Our department is united in our collective passion for the discipline we teach and what it can mean for students' lives. We believe strongly in the principles that guide our curriculum development, instruction and relationships with students. These core principles are listed below:
Creativity is a process-oriented skill that can be practiced, learned, and adapted. It is by its nature flexible and unlimited in possibilities and format. Therefore, art education should be scaffolded to facilitate a growing student centeredness and progressively advancing toward more individuality and choice. ALL students can learn and grow in their artistic ability.
The experience of the art classroom should reflect the authentic process of thinking, creating, and developing that a working artist regularly experiences, as closely as possible. Therefore, we will facilitate our students as they develop their individual creative process by teaching them how to practice and explore art skills and techniques, become selective and intentional as they generate ideas, develop their own artworks from start to finish, and perhaps most importantly make a constant practice of courage, adventure and vulnerability through art making.
Art is meaningful and beneficial to all people whether their future role in the arts community is to be a creator, curator, educator, appreciator, etc. Therefore, we seek to equip our students with all roles in mind. The art making process in and of itself is an educated exercise in creative critical thinking and has immense value in both challenging and preparing students for their future, whatever that future may be.
Visual literacy, comprehension of art analysis, and fundamental vocabulary are skills that have great power and benefit in the world today. It is our mission that students have equitable access to these visual and analytic skills which can then lead to success in upper level courses, collegiate opportunities, and art communities.
Finally, since the beginning of time art has belonged to every culture, every class, and creed. The implications of this demand that students of all backgrounds and ethnicities should be able to see themselves in the artistic process as well as the art communities we present in class. Our hope is to open up the art world to our students, a world that is already waiting for them and to equip them to take their rightful place in that world.