Finding your passion
“Changing the World One Piece of Art at a Time”
“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed — it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.”
Ken Robinson, The Element: How finding your passion changes everything
Matt Phillips and Summer Meraz warmly greet arriving students at Meadows Union School, with big smiles and genuine individual conversation. As superintendent and principal, respectively, of this rural school surrounded by a sea of agriculture, Matt and Summer are not isolated from the great question confronting enlightened school administrators throughout the country. “How do we prepare our students for a future, which is coming at us with relentlessly increasing speed and uncertainty?”
About a mile east of Meadows School on Evan Hewes Highway is the University of California Desert Research and Extension Center, where scientists come from all over the world to develop leading-edge agricultural technology. Farm Smart is the UC educational outreach program, which serves about nine thousand students a year. Stacey Willis and Stephanie Collins meet, greet and inspire every one of these students with exciting, hands-on projects, such as making their own butter and working in the “pizza garden.” Farm Smart was established in 2001 to help people understand the science and processes involved in bringing food to our tables — with the larger goal of preparing children for the future by teaching sustainability and demonstrating the importance of our shared livelihood.
The Rainforest Art Project is assisting Farm Smart with permanent art and graphics for their new Xeriscape Conservation Garden, which will be located in front of the main administration building. In addition, there will be a Rainforest Art Studio at the UC Extension, providing a workspace for student projects and ongoing campus improvements. Over the course of our meetings regarding these developments, I have observed the excitement and enthusiasm of these professionals as they describe the amazing new technologies transforming modern agriculture. Here are a few:
Drone technology will give farmers a high-tech makeover. New strategies will be based on real-time data gathering and processing.
Remote soil monitoring with specialized sensors sending data to your computer or smartphone.
Solar powered irrigation gates, with remote control capability, operated from your computer or smartphone.
New yield enhancing genetic research.
We were quickly swept up in the excitement, as we began discussing the possibility of developing a STEAM program to introduce these technologies to upper grade level students. I called Matt at Meadows School, and asked if he could join our discussion. He arrived in 10 minutes, carrying copies of “The Next Generation Science Standards,” where we were encouraged to see that they align perfectly with our curriculum outline.
STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs were just beginning to build momentum within public education in 2006, when a graduate student from Virginia Polytechnic took the acronym one step further by inserting an “A” for arts. This evolution to STEAM has powerful significance, as it elevates art to its rightful status, and acknowledges the indispensable role that creativity plays in solving complex problems within every specialty.
Art provides a valuable creative link between all disciplines, especially for those students who are not motivated by science, technology, engineering or math. All children share a natural inquisitiveness, and It is art which allows them access and provides the spark that ignites a genuine curiosity … the common trait among all successful professionals.
As the pace of change in the job market accelerates, one of the most valuable skills we can instill in our students is the ability to adapt and grow. This requires a strong sense of self, along with the creativity to visualize ourselves in the adaptive role. Art is, and always has been at the heart of our very survival, yet it’s continuously the first thing to go in the dizzying cycle of budget cuts.
Schools with dedicated art teachers are fortunate, but this responsibility cannot be seen as the domain of a single educator within the system. It is the responsibility of every teacher to enrich their curriculum with elements of creativity and art. Even without a full time art instructor, schools can achieve a superior level of art literacy when it becomes a shared responsibility — a shared joy, which enhances every learning experience.
As students grow up, and confront their adult responsibilities, it is fairly certain that none of them will remember their standardized test scores. It is more likely that they will recall the warm, sincere and confident greetings that they received from their superintendent and principal, reassuring them that at Meadows Elementary School, there is nothing more important than their future.
They will never forget that their learning experience went way beyond the classroom, as they did remarkable things, and met professional people who gladly shared their excitement for knowledge, inspiring within them a life of curiosity and fulfillment through the discovery of their “true passions.”