CREATIVITY AND THE ROLE OF ART IN SCHOOLS

CREATIVITY AND DREAMERS WANTED NOW

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

USING ART TO FIND YOUR DYSLEXIC READERS

Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Leonardo da Vinci...all of them, it's said, were dyslexic. But was there any connection between that and their work? Chris Ledgard visits the Royal College of Art in London, where he explores the relationship between dyslexia and dyspraxia, and students' ability to draw.

Poetry , Story Telling , Folk Arts, Folktales , Dance ,
and the Performing Arts such as Drama and Speech are all vital parts of Teaching the Arts.

Jerome Kagan, Ph.D., emeritus professor of psychology at Harvard University, was co-director of the Harvard Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative. He is a pioneer in the study of cognitive and emotional development during the first decade of life, focusing on the origins of temperament.

Joan Weber Summary of Jerome Kagan's keynote called " Learning, Arts and the Brain "

The first advantage is that it boosts the self confidence among the children who are behind in mastery of reading and arithmetic.

A second reason for an arts/music curriculum, which has a more recent history, may help the middle-class children who have been infantilized by overprotective parents who were excessively concerned with the child's grades and talent profile.

A third advantage to an arts/music program, which might help all children, is based on the fact that the mind uses three distinct forms, or tools, to acquire, store, and communicate knowledge.

A fourth advantage lies with the opportunity to provide all American youth with some values they feel warrant consistent loyalty.

The fifth advantage of an arts curriculum is that it allows a number of children to work as a cooperative unit when they compose a mural or play in the school band or orchestra.

TAKE AWAY: Art and Music provide opportunities for all children to experience and to express feelings and conflicts that are not yet fully conscious and cannot be expressed coherently in words.

Delivering Speech and Speech Acquisition
NPR Radio The Science Of Baby Talk

Evolutionary Science Ferral Children and how Non Human Animals Have Intelligence, Language

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

FOR 7/8/ graders show the true story of Trauffaut's The Wild Child, from the 17 Century book of the same name. The fascination is enthralling. Extend this story about feral children to include discussion into child development and parenting. This deepens the discussion into taking children away from tv, and stimulating their brain development more seriously by reading outloud, making puppets, reading plays and creative theatre.
It is a fabulous springboard for enriching students imaginative thinking and discussing new ways to learn more creative outlets to interact with one another. It also opens up the world of foreign film as a learning tool and entertainment.

This is one of my favorite lessons because everyone loves learning about how they began to speak. The assignment is to find out their first word, what age,their siblings first age and word. Sharing that in class is hilarious!

UNHAPPY, UNDERACHIEVING, STUDENTS WHO DON'T TEST WELL, WHO DON'T READ WELL, ARE SET UP TO FAIL AND DROP OUT

CREATIVITY AND HAPPINESS RESOURCES


"Research shows that learning with laughter and play helps avoid burn out. Play is Art and the Bridge to Learning" Research shows that learning with laughter and play helps avoid burn out.

STUDENT HAPPINESS - Children Need to Play for Healthy Development
Is unhappiness a key to academic success? No credible learning or management theory suggests that fearful, unhappy or insecure people are more productive.

THE TWO MOST LIKELY CAUSES FOR UNHAPPINESS IN SCHOOL ARE SOCIAL ANXIETY AND DYSLEXIA. THESE CHILDREN NEED TO BE DIAGNOSED AND TREATED AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE.

CHILDREN WHO ARE DYSLEXIC OR THOSE WHO SUFFER WITH SOCIAL ANXIETY DISORDER SPEAKING IS ESSENTIAL CHILDREN WHO DON'T SPEAK STRUGGLE CAN BE TREATED AND BE SUCCESSFUL IN SCHOOL!!!

Auditory Processing Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy : The Science of Misheard Song Lyrics

A common cause of mondegreens, in particular, is the oronym: word strings in which the sounds can be logically divided multiple ways. Other times, the culprit is the perception of the sound itself: some letters and letter combinations sound remarkably alike, and we need further cues, whether visual or contextual, to help us out. According to the cohort model —one of the leading theories of auditory word processing—when we hear sounds, a number of related words are activated all at once in our heads, words that either sound the same or have component parts that are the same. Our brain then chooses the one that makes the most sense.


The Importance of Creativity, Dreams And Play in K-12 Education

Studio Thinking:
The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education

THE ROLE OF ART IN SCHOOLS [ 1 ]
Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland argue forcefully for the benefits of art education. In their view, art education should be championed for its own sake, not because of a wishful sentiment that classes in painting, dance and music improve pupils' math and reading skills and standardized test scores. The researchers found that the visual arts classes did have broad indirect benefits, even if they were not directly related to quantifiable performance in other subjects. "Students who study the arts seriously are taught to see better, to envision, to persist, to be playful and learn from mistakes, to make critical judgments and justify such judgments," the authors conclude. "When kids take a lot of art, they don't improve in their core subject areas," Ms. Winner said in an interview. "We simply found no evidence of that." When students who take art also generally do well in school, reports Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times, this may be because academically strong schools tend to have strong arts programs, or because families who value academic achievement also value achievement in the arts. "You cannot conclude that because they're taking art, they're doing well in school," Ms. Winner said. "There's just no way to conclude anything about causality." In campaigning for keeping arts education, some educators say, advocates need to form more realistic arguments. Art classes are often the first thing to be jettisoned from a crowded curriculum. As a result, Ms. Winner said, it is understandable that some arts advocates hew to the academic argument to keep the arts in the curriculum. "The arts are totally threatened in our schools," she said. "Arts advocates don't even think about whether they're accurate -- they latch onto these claims."

