The educational website, Learning Liftoff (powered by K12 Inc.), featured an interview with Head of School Dr. Scott Gaynor on the importance of performing arts education for students with learning differences. The article, authored by Angela Guzman, focuses on research showing that integrating arts with other subjects can help raise student achievement levels in reading and math, as well as improving positive social skills. According to the article, “Students with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, as well as audio, verbal, language, and visual deficits, benefit greatly from a performing arts education.”
While performing arts education in general is important, integrating the arts into a child’s school curriculum maximizes the benefit. According to the article:
While integrating performing arts into a child’s life can be a beneficial asset, Gaynor believes it can be more impactful if the entire learning atmosphere is cultivated around arts education. “When the head teacher is talking to the drama teacher and they’re incorporating some of the content across those two areas, that’s really where it deepens learning. Children get a better understanding of what they’re learning in the core classroom, and they’re able to generalize those skills,” says Gaynor. “It’s not natural to see the connection between performing arts and learning to read, but I’ve seen the value of it. Building self-confidence and a child’s passion about something very often turns into resilience,” says Gaynor. “So the next time they’re doing something that’s really hard in the classroom, then they will have the experience of doing it on stage and can apply that when they’re trying to sound out a really difficult word.”