Arts in Education Should Be…

On October 9, 2024, educators from 14 different campuses across the Greater New Orleans area gathered for the first Arts eXperiences In Schools (AXIS) session of the 24-25 school year.

We began the session by sharing words that describe what arts in education should be. Educators submitted their descriptors electronically to add to a community word cloud. In real time we joyfully watched as our cloud grew bigger and more colorful with words and phrases like: intentional, engaging, culturally relevant, collaborative. 

The more popular a word was, the bigger and more central it became in the word cloud. I was delighted and inspired to see that the most popular word in the cloud was fun.

Because arts in education should be fun. 

Fun and joy are important elements of each KID smART classroom. When a learning environment is fun, beautiful things can happen. In fun learning environments, engagement increases. In fun learning environments, community is more easily built. In fun learning environments, students are more likely to want to come to school and stretch themselves. Seeing educators from our creative schools name fun as the most important quality of arts education was affirming to our work. 

AXIS is the year-long professional development series in which teachers from all of KID smART’s Creative Schools join a community to learn together and add strategies and resources to their arts-integration toolkits. Our first session of the year embodied many of the descriptors the educators included in our world cloud. And, it was particularly fun. We’re all looking forward to a year of joyful learning.