a high-tech facility that offers everything
from laser cutters to 3-D
printers. At Harker, a castle-building
project starts with drawing with pencil
and paper, followed by building a
model with clay, and finishing with
computer designed, 3-D printed
materials to add onto the project.
These emerging technologies are
not treated as toys, says Harker art
teacher Gerry-louise Robinson, but
rather as tools to the process, and
ones that are inherently a part of the
world the students will grow up in.
Last year, her elementary school students
used virtual reality to explore art galleries
in Europe.
Dawson also looks at art classes as an
Throughout the South Bay, various
private schools are using the arts to
redefine what it means to be “smart.”
66 South Bay Accent
essential component to building “visual
literacy” in a world now “saturated with images.”
More accurately, though, students are
saturated with seemingly everything, and
in the larger context of 2018, art provides
what Flores calls a “safe space” for students
to respond to and cope with a chaotic world.
She sees the arts as a way to teach students
how to take risks and handle the failure
that might come as a result.
Laura Lang-Ree, director of performing
arts Harker, echoes this sentiment. “You’re
encouraged and nurtured to fail,” she says.
“You really can’t do your art until you fail.
And that’s something that I think is epidemic
in Silicon Valley, maybe everywhere,
in that kids are so motivated to get the
‘right’ answer.’”
“They’re dealing with a lot of different
issues,” Flores adds. “There’s gun violence
at schools. There’s the MeToo movement.
There’s all these things they’re seeing, these
terrors against humanity.”
“We have stressed out kids, and I think
some of it is parental, especially here in
the Bay Area,” notes Flores. “If a kid has
this drive and passion and they want to
STATE of the ARTS
Students at Archbishop
Mitty High
School performing
in the play
“One Man, Two
Guvnors.”
Middle school students
can take a mixed media art
class at Nueva School.