Vancouver School of Arts and Academics
Encyclopedia

The Vancouver School of Arts and Academics (VSAA), located in Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington. Incorporated in 1857, it is the fourth largest city in the state with a 2010 census population of 161,791 as of April 1, 2010...

 (Clark County
Clark County, Washington
Clark County is a county located in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.Clark County was the first county of Washington, named after William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition...

) in the Vancouver School District, is a public arts magnet school
Magnet school
In education in the United States, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities as school zones that feed into certain schools.There are magnet schools at the...

 for grades 6 to 12. In addition to traditional academic studies, the school's curriculum involves in-depth elective study of the performing
Performing arts
The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...

, literary, visual
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 arts, as well as film studies
Film studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies...

 (called "moving image arts" at the school). For the 2008-2009 school year, they accepted nearly 100 6th graders. Originally built in 1929 under the name "Shumway", it was remodeled and renamed in 1996 and opened in the fall of that year. The school's vision was to create a unique art-centered learning community where young artists were able to develop their creative skills and connect their creativity to an academic foundation. Teachers are commonly artists themselves, and resident artists of every art form routinely visit to teach workshops.

Historically, the school has not just been an artist community; the academics instilled in the students have offered publicly visible results. According to the "2005 Report Card" published in Portland Monthly
Portland Monthly
Portland Monthly is a monthly news and general interest magazine which covers events and culture in Portland, Oregon. The magazine was co-founded in 2003 by siblings Nicole and Scott Vogel. Nicole had previously worked for Cendant Corporation and Time Warner, and Scott had been a journalist at The...

(September 2005), the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics was rated (within the Vancouver School District) with the best 2007-2008 graduation rate (100%), the best 2003-2004 Grade 10 WASL
Washington Assessment of Student Learning
The Washington Assessment of Student Learning was a standardized educational assessment system given as the primary assessment in the state of Washington from spring 1997 to summer 2009. The WASL was also used as a high school graduation examination beginning in the spring of 2006 and ending in 2009...

 Reading (89), Writing (87) and Math (71) scores, the lowest student/teacher ratio (13:1, respectively), and was the only school in Clark County
Clark County, Washington
Clark County is a county located in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.Clark County was the first county of Washington, named after William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition...

 serving grades 6 to 12.

The school's arts classes include dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

, music (vocal, Jazz, and orchestral), theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

, literary arts, moving image arts (film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 and animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

), and visual art (both visual art and photography). Every student must study each art form in at least one class; they can then choose to either focus in one or two art forms or continue "multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 study" (studying all art forms). The school's block schedule allows students to take three 100 minute classes a day. An interdisciplinary core class acts as a collaborative foundation for learning across classes and grade levels, further combining arts, academics into experiential learning
Experiential learning
Experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience. Simply put, Experiential Learning is learning from experience. The experience can be staged or left open. Aristotle once said, "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." David A...

projects based on a theme usually set by instructors. The Vancouver School of Arts and Academics' 550 students (numbers fluctuate some) are all subjected to an application process that identifies the interest a prospective student has in the arts, which is considered by staff to be the most important qualification for entrance to the public arts magnet, rather than preexisting talent.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK