My niece watched me draw a longhorn steer and asked if drawing had always come easy to me. I thought I'd always had a knack for it, but now I'm convinced someone must've led me to believe that I could draw at some time or other. I didn't start off drawing any better than other children my age, but like athletics or anything else, I improved gradually according to the amount of effort I put into it. Some may start off more observant or having a good eye for details and perspective, but for most everyone, the eye can be trained to see better as well.
Some people truly have a gift of certain talents or abilities. When I was doing my student teaching in Lockhart years ago, I remember two students that I believe were truly gifted in art. Neither had training prior to their art class in high school, but their skills were beyond many established artists twice their age. One of the students had already mastered the human body and began painting surrealistic art along the lines of Salvador Dali. The other student had one of the most creative and whimsical minds I had ever seen. She saw imagined things in still life assignments that no one else pictured. I wonder what paths they chose to take in their careers. They should be around age forty today. Both students amazed me.
But for most of the rest of us, the extent of our talents and abilities is directly related to the amount of time and effort we are willing to invest in them. No telling how many talents remain locked inside students and adults because they either never had the opportunity for them to be exposed and expressed, or someone discouraged them in the early development of that talent.
It takes a strong belief in self to continue to develop a talent in the midst of little or no encouragement nor outlet to develop it.
It's so important for parents, schools, and communities to provide those programs that allow our children to put creative application behind those rote skills learned in schools. I was so fortunate to be in several elementary schools that had strong music and art programs, which was the foundation of so much I'm involved in today. One of the schools I attended in Dell City in far West Texas was so small, it only had a six-man football team. But it also had art and music classes which I loved. Our music and art teacher, Mrs. Huffman, taught us how to sing songs in four-part harmony, and provided us the opportunity to compete in UIL meets.
UIL competitions with events such as poetry and prose, voice and instrumental solos and ensembles, improvisational speaking and acting, one-act play, debate, and many others provide wonderful outlets for developing talent and skill. Sadly, athletic competitions far over-shadow the scholastic competitions in schools today when it comes to promotion and funding. But which type of competition actually benefits us more later in life?
An elective course that involves more opportunities to creatively apply learned skills than any other subject in school is journalism, especially in the course of publishing a school newspaper and yearbook. Unfortunately, journalism has fallen by the wayside in too many school districts because students cannot fit this elective into their already burdened schedules, or journalism is assigned to an already over-burdened English teacher. My daughter and niece don't even have a yearbook for their senior year, and it still breaks my heart that the school let it fall by the wayside.
Some consider music, art, and other forms of creative expression as expendable luxuries that are easy to cut funding or even eliminate during budget crunching years. But I believe the arts are the keys that unlock the imagination and enable our children to put meaning and purpose beyond the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. They were for me, they were for my children, and I'm already seeing amazing benefits in my grandchildren's lives.
I can't remember who encouraged me along the way, but I do remember the creative opportunities that were available for me in my younger years, which planted seeds fertile enough to last throughout the lean years in the upper grades. I'm so grateful to those school administrators and teachers who also recognized their importance and safe-guarded the existence of the arts.
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