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CORE STATEMENT

A description and rationale for students, parents, community, teachers, administrators, and auditors.

What is core?

Core is a student-centered, project-based experience that facilitates a full range of learning styles, contextualizes knowledge and skills to assure relevance and brain-compatible learning, and assesses what is worth measuring. It teaches collaboration that rewards individuals for what they know and encourages social skills and respect for others.
Core consists of arts and academics based work directly aligned with an art-centered theme. It is the heart of integration for an entire school. A framework of inquiry, know as the fundamental questions, or FQs, guides the study to be deep and significant. Inclusion of many disciplines through the five voices (artist, mathematician, scientist social scientist, and writer) insures breadth of learning. Core is a meaningful application of knowledge and skills learned in separate classes and through guided/independent research.
Assessment in core is authentic, collaborative, on going, and holistic. It has true value because students choose work that is creative, useful, and relevant to them as individuals. Evaluation involves stages of reflection by teachers and students. Clear targets, common to all disciplines, are based on essential learnings (problem solving, communicating, connecting, and critical thinking) and are shared at the start. Checkpoints are provided to determine where improvement can be made and time for revision towards mastery is provided. Students demonstrate where/how they incorporate each discipline into their project in a reflection paper.Integration of art and academic subjects is tracked yearly and remains on file.

Why is core important?

The purpose of an integrated curriculum is to eliminate fragmentation of a separate subject approach, to alleviate problems of relevance, and solve dilemmas of overcrowded curricula with separate methods, procedures, and assessments in each discipline. An interdisciplinary approach builds life-skill competencies without regard to subject matter divisions. Information is re-positioned and accessed when pertinent to studies. Knowledge is not acquired as a collection of facts, but in a context created by a theme or topic. Learning becomes about doing something with/for it's own value. Arts projects have proven to be an effective catalyst for integration as they provide a rich source of meaningful themes.
A large body of scientific evidence shows learning is accelerated by connections among disciplines. Experts in educational brain research (Jensen, Sprenger, Sylwester, others) explain the biochemistry of increased neurotransmitter flow and growth of dendrites in the brain. Numerous case studies provide the concrete evidence of enhanced learning in areas of investigation, analysis, problem solving, synthesis and reflection when students study arts connected to core subjects (Davis). Thinking skills, self-perception, and involvement are shown to be significantly higher across science and the humanities among students who study arts (University of Maryland study).
In addition, graduates of VSAA provide a testimony to the value of the learning environment and structure of core. Students have high test scores and are successful in college and work environments. Individuals speak willingly of their love of integrated project learning and the high degree of preparedness it gives them for post graduation years.

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What is Core?