Fine & Performing Arts
The fine and performing arts provide an essential path for students to learn about themselves and the world through creative and cultural expression. The arts are intrinsically valuable and provide a well-rounded education that supports the development of the whole child through positive school culture, social-emotional wellbeing, diverse cultural understandings, and divergent ways of thinking.
Dance
Dance Overview
The dance magnet program provides a comprehensive dance education that develops the student as an artist through opportunities to create, respond, and connect dance to personal and global experiences. Through movement, students can communicate meaning that shapes how they see themselves and the world. The skills learned in dance develop creativity, discipline, expressiveness, and focus.
Charles County Public Schools offers a 9th-12th grade dance magnet program at Maurice J. McDonough High School. Dance styles include, but not be limited to, ballet, jazz and contemporary dance. 8th-grade students interested in the program will submit an application and audition to be considered.
Artistic Processes and Enduring Understandings for Dance
Creating
- Choreographers use a variety of sources as inspiration and transform concepts and ideas into movement for artistic expression.
- The elements of dance, dance structures, and choreographic devices serve as both a foundation and a departure point for choreographers.
- Choreographers analyze, evaluate, refine, and document their work to communicate meaning.
Performing
- Space, time, and energy are basic elements of dance.
- Dancers use the mind-body connection and develop the body as an instrument for artistry and artistic expression.
- Dance performance is an interaction between performer, production elements, and audience that heightens and amplifies artistic expression
Responding
- Dance is perceived and analyzed to comprehend its meaning.
- Dance is interpreted by considering intent, meaning, and artistic expression as communicated through the use of the body, elements of dance, dance technique, dance structure, and context.
- Criteria for evaluating dance vary across genres, styles, and cultures.
Connecting
Courses Offered
Dance I, Dance II, Dance III and Dance IV. Course offerings are dependent on enrollment and may not be available every year. Please check the program of studies for additional courses or course descriptions.
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Multimedia
Multimedia Overview
We experience and interact with our culture through media every day. Study in multimedia develops a student’s capacity to understand ideas through diverse media and to express and communicate their own ideas using various mediums. An education in multimedia provides the student artist opportunities to create, produce, respond, and connect to ideas.
Artistic Processes and Enduring Understandings for Multimedia
Creating
- Media arts ideas, works, and processes are shaped by the imagination, creative processes, and by experiences, both within and outside of the arts.
- Media artists plan, organize, and develop creative ideas, plans, and models into process structures that can effectively realize the artistic idea
- The forming, integration, and refinement of aesthetic components, principles, and processes creates purpose, meaning, and artistic quality in media artworks.
Producing
- Media artists integrate various forms and contents to develop complex, unified artworks.
- Media artists require a range of skills and abilities to creatively solve problems within and through media arts productions.
- Media artists purposefully present, share, and distribute media artworks for various contexts.
Responding
- Identifying the qualities and characteristics of media artworks improves one's artistic appreciation and production
- Interpretation and appreciation require consideration of the intent, form, and context of the media and artwork.
- Skillful evaluation and critique are critical components of experiencing, appreciating, and producing media artworks.
Connecting
Courses Offered
Digital Media I, Digital Media II, and Digital Media III. Course offerings are dependent on enrollment and may not be available every year. Please check the program of studies for additional courses or course descriptions.
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Music
Music Overview
Almost everyone experiences, creates, or interacts with music each day. Music education is part of a well-rounded curriculum that develops student’s creativity, social-emotional wellbeing, sense of belonging, discipline, and aesthetic understanding.
Students in Charles County Public Schools begin their music education as early as Pre-Kindergarten. In 5th grade, students may choose to study music in band, choir, general music, or strings. In high school students may have opportunities to study piano and AP Music Theory. Throughout middle school and high school, students who continue studying music have many opportunities to participate in music festivals, all-county honor ensembles, and tri-county honor ensembles. The benefits of studying music only grow as students continue their education!
