Arts Education Ushers in the New School Year

The fall fog is hovering over San Francisco and school is back in session. For about a month now, teachers and students have been readjusting to the sound of bells, the homework, the concepts, impossible locker combinations.

I remember September as a mass of anxiety mediated only by my excitement of the unknown. My brother and I would stand outside our red house in our first day outfits, backpacks on, and my mother would take a photo. But what began with my nervous smile and my brother’s insistence on wearing his bug t-shirt quickly transformed into a world of dissolving boundaries and crystalizing nuance.

In the coming months, a lot can happen. It’s amazing how quickly children develop their interests and knowledge. They go from scientists, to poets, to 100-yard sprinters, to historians–oftentimes all within the course of a single school day.

The arts, in their many forms, transcend the boundaries of school subjects, which is just another reason to celebrate them this week as part of National Arts in Education Week.
Coinciding with the start of the school year, Arts in Education Week is a good reminder to all of us of the importance of multidisciplinary education. The experiences, no matter how small, that kids have in the classroom greatly influence them and inspire them outside the classroom. It is important, too, to remember that Art is a broad spectrum, including many forms of creative self-expression, such as the written arts and, yes, translation.

The California Alliance for Arts Education has a Top 10 list of things to know about arts education, and the National PTA has a fact sheet about the benefits of arts education.

Here at the Center, we’re excited to kick off the school year with a Poetry Inside Out Teachers Workshop next week (Sept. 25-26) for Bay Area classroom teachers interested in bringing our poetry and translation-based language arts curriculum to their classrooms. Participants will learn the ins and outs of the program and join a community of likeminded practitioners passionate about diversity in education. Find out more about the workshop and register here!

And don’t forget to check out the Arts Education Resource Fair on Sept. 24 here in San Francisco!