EDU204 explores how dance, drama, music, and the visual arts provide ways of learning and inquiry. It is designed to provide students with creative arts content, skills, and understandings that they will use to guide their creative endeavors as lifelong learners. It reviews theoretical aspects and the origins of creative processes that explain how we explore, inquire and document the human experience. Through a variety of course activities students will investigate the elements, processes, terminology, and methodologies of the creative arts, the nature of the unique perspectives offered by the creative arts, as well as the ways in which they integrate with our social and physical worlds.
“The arts are about the qualities of human experiences. Through music, dance, visual arts, drama, and the rest, we give form to our feelings and thoughts about ourselves, and how we experience the world around us. Learning in and about the arts is essential to intellectual development. The arts illustrate the diversity of intelligence and provide practical ways of promoting it. The arts are among the most vivid expressions of human culture. To understand the experience of other cultures, we need to engage with their music, visual art, dance, and verbal and performing arts. Music and images, poems and plays are manifestations of our deepest talents and passions. Engaging with the arts of others is the most vibrant way of seeing and feeling the world as they do.”
Robinson, Sir Ken and Aronica, Lou. (2015). Creative schools: The grassroots revolution that’s transforming education. New York, NY: Penguin Books. (p. 142-143).
EDU 101 is a discussion-centered course designed to develop our critical understanding of public education and the role of classroom teachers in today’s public schools. We will discuss what it means to know, to learn, and to teach. We will examine how public schools developed and changed over the last 175+ years and how teachers’ roles have evolved accordingly. We will look at challenges facing teachers today and society’s expectations of teachers and public schools through short and longer texts of theory, practice, and teacher narrative. Our responses to texts include writing, both formal and informal, discourse, and presentation. Most importantly, we will begin to see the classroom as a place of work, of community, of inclusion, and of infinite promise. We will explore your current beliefs, values, and attitudes toward teaching and learning based on your prior experiences in order to make you aware of the diverse perspectives of teachers and students and how these dispositions influence the choices teachers make in planning and instruction.
PREREQUISITES:
MTDA is recommending this course for Seniors only as there is significant reading and analysis of college-level text throughout this course.
PLEASE SEE YOUR LOCAL COUNSELOR TO REGISTER FOR MTDA COURSES
Montana Digital Academy Phyllis J. Washington College of Education The University of Montana 32 Campus Drive – Room 365 Missoula, Montana 59812 Phone: 406-203-1812 Fax: 406-203-1815
