Why Art Was Important in My Education

This month is Arts in Education month and I’ve been contemplating what kind of post I wanted to write to acknowledge and support the promotion of arts education in our schools. I decided against the easy solution of just posting a list of links to good resources and research. You can find tons of that here. Instead, I thought I’d write a more personal blog post about what art education meant for me as a student.

As a child I was always interested in drawing and doing creative projects. My family encouraged my creative work — even when it found it’s way onto the closet doors (sorry Mom!) that eventually had to be repainted. In grade school all of my teachers provided opportunities for the students to use drawing and/or painting in our work and projects, and my elementary school had a music program that all of the students participated in twice a week. By the time I moved up to middle school I was already able to read music thanks to our music teacher. Two of my other teachers, Mrs. Biagas and Mrs. Spates, stand out for their encouragement and classroom atmosphere. Mrs. Biagas, my fourth grade teacher, was known for incorporating visual arts into nearly all classroom topics and activities. Mrs. Spates, my fifth grade teacher, has always had a special place in my heart. She went out of her way to encourage and support all of her students in their personal interests, and I vividly remember her sneaking white copy paper from the store room to give to me and my friend Chad who also had a passion for making art. During our fifth grade year there was a terrible shortage of paper in the school, but Mrs. Spates did what she could to make sure that we had paper to continue our drawing — even though the art we were making was not a required class assignment or related to any class assignment.

When I entered middle school I enrolled in band class instead of art class, and though I have no regrets, I do think I would have enjoyed the art class more than band. I eventually decided the flute was not for me (it was a hand-me-down from a family member), and spent 8th grade taking another enrichment class that covered a variety of subject areas. There was one experience that stands out to me from middle school and it happened during my 7th grade year. I had been selected by my math teacher to participate in an after-school program called Math Counts. It was a program for students who were strong in math and who could handle some beginning algebra work. Math Counts participants would eventually go to a competition at the end of the year. I entered the program and a couple of months later my mother told me about some oil painting classes for children that she had heard about. Unfortunately, the oil painting classes were scheduled at a time that conflicted with the Math Counts program. My mother gave me a choice. I chose the oil painting classes. My mother still has my very first painting hanging in her living room.

When I entered high school I had learned my lesson and I immediately signed up for Art 1. I spent the next four years taking art electives and ended up being selected to be the artist for the yearbook staff in my senior year. It was in high school that I decided I wanted to major in art in college. I wanted to be an artist and I wanted a career in graphic design (didn’t want to be a starving artist!). I was very fortunate to have parents who supported my interests and who never told me that I couldn’t do whatever I was interested in doing with my life.

I started college majoring in art with a concentration in graphic design. Before I finished college I decided that I wanted to pursue further education in studio art and use the graphic design concentration as a back-up. I applied to graduate schools and ended up in the midwest pursuing a master’s degree in studio art with concentrations in painting & printmaking. It was in graduate school that I fell in love with “the classroom” during my teaching assistantship.

Eventually I made my way to K-12 art education and the rest is history

When I reflect on how the arts played a role in shaping my pathway to higher education and adulthood, I am struck by the amount of support from both my family and my schools. I can’t imagine what school would have been like without the strong arts programs and the integration of visual art into the core curriculum that I experienced from kindergarten through graduation. I didn’t go to a special arts magnet school and it’s surprising to me now to look back and to remember how much arts integration there was in my k-12 experiences.

It saddens me to know that so many schools have cut back on arts programs for one reason or another. Our students need exposure to the visual and performing arts, if for no other reason than to be aware of the rich diversity of art and culture that is available for them to enjoy. Not every student will become an artist, a musician, or an actress. But the arts do stimulate the brain and new research is showing definite connections between exposure to arts education and success in other academic areas. A solid art education program can help students learn to think outside-of-the-box in creative ways, to explore more than one solution to a problem, and to think critically about the world around us. Our country, our economy, and our culture need students who are able to do all of those things.

I would like to end this post with a public “Thank You” to my parents and my family for supporting my creative efforts my entire life, to the Calcasieu Parish School system (Louisiana) for incorporating the visual and performing arts across the curriculum through k-12 for all students, and to all of my teachers over the years who provided support and encouragement to me and all of the other budding young artists who attended our schools.