The artists that have most inspired Ms. Tolentino are those who ask questions that go beyond mastery of skill, craft, or self-expression, those with a relentless commitment to asking hard questions about social and environmental systems, human existence, spirituality, and compassion. Her interdisciplinary approach is based on the premise that different people learn, care, and latch on to things differently. By offering multiple ways of experiencing the same material – be it math or art, these different ways of learning and being are respected.
Each of Ms. Tolentino’s classes consists of processes that are grounded in design thinking, but with different outcomes. For example, Coding as Art I teaches students how to think computationally by analyzing, recreating, and generating original visual designs, animations and textile patterns. Coding as Art II gives students more advanced tools to create physics simulations, video games, and interactive possibilities that involve multiple computers or other elements like sound or motion sensing. Game Design teaches students how to analyze games from their technical and aesthetic qualities, as well as the social dynamics they produce when people put rules into play; once they have learned how these systems work, they build their own game, meanwhile examining systems that exist in society (e.g., methods of control, stereotypes, implicit games people play) to understand the hidden or implicit rules. In Interactive Spaces: Physical Computing and Installation Art, students manage a long-term project proposal, timeline and budget for a large-scale, interactive piece, and meanwhile make interdisciplinary connections between design, engineering, art, and psychology, through team-based projects and in-depth analysis of works in the field.
Ms. Tolentino’s philosophy regarding arts education is to bring young people as close to a true contemporary practice as possible. That means allowing them to be creators of something new or novel, and that there will be no clear guide or "how-to" manual; they learn as they go. While this can be very uncomfortable place for students, Ms. Tolentino supports their development of comfort and patience with unknowable spaces or seemingly impossible goals; because this is the place where she believes all creators - artists, architects, designers, and engineers – live; at some point, what is not known becomes known, but it takes constant work and patience. Ms. Tolentino teaches her students to learn to love the process of being resolved, adaptable, relentless, and reflective. This will get them to resilience, a skill that transfers far beyond the practice of arts. Ms. Tolentino empowers her students to choose ideas, paths, and solutions that make sense for them.