Visual and Performing Arts

Study in the Visual and Performing Arts is a distinctive way of challenging students’ perceptions of the world around them in new ways. By studying one or more of the arts, students can acquire skills in concentration, critical thinking, effective listening, artistic expression, and communication in a variety of media.  In order to graduate, all students must achieve a passing grade in three courses in Visual and Performing Arts, accruing at least fifteen (15) credits.

The curriculum is organized around enduring understandings that are important to the arts disciplines: Structures in the Arts, Humanity in the Arts, Purposes for Creating the Arts, Processes in the Arts, and Interrelationships among the Arts. These enduring understandings are conceptual organizers for the arts and are similar at each grade level to ensure students have multiple opportunities throughout their school careers to develop skills and concepts linked to each understanding.   In addition, the three arts processes of creating, performing, and responding to the arts provide a basis for deeper understanding and appreciation of the arts. In the processes of creating and performing, various technologies are employed, ranging from primitive technologies to innovative electronic and digital technologies.