William E. Doar Public Charter School of the Preforming Arts

WEDJ PCS will follow a standards-driven, performance-based developmental curriculum. Our curriculum is carefully framed around knowledge about children  physical, social, emotional and cognitive growth. It is based on what children need to know and be able to do in both the artistic and academic arena and our collective knowledge about how children learn. The task of teachers then is to adjust the curriculum through their understanding of each child both as an individual and as members of a class.

High quality learning experiences will form the core of teaching and learning at WEDJ PCS. Our interdisciplinary program, as dictated by the National Standards for Education in the Arts, will provide for long-term, in-depth explorations of a theme or topic across the curriculum. It will reinforce both skill and content for all students and thereby enable students to approach a topic from many different learning styles. This will promote high academic achievement, critical thought, essential work skills and habits,personal and social development and high-quality original demonstrations/presentations.Each term or year, depending on the grade of the student, will end with a class or ensemble presentation/demonstration involving each student in front of audiences of family and community members.Flexibility with materials allows us to teach the performance-based standards through content standards that adjust with current events and the local arts season. The standards focus on process before product.

Study after study has shown the importance of Arts Education to overall student achievement. Performing Arts education in particular also contributes to the self-confidence, communication and public speaking skills of students all qualities necessary for ultimate occupational and educational success. The SPECTRA (Schools, Parents,Educators, Children, Teachers Rediscover the Arts) program infused the arts throughout the curriculum. Not only did this infusion improve attendance rates and reduce discipline problems, but the SPECTRA group students scored considerably higher in math comprehension and demonstrated significant improvement on total reading scores,reading vocabulary, reading comprehension and math comprehension.4 Beyond simply providing students with opportunities for arts appreciation, as a Performing Arts School,arts classes will be given equal billing with academic subjects as well as provide the basis for creating a hands-on inquiry based academic setting for students. As both a content area and a teaching tool, arts education is at the core of our entire school program.The school will employ full-time arts administrators and full and part-time teachers in disciplines including: graphic, music, plastic, drama and movement. Our dance program is being designed in partnership with the CityDance Ensemble. In addition, all teachers will use art as a tool for helping children learn in a developmentally appropriate manner about society, culture, history, science and the human experience. The arts, including both exhibits and performances will also be the subject of many field trips throughout the region.

In recognition of the wealth of artistic resources in the Metropolitan Washington, DC area, we will continue to work on forging partnerships with area arts and cultural institutions. These organizations may include, but are not limited to: Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, Wolf Trap Center for Performing Arts,the National Symphony Orchestra, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Folger Shakespeare Company, Imagination Stage, The Levine School of Music, The James Weldon Johnson Community School for the Arts and many others. These types of community partners will provide additional opportunities for our students to have a breadth of arts experiences to bolster and augment those programs provided in our school building.The Visual and Performing Arts standards provide both the foundation for creating curricular decisions and the opportunity for meaningful assessments in all four art forms.The standards are organized in three sections applicable to all of the arts: Creating and Performing, Perceiving and Analyzing, and Understanding Cultural and Historical Contexts.

The Mission of WEDJ PCS is to provide a rigorous, college-preparatory academic and artistic learning environment that challenges students to reach their maximum intellectual, social, emotional and artistic development as rapidly as their talents permit. Combining a rigorous program with high educational standards, the school is committed to graduating well-rounded, responsible young men and women.

The philosophy of WEDJ PCS reflects our full support of the ideology of child development presented in Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. We believe that all children learn differently, that comprehensive Education in the Arts is one of the greatest gifts one can provide a child as they learn and grow, and that success comes from full community support of and focuses on collective goals. WEDJ PCS is offering an academic and artistic program to students whose creative outlook may be unique to the regular educational classroom setting. Unlike standard academic settings in schools that reward students whose strengths lie primarily in linguistic and/or mathematical skills WEDJ PCS will include other areas of strength, teach through them and cultivate these gifts.