art education

Full STEAM ahead: Artist creating a business to return art to schools

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Full STEAM ahead: Artist creating a business to return art to schools

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 11/17/2016

What would happen if our nation’s schools embraced the teaching of art to enhance student understanding of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects? According to local artist and entrepreneur Ed Martinez, integrating hands-on art projects into the widely accepted STEM curriculum would result in nothing short of an educational paradigm shift.

“Decades ago art was isolated from the academic environment. That made it easy to eliminate the arts from the curriculum, and that’s what we have now,” Martinez says.

“Many kids are lost along the way because their curiosity is not stimulated by book learning alone. When hands-on art projects are added to the STEM curriculum, students begin to recognize and tap their own genius,” he adds.

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Playground art: More than meets the eye

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Playground art: More than meets the eye

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

Published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 10/19/2015

Just weeks before the start of October rains, art teacher Sue Friedland engaged 35 young students in painting a 25-by-36 foot map of the United States in the middle of their asphalt playground at Our Lady of Angels School in Burlingame. They are now embellishing the map with paintings of all the state flowers. But this is not graffiti!

“This project teaches children some basic geography and nature observation skills,” said Friedland, “and they learn to work together.”

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