Last week all of our kindergarten through 5th grade students took the stage across one of three evenings for ANCS’s annual Winterfest concerts. Their voices filled the school with holiday songs, and they continue to do so this week as encores are happening at morning meeting. This singing and music and the joy it brings those in the audience and those on stage is a reminder to me about why arts education is so important for young people.
During the past 15 years, as the No Child Left Behind Act ushered in an even more intense focus on high stakes for schools based on standardized test results in reading and math, arts education has often been neglected to make room for more time for those subjects. At best, schools were often looking for ways to tie what students might learn in a visual art or music class to math lessons as a way to justify the continued existence of arts programs. And in the very lean years of public education funding not so long ago, arts classes and teachers were usually the first to be cut from budgets.
I’m proud to be at a school that has long valued the arts and sees the benefits of them as standing on their own. All students at ANCS have regular classes in the arts, with K-5th grade students gaining skills as visual artists and musicians and middle school students getting the chance to add theatre to the mix. Through these classes, students often produce remarkable works of art. Yet even more importantly than the quality of their work, students are developing their imaginations, gaining new perspectives, learning how to be empathetic and to communicate emotionally, and understanding how to overcome frustration to experience joy. Each of these traits will be of use to students throughout their lives.
The arts can often be the subject that keeps students most interested in school as they get older. Let’s do all we can to keep arts education central in our schools, not only because of what it can teach them about math or reading or history, but mostly because of what it teaches them about themselves.
This is my last blog post for 2016. I look forward to more blogging in the new year. Until then, happy holidays to all!