Hello and welcome to my blog; The Academic Palette. This is a blog discussing what’s going on in NC education, what it means and why you should care. I was inspired to start this blog when I was running for the Board of Education in my county. While out campaigning, I learned that a lot of people had a lot of questions about education, but they didn’t quite understand all that was going on and they didn’t know where to go to get the answers. After countless and valuable “front porch chit chats”, I decided that I wanted to be that “go to” person for people in my county to turn to for information on what’s going on in education, why it matters and why they should care. I also wanted to create a place where people could get the facts! With all the misinformation that has been spread about public education and education in general, I wanted to be a voice of truth and reason. It was a natural segway to my three-decade long advocacy for education and a system that works for all. Here in North Carolina Y’all means ALL and we are working to preserve an education system that works for ALL.
What does Academic Palette mean?
As an artist and art educator,I have been a fierce advocate for the arts in schools since the early 1990s. In spite of the evidence, quite often it is the arts that get cut first and those decisions are more often than not made by people with no background in education, much less a true understanding of an arts education. The testing tsunami we saw in the early 1990’s has led to the crippling of the arts in schools through defunding and/or cuts. An arts education is essential to educating the whole child. The arts teach children how to question, how to see things from a different perspective, how to creatively problem solve. It builds confidence, compassion, awareness, and encourages thinking outside of the box. Students need a well rounded education in order to compete in the modern day global world. I equate each subject to a color of paint on the palette. Individually, they are just colors. Blended together they make a beautiful & powerful masterpiece. Every child deserves to paint their own masterpiece. Our students are more than a test score and their education should be a combination of academics and humanities so each child has the opportunity to paint a masterpiece of their own.
