One of the brain research organizations that is well known to arts educators is the Dana Foundation. They publish research articles and studies about all types of brain research, often with an emphasis in the arts.
At one of their conferences in 2009, Harvard developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan gave his six favorite practical reasons why the arts are very necessary parts of the school day. To read a summary of his words, please click here.
All of Kagan's reasons are ones which resonate with me and my motivations for teaching music. Kagan's second reason, that the arts provide students with a sense of agency, is one that I believe is stressed at the Sage School. A great deal of the work our students engage in is a demonstration of their own thought processes, from start to finish. Watching students struggle through the experimentations of what sounds good and what doesn't, which instrument choices help emphasize their musical message and which do not, and seeing them get so very attached to their own pieces and their own thoughtful choices is part of what makes my job so fun! It often may seem easier and more time-efficient to rush in and solve a problem for a student, or to impose my own judgment on their works. However, the belief that artistic creation is valuable for its ability to make a student feel like a capable problem solver means that music class is a time where students to work through those experiments to discover an answer that is best for them (even though my ears very often disagree with theirs!)
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