The Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush

RUSH ARTS VISION

I have been thinking more about our vision as we begin to plan for another transition…11^th grade!

The Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush is based on the belief that the arts provide an unequaled opportunity to foster intellectual growth. This vision lives and breathes within our curriculum and school culture. By integrating the arts into all programming at the school level, new literacies are cultivated among the disciplines. For example, media, visual, and music literacies are addressed by science and math teachers as well as arts and humanities teachers. These literacies are used to foster higher order thinking and critical analysis. We believe that these “new” literacies set us apart from most schools in our district and allows us to create an innovative and rigorous program. We often refer to Elliot Eisner when presenting the vision of the Arts Academy. Eisner often speaks about art education and reform in the following way, “It may be that by shifting the paradigm of education reform, and teaching from one modeled after the clocklike character of the assembly line into one that is closer to the studio or innovative science laboratory might provide us with a vision that better suits the capacities and the futures of the students we teach.” (Eisner, 2004)

Traditionally, schools that focus on The Arts encourage students to attend arts colleges or Universities with an emphasis in the humanities. ‘Rush Arts’ positions students to pursue non-traditional fields regardless of race or gender. Using the arts as a vehicle, many girls will be encouraged to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. Commitment to building girls confidence and interest in these fields is a priority.

As a school that is only one and a half years old, we are excited to be planning with the future in mind and having our students think about what kind of innovators, designers, and creators they would like to become and the importance of higher critical thinking to any application in life.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under PRINCIPAL'S COLUMN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.