Like many other high schools in America, Blind Brook takes part in having opportunities for its students to learn and practice various aspects of the arts. There are classes, after school programs, and clubs. Blind Brook has its options for students to pursue learning in the arts of their choice, and in this article I will be discussing some of the ways Blind Brook promotes arts education.
Firstly, Blind Brook has educational opportunities implemented into the curriculum. It starts with classes like art or photography, and expands into more advanced understandings and studies of said mediums. I myself am taking an advanced photography option called portfolio. The photography route has you start with film, an older style of photography, having students understand the basics of lighting and framing. It then expands into digital working, understanding more intricate attributes of photography. It is very similar to the arts (painting, drawing, etc), though instead of building up skill in the medium, it allows students to express their dynamic creativity and imagination. Blind Brook allows students to initiate and start their understanding of certain art mediums, and expand upon them as they progress through grades.
Blind Brook also has after school programs for those interested in the arts, particularly the performing arts. As tradition has it, Blind Brook has the option for students to perform or work backstage on the school play. The production takes a couple months, but both the middle school and high school have a yearly play. The middle school begins to find the skills of the performing arts in students, so once they get to high school, if they continue to pursue the medium, they begin partaking in more advanced dramas, more mature productions. Blind Brook has an emphasis for the performing arts, it’s a staple of the school year for there to be a production. This promotes stagecraft and performing education for students.
Lastly, Blind Brook allows for artistic clubs to be formed and to function for its students. Students are allowed to choose clubs they want to partake in, and clubs have a variety of subjects that one could cover. Some artistic clubs can include the newly introduced Blind Brook video broadcasting club, as it has students experiment and practice with cameras. It is a newly formed club, so the details of how it functions are sparse, but the goal is to allow students to use video and photography to document the school and other current events. Mainly though, clubs oriented to more other forms of practice and experience, like debate or model UN, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible for a student to form a club with artistic intention. While this form of meeting and practice has the least options and promotion for arts education, it still offers the possibility to students to take action themselves, and learn about the arts they want to learn about.
While Blind Brook does follow a more typical high school formula, they do offer many possibilities for one to partake in an artistic learning experience. They have classes, after school programs, and clubs that allow students to grow their knowledge and skill in a multitude of artistic mediums. This is how Blind Brook promotes arts education.