Center Stage Youth Theatre

How the Arts Help Children to Create Healthy Social Scripts:
Exploring the Perceptions of Elementary Teachers
Laine Brouillette

Ms. Brouillette here explores the mechanisms by which experiences in the arts can enhance social and emotional learning. She interviewed elementary school teachers who participated in an inner city arts program in their schools and also reviewed some of the literature available on the “impact of arts activities on social-emotional development.”(2010)
I found it very interesting that this piece also states that it is thought that the overexposure to media stimulation that children often experience as a matter of course in our modern world was thought the impair their ability to balance their “calming and arousing activities.” (2010) That in addition, this overexposure to stimulation may impair the child’s ability to attend and respond to traditional school room situations.
While most of what children learn in school situations is geared toward teaching them lessons of the world around us, Ms. Brouillette points out that arts activities turn the attention inward in a way that most other school activities do not, and this can lead to a more conscious awareness to one’s emotional and perceptual responses to the world around them. This kind of perception not only helps children choose their focus but helps them learn that “they do not need to respond to emotional impulses unthinkingly,” a very valid, necessary skill useful for fostering successful emotional and social experiences.

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