Arts + Learning

Art plays a powerful role in the development of children’s minds. It teaches children to look for connections and leap into problem solving without fear.

If we want our students to have the skills to address the complexities of the future, they must believe that their ideas have value and that they can create something tangible from them. Giving art a central role in our classrooms stretches kids’ imaginations and inspires deep, synthetic thinking.

Children come to school with an affinity for tinkering.  It’s what’s natural for them. If children have mediums for drawing or painting at home, recyclables or blocks for building, they’ll be primed to expand their minds and use their ingenuity in school. Knowing what it feels like to think inventively, they’ll recognize that one Big Idea can spontaneously multiply into many more.

“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that they are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”
-John Steinbeck

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that they are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

-John Steinbeck

Because art plays a powerful role in the development of children’s minds we are intentional about teaching children to look for connections and leap into problem solving without fear.

If we want our students to have the skills to address the complexities of the future, they must believe that their ideas have value and that they can create something tangible from them. Giving art a central role in our classrooms stretches kids’ imaginations and inspires deep, synthetic thinking.

Thinking through Context

  • Context provides a vehicle for connection building, key to living connected lives in an interconnected world
  • Connected teaching means learning exists within a holistic context rather than in unrelated pockets
  • Connected learning invites conceptual, big picture, symphonic thinking

Thinking through Big Ideas

  • Art is a context for working with big ideas
  • Big ideas deepen one’s understanding of historic and present day issues
  • Big ideas inpire thinking for the future

“Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement.”
-Sir Ken Robinson