Edutopia "New Studies Link the Arts to Crucial Cognitive Skills"
Video by George Lucas Educational Foundation
Overview of Arts Education
The Arts – Dance, Music, Theatre, Visual, and Media Arts – are essential components of a complete and well-rounded education. Through the Arts, we share and celebrate humanity’s highest achievements and develop enduring historical and cultural understandings of ourselves and the world around us. A balanced, comprehensive, and sequential program of study in the Arts allows Arizona’s students to learn and practice 21st-Century skills and behaviors that foster critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creative problem solving. The Arts seamlessly integrate with other disciplines and subject areas to create engaging and rigorous learning opportunities for all students. Instruction in the Arts builds discipline, enhances self-esteem, inspires creativity, fosters linguistic, numeric, and aesthetic literacy, and encourages students to make and reach personal and academic goals. Preparing students with the skills to thrive in the 21st century and to pursue a future in the creative industries, if they choose, is the goal of a high-quality arts education. As of 2016, Arizona employs 91,878 people in arts related jobs. Explore the diverse career possibilities of an arts education!
Arts programs are not just nice to have, they are an essential part of a well-rounded education system. Arts education fosters critical thinking skills, improves overall academic performance, and sparks creativity. In short – we need the arts to ensure students realize their full potential. - Superintendent Kathy Hoffman
The mission of the Arizona Department of Education Arts Education is to provide support to Arts educators, classroom teachers, school and district administrators, and Arts stakeholders – including Arts and education organizations, community groups, and service organizations – so that every student has the opportunity to experience the power and beauty of the Arts, and the joy, creativity, and intellectual stimulation that instruction in the Arts provides.
The Arts Education Specialist will serve the internal and external customers of ADE by championing Arts Education for the State. They will work closely with arts agencies and schools to create a unified revitalization of values and goals for arts education providing content expertise while continuously creating arts opportunities for our students, teachers, teaching artists, administrators, and policy makers. It is through these actions that the artistic literacy of our state will flourish. Specific responsibilities include but are not limited to:
Serving as primary Arts Education Advocate for ADE
Providing professional development in Arizona’s Academic Arts Standards, Arts assessment, and Arts integration
Promoting quality Arts education programs in all of Arizona’s schools
Providing a variety of high-quality tools and resources for LEAs interested in learning how to create balanced, comprehensive, and sequential Arts learning programs for their students
Join Dustin Loehr, Director of Arts Education and Title IV-A, as he sits down with two mavericks of Arizona Arts Education, Zarco Guerrero and Catherine "Rusty" Foley. They chat about their roles influencing the Arts Education landscape in Arizona and their personal experiences that brought them to the field. This is one you don't want to miss!
