For nearly half a century, Dowagiac Union High School art instructor Dean Hill has used his classroom as a canvas, and used it to work on countless masterpieces.

On Thursday morning, he was busy at work with a batch of fledging artists. Making his way from table to table inside a room filled wall-to-wall with colorful student murals,  Hill glanced at each of the silhouette art pieces his fourth hour class have spent the last few days working on, offering some helpful advice along the way.

Watching him weave from student to student, offering nuggets of praise and the occasional joke, one can easily see Hill is in his element. Although the paint brushes and pencils are in hands of his students and not his own, Hill was none the less hard at work on another work of art — instilling a passion for the humanities his charges will carry with them for a lifetime.

At the end of the school year in June, though, the longtime educator will be hanging up his brush and moving on to his next project.

Dowagiac Superintendent Paul Hartsig announced earlier this week that Hill had submitted his letter of resignation, stating that he would be retiring after nearly 45 years with the district. Hill will serve through the end of the spring semester, which is scheduled to end June 14.

A native of Detroit, Hill has been creating works of art from a young age. His interest in the humanities was sparked by his elementary school art teacher, Mrs. Ellis, he said.

“She noted that I had a knack for it,” Hill said.

His early artwork mostly consisted of sketches and drawings, he said. One of his pieces, a collage of different geometric shapes and patterns he made in 1966, he keeps in his high school classroom to this day, which he inherited from his mother after her passing several years ago.

After graduating from high school in 1968, Hill attended college at Eastern Michigan University, where he majored in geography and minored in art. Although he originally planned to get into mapmaking, just one year after graduating from Eastern in 1972 he decided to take a teaching position at Dowagiac Union High School.

“There was certainly a culture shock, coming here from the big city,” Hill said. “I didn’t think I would be out here for all that long, but obviously things changed.”

Although he was thrown into the art room right away, he originally was only supposed to fill in as an art instructor for a few months before he would begin teaching geography, Hill said. However, his temporary assignment became a permanent one.

Although he has primarily worked with high school students, Hill also spent around 15 years working at the middle school, teaching art and, for several years, math, he said.

Over the years, Hill has taught art to countless students, showing them how to create everything from paintings, pottery, wood and metal work and more. One of his classes once created a wooden totem pole, which stands today outside one of the school courtyards.

Hill runs his classroom a bit differently from the conventional one, he said. Rather than dictating commands on what his students must create, Hill instead sees himself as more of an advisor, offering suggestions and help to students as they work to create something unique, he said.

“One of the students might have a better idea than what we are working on, so I’ll let them go with it,” he said. “I like to let the students have some control over their artwork.”

Hill’s has lent his calm and composed style of mentoring outside the art room as well. For years, the teacher coached several high school and middle school teams, including girls basketball, junior high tennis and football, and track, among others, he said.

A resident of Niles, over the years Hill has encountered many of his former students, some of whom have gone on to enjoy successful careers in art or fields related to the subject, he said. One of his students has since become a furniture designer, another works as an art designer for a TV station and several others have followed in Hill’s footsteps and now teach art themselves, he said.

Following his retirement later this year, Hill said he plans on spending some long overdue time working on his own artwork in his studio. He also plans on running again for state legislature. Last year, he ran unsuccessfully again Dave Pagel for the 78th seat in the Michigan House of Representatives, although the incumbent cannot run again in 2018 due to term limits.

Although he said he dislikes thinking about his career in terms of legacy, Hill hopes that his time with Dowagiac Union High School has left a mark on the countless students who he taught since 1973.

“I just wanted the kids to learn something new, have fun and maybe use what they learned to help other people,” Hill said.