Wednesday, August 24, 2011

10 Lessons the Arts Teach


1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.


3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.


4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.


5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.


6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.


7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.


8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.


9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.


10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.


SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Welcome everyone!





Welcome to the new Dealey Montessori Vanguard and International Academy art blog! Here you will find a variety of resources about art education in the classroom, examples of projects and updates about our visual art program. If you are interested in making a donation to the art program, the following supplies are needed:


  • Rolls of paper towels

  • Black FINE point Sharpies

  • #2 pencils

  • Block erasers

  • Decorative papers (scrapbooking)

  • Any book, calender or resource about an artist or culture

The art supply company Dick Blick has a great new program called ArtRoom Aid that works like wedding and gift registries. You can follow the link below and purchase any of the listed supplies. The supplies are then shipped directly to the school. This is perfect for more specialty items that are used in the Art room.


www.dickblick.com/lists/artroomaid/JBR87XHLMFOOR/publicview/


Thank you for supporting the arts in education. Here is to great year filled with many masterpieces!