Fine Arts Department
General Announcement
2nd Annual International Fine Arts Celebration
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Click here to download an application to perform in the International Celebration (PDF Format)
Click here to submit an online application to perform in the International Celebration
Click here for information on the trip to France - Summer 2009
The Garland Independent School District’s Fine Arts Department has many performances and activities throughout the school year. You are invited to attend these performances to witness the fine work being done by both the students and our teaching staff. Be sure to check the Fine Arts Calendar throughout the year for a current list of scheduled performances and activities across the school district.
Read an important letter from Dr. Rod Paige, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education (and former Superintendent of the Houston Independent School District), pertaining to the importance of arts education in our schools.
The Fine Arts Department of the Garland Independent School District includes the areas of music, art, theatre arts and dance. Also included under the fine arts umbrella is the competitive speech and debate as well as cheerleaders and drill teams.
There are a total of 268 certified teachers employed by the GISD in the fine arts department.
he Garland Independent School is committed to the education of the whole child and as a component of that education believes that every student should have a basic knowledge, skills and appreciation of the fine arts. The Texas Coalition for Quality Arts Education sites the following information about the importance of fine arts education:
Why the Fine Arts Are Important
The arts make a contribution to education that reaches beyond their intrinsic value as direct forms of thinking. Because each arts discipline appeals to different senses and expresses itself through different media, each adds a special richness to the learning environment. As students imagine, create, and reflect, they are developing both verbal and nonverbal abilities necessary to school progress. At the same time, they are developing problem-solving abilities and higher-order thinking skills. Research points toward a consistent and positive correlation between a substantive education in the arts and student achievement in other subjects and on standardized tests. A comprehensive, articulated arts education program also engages students in a process that helps them develop the self-discipline, cooperation, and self-motivation necessary for self-esteem and success for life.
The arts teach students to:
- Understand human experiences, both past and present;
- Adapt to and respect others' ways of thinking, working, and expressing themselves;
- Learn artistic modes of problem solving, which bring an array of expressive, analytical, and developmental tools to every human situation;
- Understand the influence of the arts, in their power to create and reflect cultures, in the impact of design on virtually all we use in daily life, and in the interdependence of work in the arts with the broader worlds of ideas and actions;
- Make decisions in situations where there are no standard answers;
- Analyze nonverbal communication and make informed judgments about cultural products and issues; and,
- Communicate thoughts and feelings in a variety of modes, giving them a vastly more powerful repertoire of self-expression.
Source-National Standards for Education in the Arts
What the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities Says About Arts Education
- Research in multiple intelligences, the brain, and how the emotions strongly effect learning, supports hands-on, experiential learning through the fine arts.
- A quality fine arts education program provides students opportunities to acquire basic skills in kinesthetic, musical, spatial, and visual intelligence, applicable to learning in all other subject areas.
- Almost all of the information we receive in the learning process is acquired kinesthetically, auditorally, and visually.
- The fine arts help children better understand concepts measured on the TAAS tests. The fine arts "essential knowledge & skills" correlate with, support, and reinforce reading, language arts, science, and math. They help teach shapes, color recognition, size differentiation, letter and number recognition, phonic recognition, sequencing, following directions, hand eye and motor coordination, kinesthetic and spatial relationships, and direction and location.
- The fine arts develop valued higher order and creative thinking skills such as memory, various forms of communication, and the ability to compare and contrast, group and label, explain cause and effect, assess significance, make predictions, and frame and test hypotheses.
- The fine arts improve many students' self-concepts and self-actualization, attitude towards school and, as a result, the students' attendance improves, and the special needs of the "at risk" student are met.
- Research shows not only that the fine arts are beneficial in themselves, but also that their introduction into a school's curriculum causes marked improvement in math, reading, science and other subjects.
- The College Board reported that SAT scores are considerably higher for students involved in the arts, and that the fine arts are key to student success in college. Test scores, attendance, and college entry are higher, and drop-out rates are lower, in arts-centered schools in Texas.
- The fine arts are vastly important to technology and multimedia production, as evidenced in their use in books, magazines, advertisement, television commercials, music videos, video games, and blockbuster films such as Jurassic Park, Twister, Toy Story, Mission Impossible, Independence Day, Space Jam, Lost World, Men in Black and Titanic.
- The arts generate over $300 billion annually as an industry! The arts represent 6% of the Gross National Product (GNP).
Source-National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
The Garland Independent School District believes that a quality arts education program will enable students to develop self-esteem, self-discipline, self motivation, and cooperation necessary for success in life.