A quality arts education is essential to a comprehensive academic experience for young people. When students immerse themselves in the arts, they secondarily learn a variety of other life skills including critical thinking, collaboration, and creative problem solving.
The “Arts” encompasses a broad range of disciplines extending from visual arts to theatre, music (band, orchestra, and vocal performance), dance, and media arts. National Core Arts Standards were developed in 1994 and recognize the following four basic artistic processes: creating art, presenting/performing/producing art, responding to art, and connecting with art. Education in the arts is a process-oriented experience, and the national standards helped shape curriculum through adoption of individual state standards.
Listen here to the conversation with Logan Hamilton and Nicole Walsh, educators in the Geneseo, IL public school system, about the importance of a well-rounded exposure to the arts, the collaboration between the art teachers within the Geneseo Community School District from elementary through high school, and how art educators played an important role in their own lives and helped guide them towards teaching as a profession. They argue that the experience of failing during the creation of an artistic project is a valuable learning experience itself, as it teaches students how to improvise and further pushes the creative process.
National Arts in Education Week is Sept 8-14, 2019.
