Arts Education Fosters Personal Growth and Development
Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning - Arts Education Partnership and The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, 1999
- The arts help all students succeed in school and life by providing students with the opportunity to develop habits of mind such as critical and creative thinking, perseverance and dedication to task.
- The arts can engage youth who are not being reached through traditional schooling and can positively affect the personal qualities critical to becoming psychologically healthy.
- On the highest levels of literacy, in the realms of social and personal growth and development, and in the development of higher-order thinking skills, the arts provide an ideal setting for multi-faceted and profound learning experiences.
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Arts Education Improves Schools
Gaining the Arts Advantage: Lessons Learned from School Districts that Value Arts Education - Brent Wilson, Ph.D.
Three Ways the Arts Improve the School Climate
Schools organized around the arts look, sound and feel different. All in all, the climate is different. The schools researchers visited were attractive, warm, welcoming and visually exciting.
The Arts' Comprehensive Tasks Challenge Students
Arts students, with the help of their teachers, undertake big projects. They produce a play, present a concert or dance recital, create an Advanced Placement theme-based portfolio, mount exhibitions. In doing so, students master an enormous number of artistic skills, direct a myriad of aesthetic and expressive qualities toward given ends, and symbolize human behaviors and emotions in a great variety of ways. In artistic creation, means and ends are continually interrelated. Each small element is connected to the creation of a complex but coherent whole work.
Students willingly discipline themselves and undertake rigorous practice and rehearsal sessions. They learn physical boundaries, and, in the process, learn to see the boundaries in a world that, to many teenagers, appears to be without them. Students also learn to ration their time in order to work at their art form and complete their schoolwork. They carry the discipline required in arts making to the discipline of study.
The Arts Turn Schools into Communities
Wherever the research teams went in arts-based school, they were greeted by smiles. Students, teachers, administrators said, "We are like a family." "We support one another." "This is our place." The occupants of arts-centered schools see themselves as members of communities- communities that they have a role in creating and sustaining, are able to capitalize on the fact that the arts encourage students and faculty members to work together, to create things together, to perform together. Teachers are continually modeling their skills, revealing their interpretation, insights and judgments to the younger members of these arts communities.
The arts transform learning and schools.
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Arts Education's Relevance to Careers
NYC DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS
Excerpts on Testimony of Kate D. Levin, Commissioner, April 2003 to the NYC Council, Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations - Arts Education; April, 2003
Why Arts Education is Relevant to Careers
As we all know, New York is the world leader in arts-related industries such as publishing, fashion, commercial theater and new media. Equally important is the observation made by Hugh O'Neill and Mitchell Moss in their 1991 study, Reinventing New York, that New York City is home to the headquarters of large numbers of Fortune 500 companies, as well as corporate research and development facilities, customized manufacturing, innovative global financial services, foreign firms and banks- in other words, industries that require high level, creative thinking. To retain these industries, it is vitally important that our schools produce the highly skilled and innovative workforce on which these businesses depend, and that we offer our children the education they need to successfully compete for the jobs these industries have to offer. There is no more effective way of doing so than providing all of our children with a solid education in the arts, and by exposing them to the incredible array of cultural resources to be found in New York City today.
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What some Staten Island Students Say About Their Arts Education Experiences
MUSIC EDUCATION HAS...
"better prepared me for a career in music" ... Rob F.>
"been full of fun, memorable moments and made me a better person and player"... Joe R.
"made my life more focused and generally happier through meeting other musicians and learning and growing..." Anthony M.
- all students of Port Richmond High School
"taught me to listen to and work with other people..." Kathleen T.
"given me many skills that helped me socially and improved my grades in school"... Diony D.
"has changed my life. I eat sleep and breathe music and plan to make music my career. . ." Christina K.
- all students of Curtis High School
PHOTOGRAPHY IS ART - PS 48
"Dear Esther,
Thank you for coming here and teaching us photography. I can't wait until we make pillows. I wonder if we will put our faces on a million dollar bill? I can't wait until next Thursday. We only have three more classes with you. I hope they will be the bet ones. I love using the digital cameras. This is the best photography program ever! I love doing this."
Your student, Melissa
THE COMMUNITY OF ALL LIVING THINGS - PS 52 MURAL PROJECT
Participants
"we all worked hard, everybody liked it and that's what matters to me"... Sarwat S., Grade 3
"it was good that parents came to the Unveiling Ceremony because they supported us by coming to see what we painted". .. Tiffany P., Grade 4
"I loved the murals. It was exciting to paint the murals. I want to do it again some day". .. Ryan R.. Grade 3
"doing the mural made me feel very relaxed and calm..." Nicole S., Grade 4
Responses from other students
"they did a good job. They look great. I wish I could be just like them..." Kevin D., Grade 1
"the murals are all beautiful. The murals make me cry because they are beautiful". .. Isabella P., Grade 1
"the children who did the murals must be artists... I wonder in will be doing one of the murals one day"... Ashley M., Grade 1
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Arts-in-Education Improves Schools
Arts-in-Education's Relevance to Careers
What some Staten Island Students Say About Their Arts Education Experiences