Deron Hall, the moderator and director of partnerships and operations for the Memphis Music Initiative, said his middle school music room was his first safe space at a panel discussion hosted by Arizona Citizens for the Arts Monday.
The discussion took place during a one-day conference at the Herberger Theater Center which attracted art education leaders in the community and across Arizona to learn how to bridge the gap in policy and practice of arts education to produce successful students. It aimed to advocate the importance of empowering young students to view art as a key avenue to success.
Hall’s childhood safe haven in the music room shows the level of comfort and confidence art advocates say many students find when engaging in the arts.
The program featured five influential leaders of the Phoenix arts scene including Deborah Gonzalez, Chief Academic Officer of the ASU Preparatory Academies; Michael Kelley, associate professor of early childhood education at Arizona State University; Jaclyn Roessel, public programs and education director of the Heard Museum; and Alex Tuchi and Paula Alvarado, youth artists at the Rising Youth Theatre.
According to the Arizona Department of Education Program Evaluation Unit, the major areas of impact are in the students’ academic achievement, engagement and self-efficacy. But arts educators argue that an impact cannot be made if schools do not continue to usher in and encourage the arts scene.
In 2013, 2.8% of schools in Arizona offered all four arts disciplines: dance, music, theatre and visual arts, according to a report prepared for the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Arizona Department of Education.
Many Arizona schools have far from embraced the arts according to a 2010 study by the Arizona Arts Education Census which reported that 34 percent of the state’s schools were barren when it came to art courses.
The fight to change this statistic, however, is showing up in the efforts of downtown Phoenix community education leaders like Gonzalez. She discussed her experience with art education in her preparatory school just blocks from the Herberger.
“I think arts education is a powerful opportunity for us to make sure that every student has an opportunity, not necessarily to be recognized for their skill or their talent, but for what’s inside them, what is in their core that they are dying to express,” Gonzalez said.
Attendee Stephanie Savage said that when she is not teaching her second grade class, she helps run a non profit dance studio called Terpsicore Dance Company on Fifth Avenue and Jackson Street. Savage said she attended the conference in previous years and found that it helped link her with other art organizations.
“It was essential for me to build art partnerships,” Savage said.
Local beneficiaries of the efforts by the Arizona Citizens for the Arts like Savage’s are vital to art advocacy in community schools, which leaders hope will spark a resilience among art communities for rounded, quality education for the children.
Deron Hall’s preface of the program was echoed throughout the panel’s discussion. He said members of communities like downtown Phoenix must stop “riding the waves of initiative … until the issues seen as time consuming, but important, become normalized.”
Contact the reporter at ljmarsh1@asu.edu.
