Developing a Vision for the Arts

As we look for innovative ways to offer various arts programs to our students, we are looking for ideas from other successful programs. For our October fine arts cohort session, we were able to visit Opelika City Schools. The visit provided an opportunity to sharpen our vision in relation to the organization of our programs and with possibilities within each arts discipline.

Our initial meeting with the superintendent and central office administrators gave insight to the development of the Opelika arts programs over many years. The system leaders showcased the district-wide leadership and financial support to arts education. They also highlighted the high-quality expectations for all of the arts from the community, parents, students, and faculty.  This culture has evidently been built over many years as their programs have grown and produced award-winning products in choral music, theatre, visual arts, and band.

As we observed across most of their schools, we were able to get ideas and affirmation in relation to our own programs. While visual arts and music in the elementary schools were organized very similarly to ours, their secondary arts courses were numerous. Even though we are smaller in size, we were still able to see ways that we could collaborate between arts disciplines, with other departments, and with community groups to possibly offer more programs for our secondary students.

Our observations also provided some examples of great instructional practices. The middle school choral music teacher displayed very efficient use of class time and excellent classroom management with strong energy and positive teacher-student interactions. Seeing a diverse group of middle school students energetically performing show choir numbers was a highlight of our visit and an image we would like to apply to our own vision. We were also able to learn new ways to organize resources for elementary visual arts lessons that can involve hundreds of students, and we were able to see a creative and positive classroom climate in regular theatre classes and structured production practices.

The whole visit provided us ideas that we can immediately apply in our classrooms and that we can use as we plan for the future of arts education in Sylacauga.