Beginning in the 2012/2013 school year, Roosevelt’s PTA funds a program for students in grades K-8 offered by Community School of Music And Arts (CSMA).

A master art teacher comes to each classroom once a month for art instruction. CSMA’s award-winning in-school Art4Schools curriculum develops hands-on technical skills and an understanding of the language of art while also teaching art appreciation and cultural understanding of art and its history.

CSMA’s professional art teachers guide and encourage learning and creative expression through sequential lessons in drawing, painting, sculpting and more. All art classes teach a concept such as line, shape, color, and develop basic technical skills. Lessons are often inspired by a cultural or historical context that encourages students to explore new worlds and view life from other perspectives. Art lessons also coordinate with the classroom’s curriculum to become an integral, enriching part of each child’s education.

• Art is critical for educating the whole child
• Arts education fosters brain development, especially of the creative and intuitive right brain functions.
• Skills developed through art lead to better learning in other areas.
• Students in quality art programs benefit from a wide range of positive effects including development of creativity and thinking skills, better self-expression, appreciation of art and music, learning about other cultures, and enriched personal satisfaction with their achievements.
• The arts provide experiences that cannot be duplicated by other means.
• Art gives pleasure and meaning to our daily experience.
• Insights from the arts are as important in giving meaning to the world as those from science and history.
• Through art, students develop cultural awareness and appreciation of other viewpoints.
• Art develops social skills and teamwork. In art class, students are encouraged to share ideas and help each other.

• Creating art helps children discover the unexpected possibilities of their creativity.
• Art teaches critical thinking rather than getting the right answer.
• Through art children learn that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
• Art teaches students about subtleties.
• Art teaches children to evaluate and make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
• Art reminds us that the limits of our language do not define the limits of our thinking.
• Art celebrates multiple perspectives and different ways to see and interpret the world.
• Art teaches students to explore through and within possible responses.
• Art empowers children to say what cannot be said.
• Art enables us to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of doing.
• Including art in the school curriculum shows students what adults know is important.