Arts in Education
This is not a usual TAG blog entry, but I think this is such
an important subject, I just had to write about it.
- Nikolai Vitti – Superintendent, Duval County Public Schools
- Jackie Cornelius – Principal, Douglas Anderson School for the
Arts
- Marcelle Polednik – Director, Museum of Contemporary Art
- Kimberly Hyatt – Executive Director, Cathedral Arts Project
- Innovation
- Creative Thinking
- Opportunities for innovation
- Success in the above motivates employees, requiring:
- Autonomy
- Mastery of your job
- A purpose
- Great teachers and principals
- An engaged group of parents
- The best use of available resources
- Focus on developing the whole child
This “whole child” concept definitely includes the addition
of arts and music to be part of the standardized curriculum, not only for the
gifted and magnet schools, but for all schools. His idea is to expose the kids
to arts and music during the elementary school years, then when they get to
middle school some differentiation can be established. By this he meant that if
there was serious interest the student displayed in middle school,
possibilities of supporting this inclination can be further developed in magnet
or gifted schools and programs.
Marcelle was very straightforward in asserting that arts
literacy is the motivation of creativity. It is not confined to the making of
art either, but rather includes the thinking about arts, which is the
foundation of our museums. One thing she said was very profound and that was we
are developing students with little interest in arts or music, so when they
grow up, they don’t foster this interest in their children. This process goes
on and on until we end up further than ever away from the arts.
This discussion continued that we don’t have any such
problem with sports. Many school activities make success in sports a key focus for
the schools and students. It also is an activity where the whole family can be
involved. Marcelle recommended that we bring this family activity concept into
the arts world by making family trips to the local museums. Many of them have
free family days to help. In Dr. Vitti’s previous experience in Miami, the
Parent Academy that he established helped facilitate this. He also established
a Cultural Passport for the students, to make sure they were exposed to a broad
range of the arts.
Once again Dr. Vitti focused on the planning process that
defines what we want the kids to do and then developing the plans and budgets
to make this happen.
- We have established a concept of core vs elective classes in our curriculum. This establishes electives as second tier and therefore becomes the focus of budget cuts. Electives are important to the students to develop critical thinking which truly benefits industry.
- We need to make it easier for businesses and other groups to help bring arts to our kids. Those channels of communication are not strongly developed or are cumbersome to use.
- We talked about the idea of a Cultural Passport, not only for our kids, but for our city officials as well, so that they can clearly evaluate the true benefit of the arts.
Ed Malesky
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