo College of New Jersey and graduated in 2021 with my Bachelors in Art with a concentration in Visual Communication Design. Other than art, my biggest passion in life is swimming. I started competitively swimming when I was seven years old, and I swam NCAA D3 all four years of my undergrad. I have been coaching age group swim teams since 2015, and currently work for a year round elite swim team coaching swimmers ranging from seven to eighteen year olds.

Being an older sister with a brother five and a half years younger than me, I always found myself playing the role of teacher or coach when playing pretend. I thought this was normal for all kids until I went to college initially pursuing a career in nursing. I quickly learned that all my peers in my nursing classes did not play teacher, they instead were playing doctor or hospital with their families when playing pretend was still part of our daily routines. This wake up call made me realize that maybe I was not pursuing a career that I was meant to be in. I looked back on the years I spent coaching and realized that the happiest I had been in life up to that point was when I was coaching on the pool deck and teaching children about the sport that made me who I was. So, at the end of my sophomore year of college, I decided to switch majors to Visual Communication Design (Graphic Design) so that I could focus on coaching and also explore my creative brain that I had pushed aside for so long. After I graduated, I began coaching year round rather than just in the summers, but I was still itching to do more with teaching. That is when the Alternate Route to Teaching path landed in my lap and I decided to go all in and start my journey to becoming an art teacher. And here we are now, I am excited for the journey ahead and look forward to continuing my story in my own classroom where I can combine my life's biggest passions of art and teaching.