Help Teach DC Elementary Students Through the Arts

Your donations have been hard at work, inspiring young minds and building strong foundations for future learning! Students at Jessup Elementary, in programming funded by Global Giving donations, showed off their visual arts creativity. Using their original artwork, we created a series of beautiful, hand crafted note cards. 

 

As both a Teaching Artist and Program Director, I took some time recently to attempt to distill some thoughts on why I believe so strongly in the work of Story Tapestries. I believe that children innately love learning, but that joy and excitement can fade with an overabundance of tests and too much time spent sitting still at a desk. We need to get them excited about coming to school and learning! As a theatre artist, it is intuitive to me that so much learning happens through the process of creating something together. Students develop reading skills, creative problem solving abilities, and respect for others. However, there are many teachers who are intimidated by the arts, often due to lack of exposure themselves. I want to help these empower these teachers to feel comfortable with the tools of the arts, to give them the confidence to reach all their students. I love when we are able to connect ideas across subjects and we can see the learning spark light up in a student's eyes. This spark, this connection to the content through the arts leads to better retention of information and keeps kids coming back to school eager and excited to learn. Ultimately, I hope that I will hook my students on stories and they will have so much fun that they learn, despite themselves.

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