Arts Education Master Plan

BOE Candidate Wilma Pang, herself a musician and arts teacher, expressed great excitement about the recently announced SFUSD Arts Master Plan. So I looked it up on the SFUSD website to check it out. "Every school, every student, every day" is their mantra, and the plan documents the critical needs, the potential, and the philosophy of the commission that authored the report. It is a striking, provocative, and ambitious plan.

Here is the conclusion:

continue reading...

The Arts Education Master Plan sets the stage for a process that will provide the students of San Francisco with an exemplary education, one in which they will learn and grow through many and varied experiences in music, dance, drama/theatre, literary and visual arts. The arts will be an integral part of every student’s school day.

Quality arts education depends on excellent teaching at all grade levels. The master plan makes powerful professional development in the arts a priority for administrators, principals, generalist credentialed teachers, arts specialist credentialed teachers, artists-in-residence and arts providers.

The arts, both discrete and integrated into the broader curriculum, must be viewed as inherent to the education of every student, at every school, every day. When woven deeply into the fabric of education, the arts impart a richness, spirit and vitality to the entire experience. Rather than viewing the arts as an "extra" or merely "enrichment," the master plan places the arts where they belong: proudly alongside the other academic subjects, in a spirit of equity and inclusion that is the hallmark of this plan.

The implementation and sustainability of the master plan requires an unprecedented commitment and effort by the Board of Education, district administrators, principals, teachers, students, parents, arts providers, community organizations, city officials, funders and business leaders. It demands the active participation of all members of our community. To change the culture of education in ways that fully embrace the arts, all stakeholders are called upon to advocate and lend support.

Learning to take creative risks, thinking in new ways, reflecting, creating, rehearsing, practicing and being persistent are some of the ways our students will benefit from the powerful promise of the Arts Education Master Plan, making them more fully present members of society who know the power of their own voices and the promise of their own creativity.

The Arts Education Master Plan for San Francisco reflects the values of our city and the promise of the arts in the lives of each student. We are called upon to be both stewards and advocates of this plan — all of us, today.

The plan sounds wonderfully ambitious. Let's hope the same idealism and excitement that has gone into this plan is sustained in the years to come. Attaining anything close to their ideal will require it.