“Clearly, at Ashbrook, the arts are not just tacked on, but are a fully integrated and definitive part of our mission to nurture and challenge our students …”
This last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to drive the Advanced Ensemble to Newport to attend the District 11 Band Festival at the Performing Arts Center. Though merely a chaperone, I volunteered because I knew I would also get a chance to watch Maestro Hoge and our most advanced musicians perform 4 or 5 pieces for the judges and receive feedback on what they performed. While they played, I closed my eyes to focus fully on what I was hearing, and I found myself transported to Spoon River and to a galaxy far, far away. I only wish you all could’ve been there to hear what I heard. I was really blown away by how professional they sounded, as I am each time Mr. Hoge taps his baton on his music stand!
Explore Character Education Today
This comes less than a week following our annual talent show, where many of our students, and staff, volunteer to get up on stage and share a piece of music, a skit, a piece of original choreography, or a poem recitation (thank you Ms. Moore for that truly wonderful rendition of Carroll’s Jabberwocky!). One of the reasons I really love the talent show is that it gives us a chance to support others in their chosen moment of expression, and also invites others to the stage as if saying, “you, too, can do this.” At least that’s the way I feel. Each time I see our students and staff perform in Ashbrook’s Got Talent, I am inspired and make myself a silent promise that, “NEXT year, I will get up there!” Then I just as quickly realize that, while I have many talents, I don’t believe any of these are particularly well suited for the talent show arena (in case you’re wondering, I am a GREAT sandwich maker, an accomplished BBQer, and chili magician).
If you sat in the audience for this year’s middle school play, enjoyed one of our several concerts and arts nights, or gazed in wonder at the beautiful drawings and paintings hanging on the Commons, you know that the arts are more than just alive and well at Ashbrook, they are thriving and flourishing!
While I know we talk about the arts as specials, and other schools describe them as co curricular or even extra curricular (if they have not outright eliminated them, that is), Ashbrook’s robust arts programs in visual art, music, and drama provides students with creative outlets that enrich their academic experience and cultivate their imaginations. So while I think “specials” captures the fact that our arts are truly SPECIAL, I would not refer to them as co- or extra- except to say that they help us to deliver on the promise of extraordinary!
Families who visit us are often floored to know that every student at Ashbrook participates in the arts, and not only have we not cut arts over the years, but that we have actually added to or enriched our arts programs; in the Lower School, students explore drawing, painting, ceramics, music theory, choral performance, and theatrical expression. As they move into Middle School, opportunities expand to include instrumental instruction, and a full scale theatrical production, to say nothing of a terrific variety of arts related electives where teachers and staff members get a chance to share their passions with our students..
Clearly, at Ashbrook, the arts are not just tacked on, but are a fully integrated and definitive part of our mission to nurture and challenge our students and, as such, an essential part of what we consider a complete education. Through the arts, students learn discipline, aesthetic awareness, collaboration, emotional expression, and creative problem-solving. As they create and consider the creations of others, they exercise their critical thinking chops as they make their own creative decisions or encounter the products of the creative decisions others have made.
As artists of all types, our Explorers gain the confidence to take risks, the patience and grit to revise, and the joy of sharing their work with others. Whether it’s performing in our annual play or talent show, exhibiting work in the Arts Festivals, assuming the role of stage manager or tech booth operator, or performing a never before seen dance, Ashbrook students, as recipients of a truly complete education, are given a chance to discover their inner creator, and to boldly and courageously channel this energy.