Art Works: Integrating Creativity in the Curriculum

A lot of the videos that I tried to watch ran very slowly and constantly had to buffer but I was glad when I found that this video worked somewhat better. The video basically shows that students who are exposed to art, dance, music, and other creative types of education are more well rounded students and that they are more likely to graduate high school and go on to college. I thought this was an interesting topic because I have always heard that schools are trying to make up for budget cuts by cutting down on the funding for art and music programs. I had some friends who were in band during high school and they always had to pay out of pocket fees and they constantly had to have fundraisers. A lot of kids learn best through creative methods. Creativity seems to be undervalued in society these days. People don’t put enough emphasis on it anymore. I think that art and music are ways that kids can release stress, anxiety, and nervous tension. Kids can’t be behind a desk in a classroom all day and this video featured kids who spoke about how they have benefitted from art and music being a part of their school days. I also found it interesting to read the comments that people had left about this video. One woman said that she wished someone would show this video to her school board because they are currently debating whether or not they should fund creative arts programs. This other person had commented saying that she had taught special education classes, gifted classes, and mixed ability classes and the one thing that all three classes had in common was that the students all wanted their emotional needs to be met. She feels that art programs are a way of meeting those emotional and social needs. I think that technology will be used more and more in the classrooms and that there should be some new courses offered in technology arts. I think schools should have graphic design and digital photography classes if possible to help a variety of kids find their passions and channel their creative energy.

Common Sense: An Overview of Integrated Studies

The video that I viewed explained the numerous benefits of integrative most if not all the curriculum into one cohesive idea. For example, if a class was learning about car, for math they would solve problems involving selling and advertising cars, for science, the students would engineer their own car and then present their innovations to he class, for art, they would draw sketches of what their car will look like, and for social studies, they may learn the origin of one of the most significant inventions in our history.
Many times throughout my academic career, I found myself asking the inevitable question: "When will I ever use this information outside of this classroom." This method of connecting every aspect of an idea within every subject matter better helps students to realize how all that they are learning coexist and contribute to one another. Additionally, much of the lessons utilize hands on activities by way of different technological tools to get students more involved in what they are learning. The education system is finally realizing confining students to a desk for eight hours is not the only or best concept to teaching classes. Many students do not posses the attention span or learning style to comprehend material in this manner. One of the teacher commented that when her students recounts the tasks completed in her class, they always remember the projects they participated in; not the tests. I believe this is because being engaged in what one is learning takes more critical thinking and analytical judgment, than listening to various information spat at them. Overall, I have faith in this notion and believe it will one day be implemented all through the United States due to his high success rate