When Jensen talks about the visual arts, he speaks about the "doing" of art in a continuous way. Unfortunately, for the most part, I am the only formal art the students get. I suspect this is true in many schools where there is an art specialist.
I only see students once every six days. But as I read Jensen's book, I began to recognize that regular classroom teachers often do a visual art activity but often don't consider such activities "art." For example, the use of mind maps is standard in our building. And teacher's often have students do illustrations with reports (like in science experiments) or other writing assignments. I've noticed that many of the mind maps are very detailed and great visual representations of their ideas. What I'd like to suggest is that classroom teachers often do much more in the way of visual arts (visual representations) than they realize. Perhaps Jensen is really on to something with respect to mind maps. They can be quite detailed, are often color coded, and are visual representations of thoughts and ideas. The parts of the brain that are engaged in the creation of a mind map are those same areas that are ignited during other visual art activities.
Something to think about. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
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