Support Art in Schools
Support Art in Schools
Did you know students in Edmond do not receive formal art education classes until 5th grade?
A creative partnership between Edmond Public Schools and the Edmond Fine Arts Institute was developed in 2002 to provide 3rd and 4th grade students with weekly art classes.
What started at three elementary schools has grown to include all nineteen Edmond Elementary schools!
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT TO KEEP THE CREATIVITY GROWING!
About the Art in Schools Program
The Art in Schools Program is innovative collaboration between the Fine Arts Institute and Edmond Public Schools developed to meet need for formal art education in elementary schools. The program began in 2002 in three pilot schools and continues to grow as sustainable funding permits. Before implementation of the program, students did not receive art classes until 5th grade. With the program’s success, growth, and financial support, all elementary schools are receiving art education weekly. Each 45 minute class is led by a professional Fine Arts Institute instructor with the goal of stimulating creativity, knowledge, self-discovery, communication and problem solving skills…all key elements to a successful, well rounded education. Currently the program focuses on 3rd and 4th grade students, however all need and deserve art education. Our long term goal is to provide all 1st– 4th grade students in Edmond with art education!
As the Edmond community continues to grow so does the need for additional funding sources. The average cost per student per year is $50, this is where you can make a difference.
Please consider making a donation to your local elementary school.
2022-2023 Participating Schools
- Angie Debo
- Charles Haskell
- Chisholm
- Frontier
- Heritage
- Ida Freeman
- John Ross
- Clegern
- Crosstimbers
- Northern Hills
- Orvis Risner
- Russell Dougherty
- Sunset
- Washington Irving
- West Field
- Will Rogers
- Centennial
- Redbud
- Scissortail
- Angie Debo
- Charles Haskell
- Chisholm
- Frontier
- Heritage
- Ida Freeman
- John Ross
- Clegern
- Crosstimbers
- Northern Hills
- Orvis Risner
- Russell Dougherty
- Sunset
- Washington Irving
- West Field
- Will Rogers
- Centennial
- Redbud
- scissortail
We are excited to have reached the goal of having ALL elementary schools participating in the Art in Schools Program by the Edmond Fine Arts Institute’s 35th anniversary in April 2020.
Student Artwork Showcase
We will be showcasing artwork from students at all of our participating schools. Submit your artwork by filling out the form below and we will have it displayed in a gallery.
Benefits of Art Education
Facts and Figures
Students who are involved in the arts are:
- More than twice as likely to graduate college as their peers with no arts education
- 4 times more likely to participate in math and science fair
- 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
- 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
- 3 times more likely to be elected to class office
See Facts and Figures from Americans for the Arts
“Art is an essential element of education just like math and science. Visual and performing arts stimulate creativity in problem solving, communication, and innovation, all keys to being successful”
The arts are recognized as a core academic subject under the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and 48 states have adopted standards for learning in the arts.
“In a world where students must frequently wade through a sea of information to determine which facts are trustworthy and relevant to a particular topic, critical thinking skills are key to college readiness and lifelong learning. Arts education develops students’ critical thinking skills—including skills for comparing, hypothesizing, critiquing, and exploring multiple and alternative viewpoints.”
–Excerpted from Preparing Students for the Next America, published by the Arts Education Partnership
“The arts teach students to observe closely, very similarly to observation required in the scientific method. When students learn to attend to visual contexts more closely than ordinary “looking” requires, they begin to see things that otherwise might not be seen.”
–Excerpted from Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education by Lois Hetland and Ellen Winner
“Arts education develops creativity, one of the top five skills employers prize for the 21st century. Students receiving an arts-rich education perform better on assessments of creativity than do students receiving little or no arts education. Performing arts students, for example, show greater flexibility and adaptability in thinking than their peers.”
–Excerpted from Preparing Students for the Next America, published by the Arts Education Partnership
Ten Lessons the Arts Teach
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- 1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
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- 2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
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- 3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
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- 4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem-solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
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- 5. The arts make vivid the fact that words do not, in their literal form or number, exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
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- 6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
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- 7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
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- 8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
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- 9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
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- 10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.