This year the Rio School District has made a concerted effort to develop our Visual arts programs across our eight schools. In doing so, we hired two new outstanding art teachers who are working to develop art lessons and learning with students and teachers alike. This week we will hold our first art show of the year which we hope to follow up with our end of year show in May.
There are many great thinkers who answer the question posed by by this blog. Elliott Eisner, Daniel Pink, and many others are resources to describe why integrating arts into learning is essential as well as why art for art’s sake is equally a deep human need.
From my point of view, as a graduate of a Bachelor of Fine Arts program and a life long maker and lover of art, art is a basic element of what it means to be a human being. Not having arts in schools removes this basic element and steals the opportunity for students to experience and learn about themselves and their world. Art has existed as long as there have been humans. We can look to the caves of Las Caux or Rock art of the Chumash to see human’s expressive yearnings to use visual imagery to understand and communicate their understandings of their world, themselves, and their realities.
In the last few years I have found a treasure trove of creativity in the children and teachers of the Rio School District. Integrating the Arts in our daily learning activities has promoted children’s development of 21st century practices; communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and caring. These practices are needed deeply to survive and thrive in our modern society even as they were essential for humans over the last forty thousand years of our existence. Some say, it is art, that separates us from the beasts, although I have seen some amazing artwork created by elephants and monkeys.