Why Art?

Using multiple modalities, dance/movement, music, visual art, drama, and other similar modes of delivery, children learn by having a wide range of their capabilities tapped into. Individuals, specifically children in school, are learning at rapid rates. Information is coming at them at great speeds and somehow they either have to find ways to take it in, make sense of it, and translate it into relevant terms or else, they miss it. The arts help children make important connections, develop critical thinking, decision making and problem solving skills. The arts involve children and welcome them as active players in learning and mingling with the world. Regardless of age, we instinctively connect to things we can directly relate to and are relevant to out lives, inside and outside the classroom. For children of this century, technology continues to integrate itself more and more into their every day happenings. As educators, it is our responsibility to make our classrooms mini “labs” of the real world in which we are able to teach students to be active observers and consumers of life outside the realm of school. By integrating technology into our curriculum, we offer students a consistency inside and outside the classroom of exposure to the technological advances of our day. The duty of the classroom holds the time and space that other settings do not to slow and understand our relationship to the messages, imagery, and infinite uses of the technology medium and its communicative and functional presence in students’ every day.