The puck surely does stop here, because we are prepared for it!

I’m not big on sports quotes or sports analogies. That is unless they are about my daughter’s soccer playing, of course. Las year I heard a sports analogy that struck home in many ways. I heard it on one of the most memorable days of my life and that alone makes it even more relevant. The speaker was discussing an interview with hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky. A reporter asked Wayne “Why are you so excellent at what you do?” Wayne had a simple and direct response. “It is easy,” he said. “The other players go to where the puck is. I go to where the puck is going to be.”

I immediately put this in perspective to my own professional endeavors, which include teaching and PAEA. How many times are we successful in the classroom with students because we knew that we should be prepared to go to where the “puck will be?” How should I plan differently classroom experiences using this philosophy? How can I use this newfound knowledge to help students? PAEA members? It seems so simple and accurate.

Over the past two months your PAEA has been very active in this philosophy putting our professional organization in a position to be where the educational “puck” is going. No Child Left Behind is having effects nation wide. Operation Public Education here in Pennsylvania continues those ripples in the educational waters. As many of our colleagues have discovered, it is not a positive experience. Programs are being drastically altered and threatened. The name of the tune is increasing test scores. In some interpretations that is being accomplished at any cost, at the demise of established programs. Administrators are developing scenarios that are almost unthinkable and unreal. However they are very real. No one is immune. Even in my own position, I am addressing regularly “new ideas” to boost language arts and math scores at the expense of the visual arts.

It is a time for forward thinking on the part of visual arts educators. No Child Left Behind lists the arts as a core curriculum. The problem lies in that it is not being assessed therefore it is being deemed as dispensable. In their passions to improve scores school districts are forgetting the real values of whole child education. They are unaware of the research demonstrating that a quality visual arts education improved student learning in areas including language arts and mathematics.

We need to move to where the puck is going to be. It is time for us to celebrate, demonstrate, and advocate the value of strong arts education programs in our schools. Hand in hand with this, visual arts educators must demonstrate their knowledge of and use of the National Visual Arts Standards and the Pennsylvania Standards for Arts and Humanities in their teaching. Are they evident in your classroom? Are they evident and taught in undergraduate programs? These standards need to be used beyond just posting them or memorizing them. Listing them in the lesson plans we use is not enough to get us in front of the puck. They need to become an active part of our thinking, teaching, and learning.

Education is an ever-evolving institution in this nation. Arts education has been a valuable active part of that evolution for decades. Our students are better for it. Now is not the time to sit back and watch the educational world go by. Now is the time to celebrate what we do, demonstrate it to students, parents& the community, and advocate in all corners of our world for quality art education. Rest assured that your PAEA will continue to do this, however we cannot do it alone. We need everyone to be active and involved.

Please come and skate with us so that we all might be where the puck is going!

It’s all about instruction and learning.

Tom Kelchner