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Goal

Through this grant, 30 of our students will be able to experience the live arts through two different Community days at the Artis Naples in October 2016 and in May 2017. It is a wonderfully enriching way to expose our Immokalee students and community members to the theatre, music, and visual arts within the Collier community.
Sufficient data exists to overwhelmingly support the belief that study and participation in the fine arts is a key component in improving learning throughout all academic areas. Evidence of its effectiveness in reducing student dropout, raising student attendance, developing better team players, fostering a love for learning, improving greater student dignity, and enhancing student creativity can be found documented in studies held in many varied settings, from school campuses, to corporate America.
Evidence from brain research is only one of many reasons education and engagement in fine arts is beneficial to the educational process. The arts develop neural systems that produce a broad spectrum of benefits ranging from fine motor skills to creativity and improved emotional balance. “The arts enhance the process of learning. The systems they nourish, which include our integrated sensory, attentional, cognitive, emotional, and motor capacities, are, in fact, the driving forces behind all other learning” (Jensen, 2001).

The fine arts also provide learners with non-academic benefits such as promoting self-esteem, motivation, aesthetic awareness, cultural exposure, creativity, improved emotional expression, as well as social harmony and appreciation of diversity.
 

What will be done with my students

Through funding of this grant, our students would be able to engage in our Florida standards (LAFS) for language arts, writing, and performance standards and skills. One month before each of the trips, student will engage in small group discussions of various art topics and culture through the arts. The discussions we engage in, books we read, and short clips we view and discuss (text and non-text media and artistic representations and art/artist studies) will be intertwined with general CCPS-adopted curricular materials and other outside reading materials I feel are appropriate to utilize and strengthen the students’ understanding of standards and skills so that there is a fluid and natural application and synthesis of learned skills from the lessons and performance and our regular curricular materials. After experiencing the live performances and activities, students will reflect on and synthesize their experiences to create an end product (for example: an iMovie commercial of the day to be broadcast on our news, a collage of products created and experiences, a written reflection of the experience).  

Benefits to my students

Today’s world is witness to the overload of the Information Age. Learning is not limited to what you know, but is dependent upon how to find information and how to use that information quickly, creatively, and cooperatively. Today’s students are inundated with data but are starving for meaningful learning. Students need to be thinkers, possess people skills, be problem-solvers, demonstrate creativity, and work as a member of a team. We need to offer more in-depth learning about the things that matter the most: order, integrity, thinking skills, a sense of wonder, truth, flexibility, fairness, dignity, contribution, justice, creativity and cooperation. The arts provide all of these.

Perhaps the most essential element to education one should consider is the manner in which we perceive and make sense of the world in which we live. An effective education in the fine arts, and particular in the theatre and theatre exposure helps students to see what they look at, hear what they listen to, and feel what they touch. Engagement in the fine arts helps students to stretch their minds beyond the boundaries of the printed text or the rules of what is provable. The arts free the mind from rigid certainty. Imagine the benefits of seeking, finding, and developing multiple solutions to the myriad of problems facing our society today! These processes, taught through the study of the arts, help to develop the tolerance for coping with the ambiguities and uncertainties present in the everyday affairs of human existence. There is a universal need for words, music, dance, and visual art to give expression to the innate urgings of the human spirit. (Bryant, 2014)
Bryant, J. (2014). The importance of fine arts education. Retrieved from http://www.katyisd.org/dept/finearts/Pages/default.aspx on April 22, 2016.
Jensen, E. (2001). Arts with the brain in mind. Alexandria, Va., Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Faison, H. (2000). Is anyone out there listening? Foundation for Academic Excellence Symposium, Haskell, Ok.
Lehman, P. (2001). What students should learn in the arts. Content of the curriculum. Alexandria, Va. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. (1-22)
 

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