The Ideal Approach and the Real Goal of All Education.

"I am a retired art teacher of 42 years. I have found that no one in education and that includes some of my fellow art teachers, recognize the value of the creative process. I approached all parts of my art classes as a series of problems to be solved. I had students who were the brightest and many who were at the other end of the spectrum including children with physical limitations in the same classes. I think teaching kids how to find their own answers to the highest level that they can reach was very rewarding for each of them. I taught them all the basics using the principles of art and problem solving skills.
For me, it is all about the process which carries into writing, science and all other parts of the curricula. The products were wonderful, original no matter the media we used. I taught stone carving, painting in all media with the results being different and every one of them was the answer to the problem I proposed. After all of these years, I still meet students who remind me about a piece of work they did in my classroom. It touches their soul and not one of them saves their math tests or essays or science tests. That is reason enough for art to be in the curricula. Now if Administration could only figure it out, this would be a giant step forward." ~ Anon

Arts Education Partnership

ARTStem http://www.artstem.org/
ARTStem is about "promoting collaborations that explore the relationship between learning and teaching in the arts and the so-called "STEM" disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics." Visitors to the site will find tabs for the different areas of art, such as music, dance, and design, as well as for areas of science, such as math, technology, medicine, and genetics. Within the tabs are articles that discuss the intersection between art and science. The theatricality of science communication as well as the aim to alter the public's perception of climate change via investigative theater are articles visitors can find in the Theater tab.

Students on the social Web: New NSBA study
In releasing its study " Creating & Connecting: Research & Guidelines on Online Social - and Educational - Networking ," the National School Boards Association this week added some balance to the public discussion about safety on the social Web. The 10-page report is just as useful to parents as it is to educators.
The National School Boards Association is a non-profit association of school boards representing 95,000 local school board members. In stark contrast to what students reported, more than half the districts said that students providing personal information online has been "a significant" problem in their schools.
... The report goes on to recommend that school districts reconsider the common practice of restricting student access to social networking tools. Fewer than 29 percent of school district leaders believe that social networking could help students improve their reading or writing, the report goes on to note.[ 2 ]

Conducted for the NSBA by Grunwald Associates, the study found that

  • These days US 9-to-17-year-olds are spending almost as much time on the social Web (about 9 hours/week) as they are watching TV (about 10 hours/week), and for many that online activity is "highly creative."
  • "Overall, an astonishing 96% of students with online access report that they have ever used social-networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities, such as Facebook, MySpace and services designed specifically for young children, such as Webkins and the chat sections of Nick.com," the NSBA reports. Interestingly, one of the most common topics of conversation in all this online communicating is education itself (about 60% of social networkers talk about this and 50% specifically about schoolwork). Grunwald surveyed, students, parents, and school district leaders for this study.

As for those creative online activities , the NSBA and Grunwald found that

  • * 32% of online students share music
  • * 30% share videos
  • * 24% share photos (22% their own photos or artwork)
  • * 12% are updating/decorating their Web pages
  • * 30% have blogs
  • * 16% create and share virtual objects such as puzzles, houses, clothing, and games
  • * 14% create new characters at least weekly
  • * 10% contribute to online collaborative projects.

KEY FINDINGS
Fewer risks than expected

"nonconformists are on the cutting edge of social networking, with online behaviors an skills that indicate leadership among their peers."

Interestingly, the survey found NONCONFORMISTS ARE "significantly heavier users of social networking sites" - 50% of them are producers and 38% are editors of online content. These students, the study found, are "significantly more likely than other students" to be "traditional influentials," "promoters," "recruiters," "organizers," and "networkers."

Fewer risks than expected !

"Study: Fears over kids' online safety overblown" is the headline on ArsTechnica.com's report on the NSBA study It "suggests strongly that the overwhelming majority of kids have never had an unknown adult ask them for personal information." And there's a big discrepancy between students' actual experience with risk, as they reported it to the researchers, and school perceptions. More than half of US school districts (52%) say students providing personal information online has been "a significant problem," while "only 3% of students say they've ever given out their email addresses, screennames, or other personal info to strangers." The School Boards Association ends the report calling on schools to "reexamine their social-networking policies." It's important to have such policies, it says, but students may learn online safety and responsible online expression better "while they're actually using social-networking tools."