Jessica Hoffmann Davis

When it comes to education, I was "born in a trunk." My family lived in the attic of the progressive school that my mother directed in New York City. For us, life was school and school was life. That experience is described in my memoir, "Ordinary Gifted Children: The Power and Promise of Individual Attention." Arts were daily subjects at Hoffmann School and they provided unique opportunities for learning and development. In my more recent life as a teacher and researcher, I've observed that most of us lose touch with the arts somewhere in middle childhood. Do we move on to other modes of expression that we find or are told are more important? Do we miss the chance to make art because it isn't included in the school day? Why are the arts-the highest forms of human expression-puhed to the side or eliminated in schools today? I explore questions like these in my book, "Framing Education as Art: The Octopus has a Good Day" (there's a funny story behind that title). In research at Project Zero, we discovered that one place quality arts education might be happening is outside of school in the community. In a multi-year study of that arena, we applied the "artful" methodology called portraiture and worked to adapt it as a group process. In order to give it further reach, with its originator Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, I co-authored a "handbook" for portraiture entitle, "The Art and Science of Portraiture." After years of advocating for the arts, I wrote a manifesto for arts advocacy called, "Why Our Schools Need the Arts" and a few years later, a sequel that addresses one of our most pressing educational challenges--the alarming dropout rate in our high schools: "Why Our High Schools Need the Arts." Most recently, I edited and contributed to a collection of essays on the arts in higher education: "Discourse and Disjuncture Between the Arts and Higher Education" which contains authentic practitioner essays with great suggestions for interdisciplinary reform. Overall, I hope these resources are useful to parents, faculty, and anyone who wants to learn about or make better our children's lives at school. Please visit my author website: jessicahoffmanndavis.com and let me know what you think.