Arts-integrated college-prep high school for gifted learners

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(Free-Press-Release.com) February 7, 2009 -- Imagine a school where an individual student’s needs are met, where they learn through sculpting clay in science, recording songs in social studies and recite Shakespeare on stage in English class. A place where subjects are studied in depth for understanding, research projects are enhanced by each individual’s passions and where a strong sense of community is established. Stop imagining for a moment, and come visit Conservatory Prep Senior High School, accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

School should be a place where critical learning skills are developed and each student’s tastes in fashion is respected. In order for such a school to exist, and for its students to excel, creativity, ingenuity and problem-solving skills need to be accepted as its core values not just by the school, by also by the parents and teachers. These abilities, when nurtured, enable individuals to thrive in a democratic society. Students sit in a classrooms, year after year, simply being taught to learn only through rote memory drills, and being asked to regurgitate factual information on examinations,. These traditional teaching methods, only encourages student complacency and indifference to the world around them, and inhibits challenge and achievement.

The purpose of education is to transmit the values and culture of a society to the next generation of its membership. To encourage individual ideals and expression an arts-integrated curriculum is to be viewed in high regard as “‘the’” method utilized by an educational system to teach core academic courses, rather than disparaged as frivolity. Teaching history through art and music, learning about Machiavelli through dialogue on stage, and performing a dance in Anatomy class, brings these subjects to life and embraces each student’s creative and intellectual spirit. Learning to work collaboratively to write a song, to solve a mathematical problem or to build a model of a house, develops a sense of community within the school.

An arts-integrated curriculum is not a new idea. John Dewey, Alfred Whitehead, Howard Gardner and Rudolf Steiner, all extemporary leaders in the field of education, theorized that students learn best through the arts and through experiences. By teaching core academics through the arts, students learn to empathy towards characters in a novel, and trace the steps of history. Teaching through the arts also provides a multi-sensory approach to and meets the needs of a wide range of learning styles and the multiple intelligences.

Learning through an arts-integrated approach encourages the individual to be creative and to seek solutions to problems through calculated risk-taking. Students need to be able to stretch their minds and determine new answers to standard questions. When students are confronted with a problem, without being limited by a pre-defined answer from their teachers, students learn to work together to create new solutions and possibilities. This is ex

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