What Should a Parent Expect from a Performing Arts Program?

The high school career of a performing arts student is one of serious consideration. The work of preparing an average student for the inevitability of successfully joining the workforce has been a focus of our traditional school system since the industrial age. Often not addressed are the needs and interests of the performing arts student. What a disservice to the development of the next generation of artists, musicians, composers, conductors, actors/ actress, filmmakers, and designers.

Arts of every medium are the flavors of our world. On every continent can be found these rituals of expression as they form universal humanity. Foundational and structural in every sense, music and dance, song and expression travel the distance between polarities. Over the course of time, artistic expression has crossed boundaries and borders, gone where words and rhetoric could not go. These instances have changed the course of history, reducing the timely steps toward unity and compromise.

So, what do we do for the artistically gifted student? How do we provide a playing field that does not require football plays, baseball diamonds, soccer nets or track spikes? Can we provide for their educational needs in such a way that is embraceable by their developing skill set?

Yes, we can with the expansion of our understanding as parents and educational professionals. Providing opportunities for the breadth of our student body can only strengthen a school community and build solid, balanced, effectual young people. As our artistic students move on to advance into adult life, they will bring with them the fortitude and resilience necessary to excel. The impact a balanced student brings to their next achievement will leave behind a footprint to follow toward success for the next generation of students.

So how do we bridge the gap? How do we change our mindset from the expected curriculum of the standard student to embrace the skill set of the artistic student?

We start by acknowledging the need for change at every level of the academic environment, from administration and academic professionals to guidance and coaching staff. Once value is established and agreement found, a systematic review of curriculum must be conducted.

The leading question is, “How can we adapt within our course requirements for the artistic student?” Perhaps the following can serve as an example:

If two years of a foreign language is a requirement for graduation, perhaps an artistic student could earn these credits through a combined German and Italian diction course. This student would be required to be enrolled in a vocal prep course as a prerequisite. The diction course would be a standard offering of the performing arts program and would utilize foreign language in a different capacity than the traditional foreign language course. However, this would still qualify the performing arts student as having the appropriate foreign language credits for graduation.

Students come to our high schools in every form of diversity. Our learning environments and courses of study must evolve to embrace the changing need. The school community that can assess the need for developing the artistic student will find the way to thrive. The work of coordinating subject matter, required course workloads and extracurricular schedules sounds daunting. Yet we must make every effort to provide high-quality, invested resources for the artistic student. The payback is enormous!

What is it worth? Can we as professionals pool our efforts and education to find a better way forward? The value of the artistic student is too great to lose. We must ask ourselves, where will their four years of high school take them? Let’s take a moment and consider some alternatives. Let’s consider a specialized admissions process that outlines a student’s four-year high school career with the end in mind. Let’s schedule music and the arts as core coursework. This can be achieved if done with intentionality and is foundational for the facilitation of a high school-level performing arts program.

Around the world, the arts are foundational to the facilitation of cultures and technologies. The formation of the human mind is stimulated and developed by art at every expression. Our artistic students must be provided the structures they need to excel. We as parents and educational professionals bear the responsibility to provide them a well-rounded education that allows them opportunity for performance on the world stage.