Artistic Processes and Enduring Understandings for Music
Creating
- The creative ideas, concepts, and feelings that influence musicians’ work emerge from a variety of sources
- Musicians’ creative choices are influenced by their expertise, context, and expressive intent.
- Musicians evaluate and refine their work through openness to new ideas, persistence, and the application of appropriate criteria.
- Musicians’ presentation of creative work is the culmination of a process of creation and communication.
Performing
- Performers’ interest in and knowledge of musical works, understanding of their own technical skill, and the context for a performance influence the selection of repertoire.
- Analyzing creators’ context and how they manipulate elements of music provides insight into their intent and informs performance
- Performers make interpretive decisions based on their understanding of context and expressive intent.
- To express their musical ideas, musicians analyze, evaluate, and refine their performance over time through openness to new ideas, persistence, and the application of appropriate criteria.
- Musicians judge performance based on criteria that vary across time, place, and cultures.
Responding
- Individuals' selection of musical works is influenced by their interests, experiences, understandings, and purposes.
- Response to music is informed by analyzing context (social, cultural, and historical) and how creators and performers manipulate the elements of music.
- Through their use of elements and structures of music, creators and performers provide clues to their expressive intent.
- The personal evaluation of musical work(s) and performance(s) is informed by analysis, interpretation, and established criteria.
Connecting
Courses Offered
In elementary school, students receive instruction each year in General Music. In 5th grade students elect to take band, choir, or strings. Some, but not all schools, may offer general music in 5th grade. In middle school, students must have a fine art credit each year which may include band, chorus, strings, general music, or visual art.
High school graduation requirements state that every student must have at least one fine art credit. In high school, the following music classes fulfill that requirement: AP Music Theory, Chamber Choir, Class Piano, Concert Band, Concert Choir, Guitar, Jazz Ensemble, Music Theory, Orchestra, Show Choir, Symphonic Band or Women’s Chorus.
Course offerings are dependent on enrollment and may not be available every year. Please check the program of studies for descriptions of each course and a complete list of courses.
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Theatre
Why should you take a Theatre Arts Course?
Theatre Pathway Program
The Theatre Pathway is a comprehensive program that aims to provide students with a well-rounded theatre experience while fulfilling graduation requirements and preparing them for college and the workforce. It offers specialized options in acting, technical theatre, or musical theatre. This program is open to students with or without prior theatre experience who have an interest in the performing or technical aspects of theatre.
Charles County Public Schools offers a 9th-12th grade theatre pathway at Maurice J. McDonough High School. It is open to students who have an interest in theater performance, theater design and production. Eighth-grade students interested in the program will submit an application and audition to be considered.
Theatre Overview
We engage with theatre nearly every day through film, television, voice acting, or theatre. Theatre not only informs how we view and understand our history, but it also shapes what we think about our future. Students of theatre can see the world through diverse perspectives and communicate their own point of view to an audience. The human-to-human connection that theatre provides is more important now than ever.
Students can study theatre in 9th-12th grade. They will have opportunities to put on musicals, plays, and monologues at their school, with the All County Thespian Troupe, and at the Maryland State Thespian Festival. Theatre is an essential part of a well-rounded curriculum that advances student’s social-emotional wellbeing, sense of belonging, discipline, and creativity. The stories we tell through theatre can promote social discourse and societal change, helping us imagine and create a better future for all.
Artistic Processes and Enduring Understandings for Theatre
Creating
Performing
Responding
Connecting
- Theatre artists allow awareness of interrelationships between self and others to influence and inform their work
- Theatre artists understand and can communicate their creative process as they analyze the way the world may be understood.
- Theatre artists critically inquire into the ways others have thought about and created drama processes and productions to inform their own work.
Courses Offered
High school graduation requirements state that every student must have at least one fine art credit. The following theatre classes fulfill that requirement: Acting, Advanced Acting I, II, Stage Production I, II, II, and Theatre Arts.
