TheFund recently wrapped up a workplace-giving campaign with Bexar County employees, and we’ll be telling you more about their achievements in an upcoming post. But last year, employees of Bexar County offices raised over $30,000 for the Fund, a 16.4% increase over 2008. Yvette Moran is the Community Programs Management Analyst for Bexar County and has served as Campaign Coordinator for Workplace-Giving Campaigns with theFund. Here, she writes about how the arts plays a critical role in the education and growing self-esteem of her daughter, Paris (pictured).
My daughter, Paris, now 12 and starting the eighth grade, has participated in the arts in several ways. She started at age three with dance and Kinder-Musik programs. She was enrolled in the Guadalupe Summer Dance camp and took Ballet Folklorico/Flamenco with them for a while. She has also done ballet and jazz through a private agency. She was in choir in elementary school at St. Anthony's Catholic School. St. Anthony's also has a good music program for the elementary school that involves learning to read music and playing keyboards.
I think her participation in the arts allowed her cognition to improve, especially when it came to tough subjects like Classical Heritage. The class taught the Classics by developing students’ thinking and problem solving skills. It was no longer enough to just memorize, students had to theorize and deduce. Paris aced the class; her predisposition for the arts helped her.
In Picture Your World, a program of Green Spaces Alliance (formerly Bexar Land and Trust), Paris practiced nature photography in various locations around town. She learned about the beauty of nature in our own environment and how to capture that with a camera. She then used the Say Si! media lab to crop and edit her photos for a contest, and she won an honorable mention for her submission. The winning photographs were displayed under glass in beautiful frames at the San Antonio Public Library Gallery. This was great for her self-esteem. She’ll be taking Journalism and Yearbook in the spring.
Paris is now learning Latin, and I believe her education and training in the arts makes her realize that she can do whatever she wants with guidance and perseverance. She has learned that from all of her art, music, theater, and photography teachers.
Paris is a great student, and the arts are her passion. I used to wish she'd become a doctor or something to support us in our old age. But, now I know that this is what makes her happy and she'll lead a more passionate life if she is doing something she loves. Besides (in my own non-objective opinion) she is good at it, and we as parents need to recognize our kids’ special talents and support them with all we've got.
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