Get Smart with Art! Introduction

Welcome from your August 2010 Monthly Mentor.  As you may see from my kindergarten photo, I have always loved creating art!  33 years into the field of art education and my passion has not diminished.  My current role as Supervisor of Visual and Performing Arts for the largest suburban school district in the state of New Jersey provides me numerous opportunities to work with 35 art teachers in 18 schools.  We meet often to update curriculum, share instructional and assessment strategies and explore community resources that enhance opportunities to learn for art students and their teachers.  This month I will be sharing words, images and downloadable tools that reflect 4 goals of NAEA's Strategic plan:  Learning, Knowledge and Research, Advocacy, and Community.

Our current President, Barry Shauck, and President-Elect, Bob Sabol, contributed to the writing of the 21st Century Skills Map released at the end of July 2010. 

http://p21.org/documents/P21_arts_map_final.pdf

This downloadable document includes examples that illustrate how the arts "promote work habits that cultivate curiosity, imagination, creativity, and evaluation skills.  Students who possess these skills are better able to tolerate ambiguity, explore new realms of possibility, express their own thoughts and feelings and understand the perspectives of others."  The map provides examples that suggest ways visual arts education can help produce globally aware, collaborative, and responsible citizens.

You're probably wondering what 21st Century Skills means to you as an art educator.  The current focus is on an educational model that takes the traditional 3 R's and fuses them with the 4 C's to prepare our students to compete in a global economy.  Many legislators are committed to building the concepts of the 4 C's into the next generation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  That means the skills will be included in state standards, assessments and professional development.

Here is a list of the 4 C's listed along with examples of how visual arts education presents powerful opportunities for human expression and cultivation of 21st Century Skills.

1.    Critical Thinking and Problem Solving-Process used by students to critique artwork
2.    Communication-How artists share ideas visually to evoke emotional responses in viewers
3.    Collaboration-Working on group projects and sharing responsibilities and resources
4.    Creativity-The process of viewing artwork, exploring ideas through sketches, and choosing one idea that will be modified as work progresses.

In the next few postings, I will be sharing examples of learning experiences created by art teachers in Toms River that fused the 4 C's with Reading, Writing and 'Rithmetic.  Hopefully you will agree that it's easy to Get Smart with Art!

-Kim Huyler Defibaugh