One middle school student said, "I'm reading test preparation booklets, not Shakespeare..."

What we've lost in the demand for accountability is the rich, well-rounded education that we all want our children to have.
-Randi Weingarten
President, United Federation of Teachers

Narrowing the curriculum in elementary school deprives students of an important opportunity to develop broad vocabulary and background knowledge necessary for strong reading comprehension later on. That lack of opportunity results in several negative consequences as students move into upper elementary school and secondary grades.
Source: The Hidden Costs of Narrowing the Curriculum, The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement

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Updated: 7/29/08

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Home > Interviews > Interview with Domenic Guastaferro

Voices of Innovation

An Interview with Domenic Guastaferro, Director of Performing and Visual Arts Education (PAVE) Program, New Rochelle High School, New York

Describe to me the unique integration of arts programming at New Rochelle High School.
I think the uniqueness of the PAVE program is that it affords students the opportunity to have a major concentration in a particular art form that they find great interest or talent in.
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What is the level of commitment from a PAVE student?
First of all, that's a big commitment – when you get up that early and be here before school. The students found that they enjoyed actually coming earlier because they were part of a small family. In a school of over 3,000 students, they felt a part of a small family of children that had things in common – in this case, the arts. And it also jump-started their day because after the PAVE process they were much more awake than ordinarily.
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Can you tell me a bit about the history of the program & courses?
We started out in 1999 with 50 students and five teachers in the program. Now we're up to close to 350 students and 14 teachers. And we've added some very interesting courses, Studio Art and Entertainment/Set Design, Script Writing and Improvisation, and Musical Theater. Now Musical Theater is team-taught by three teachers – stage, dance, and music. In that course, the students study the history of musical theater. Then they go on to create, write, and perform their own original one act. And there are usually three every year, so now at the end of four years, we’ve had 12 original one-act musicals. One of them, in fact, was slated to go to the Fringe Festival in Scotland in 2009.  So that’s an exciting course that’s team-taught.
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How does having a quality arts education affect students' overall performance?
The program helps students to open up and to grow socially with confidence and greater self-esteem. There was one young Afro-American girl who graduated this past year, she had come to me for a letter of recommendation, and I remember her saying to me, "You know Dr. Guastaferro, I just wanted you to know that the fruits of your work in this program have given me confidence to know what it means to work hard to get something."
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Click here for an interview with Theresa Kump Leghorn, director of New Rochelle High School's Museum of Arts and Culture.

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