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Students’ projects are evaluated on the basis of the student’s understanding of the project, the ability to follow directions, technical skill, presentation, and overall aesthetics. Reading assignments, and written work, where appropriate are assessed through worksheets and written quizzes. Written reports are assessed for reading skills, writing skills, and creativity of presentation. Required weekly sketches are used as evidence of the students’ establishing the habit of drawing regularly outside of class.
Visual arts education inspires students to perceive and shape the visual, spatial and aesthetic characters of the world around them. Using a variety of ways to explore, learn and communicate, students develop their capacity for imaginative and reflective thinking. The field includes the traditional “fine arts” of drawing, painting, photography and sculpture; the design fields which include: industrial, ceramic, textile, furniture and graphic design; and architecture, landscape design and urban, regional and rural planning. Visual arts is a continuously evolving field that also explores technologies such as film, holography, video and other electronic forms of image making.
The Art Department of Cathedral High School teaches the various fields of fine arts to students by educating the whole person. Fine arts instruction concentrates not only on intellectual learning, but also on spiritual, emotional and physical learning as well as creative thinking. These ideals are reinforced through the mission statement of Cathedral High School that focuses not only in academic excellence but also in spiritual development of the individual. Arts education broadens students’ thinking about ways of expression and communication, enabling them to create and perform as well as respond to both historical and contemporary forms.
Every student can benefit from a sequential PreK-12 education in the arts. A sequential program of instruction in the arts provides experiences in creating, performing and responding to students each year they are in school. The Fine Arts Department at Cathedral High School divides courses and levels of instruction to allow for continuity and gradual progression from course to course or grade level.
Whatever their previous training or level of expertise in the arts, adolescents search for ways to communicate personal and original ideas. They are able to refine its expressive qualities and look inward to try to understand themselves better. The goals of the is to take students with different levels of artistic backgrounds and bring them together to learn about and through the various fields of fine arts, where everyone can reach and achieve a common goal while all at different levels of artistic achievement. Students with little or no artistic background can learn with students who are heavily immersed in the arts. They each will work at their own level but will both learn through and connect with the particular visual art learning standard being examined.
The method of teaching or pedagogy used by the Fine Arts Department supports the theory of a well-rounded education in the arts. Well-rounded education in the arts consists of experiences in three interrelated kinds of artistic activity; creating, performing and responding. Students involved in these ways of learning gain knowledge about the arts, refine their perceptual and expressive skills and excise their powers of analysis in order to make and justify judgments about works of art. Students who are given such opportunities in school are better prepared to continue active engagement with the arts as adults.