Welcome to Visual Arts!

Where creativity, personal expression, discovery, exploration, and enthusiasm all come together.  As the art students begin to comprehend the Elements and Principles of Art and Design, students will develop necessary aesthetic understandings and appreciations in the art world.  As their teacher, I encourage students to be thinkers – not memorizers, to create and innovate, make mistakes and gain from them.

Here’s 10 things the visual arts do:

1. Working in the arts helps learners to develop creative problem-solving skills.
2. Teaching through the arts can present difficult concepts visually, making them more easy to understand.
3. Art instruction helps students with the development of motor skills, language skills, social skills, decision-making, risk taking, and inventiveness.
4. Visual arts teach learners about color, layout, perspective, and balance: all techniques that are necessary in presentations (visual, digital) of academic work.
5. Integrating art with other disciplines reaches students who might not otherwise be engaged in classwork.
6. Arts experiences boost critical thinking, teaching students to take the time to be more careful and thorough in how they observe the world.
7. The arts provide challenges for learners at all levels.
8. Art education connects students with their own culture as well as with the wider world
9. A report by Americans for the Arts states that young people who participate regularly in the arts are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement.
10. Arts education leads to fewer disciplinary infractions and higher attendance, graduation rates, and test scores.

My email is tlensing@ccsd.k12.or.us

My classroom phone number and voice mail is 541-247-6604, extension 356.