Course offerings are dependent on enrollment and may not be available every year. Please check the program of studies for descriptions of each course and a complete list of courses.
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Visual Art
Visual Art Overview
Now, more than ever, visual art students rely on art to provide opportunities for self-expression, creativity, and social-emotional wellbeing. Through visual art, students learn to understand themselves and their world in a deeper way through the lenses of history and culture. Visual arts students develop critical and creative thinking to understand problems and bring about change. Arts education fosters divergent thinking that leads to new innovations and creative solutions.
Students begin their visual art education as early as pre-kindergarten and receive visual art every week through 5th grade. There are 20 different visual art course offerings for students in middle school and high school. In visual art, students have opportunities to participate in multiple art shows each year and Youth Art Month.
Artistic Processes and Enduring Understandings for Visual Art
Creating
- Creativity and innovative thinking are essential life skills that can be developed.
- Artists and designers shape artistic investigations, following or breaking with traditions in pursuit of creative artmaking goals
- Artists and designers experiment with forms, structures, materials, concepts, media, and art-making approaches
- Artists and designers balance experimentation and safety, freedom and responsibility while developing and creating artworks
- People create and interact with objects, places, and design that define, shape, enhance, and empower their lives.
- Artist and designers develop excellence through practice and constructive critique, reflecting on, revising, and refining work over time.
Presenting
- Artists and other presenters consider various techniques, methods, venues, and criteria when analyzing, selecting, and curating objects artifacts, and artworks for preservation and presentation.
- Artists, curators and others consider a variety of factors and methods including evolving technologies when preparing and refining artwork for display and or when deciding if and how to preserve and protect it.
- Objects, artifacts, and artworks collected, preserved, or presented either by artists, museums, or other venues communicate meaning and a record of social, cultural, and political experiences resulting in the cultivating of appreciation and understanding.
Responding
- Individual aesthetic and empathetic awareness developed through engagement with art can lead to understanding and appreciation of self, others, the natural world, and constructed environments.
- Visual imagery influences understanding of and responses to the world.
- People gain insights into meanings of artworks by engaging in the process of art criticism.
- People evaluate art based on various criteria.
Connecting
Courses Offered
In elementary school, students receive instruction each year in Visual Art. In middle school, students must have a fine art credit each year which may include band, chorus, strings, general music, or visual art.
High school graduation requirements state that every student must have at least one fine art credit. In high school, the following visual art classes fulfill that requirement: Advanced Art, AP Art History, AP Art History, AP Studio Art Drawing, AP Studio Art 2-D Design, AP Studio Art 3-D Design, Architecture and Interior Design, Art I, Art II, Ceramics I-III, Drawing/Design, Painting I-III, Photography I-III, and Sculpture.
Course offerings are dependent on enrollment and may not be available every year. Please check the program of studies for descriptions of each course and a complete list of courses.
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Contact Us
Timothy Bodamer
Content Specialist
Fine and Performing Arts
tbodamer@ccboe.com
301-934-7409
Andrew Blumhardt
Instructional Specialist
Fine and Performing Arts
ablumhardt@ccboe.com
301-934-7403
Alisha Sweatt
Secretary
Fine and Performing Arts
asweatt@ccboe.com
301-934-7315
Artistic Processes and Framework
National Coalition for Core Arts Standard
The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards(NCCAS) has set forth standards and artistic processes within a framework of creating, performing, responding, and connecting. Charles County Public Schools curriculum for Fine and Performing Arts courses develops student’s abilities through the following artistic processes:
- Creating includes conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work.
- Performing means realizing artistic ideas through interpretation and presentation.
- Responding is defined as understanding and evaluating how the arts convey meaning.
- Connecting means relating artistic ideas and work with personal meaning and external context.
National Core Arts Standards © 2015 National Coalition for Core Arts Standards. Rights administered by State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE). All rights reserved.