me arts ed

Walking the walk

Omari Rush is the education manager for University Musical Society but that is not all he does. He serves in an advisory role for numerous organizations of varying cultural and geographic scopes: as a governor-appointed Council member for the State of Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, as a member of the Kennedy Center Partners in Education National Advisory Committee, and as chair of the board of directors for the Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation.

Omari earned degrees in music from the University of Michigan and Florida State University, and while his concert performances as a clarinetist are now infrequent, Omari fills his downtime with running, watching the Cartoon Network, and reading (especially American Revolution literature).

Omari has been committed to creating rich arts education opportunities and experiences for many years. In a recent blog post for a blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan Omari articulated that commitment. He reminds the reader why the arts belong in the K-12 education. He sites 4 research reports that support the topic.

1. A study about Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit clearly connects arts participation and increased graduation rates and optimism about life potential
2. MSU researchers Robert Root-Bernstein and Rex LaMore have found that high achievers in engineering and the sciences commonly possess a trait of sustained arts engagement. (This one is especially interested in connection with the conversations around STEAM).
3. The National Endowment for the Arts demonstrates that arts participation enhances civic engagement, empathy, and tolerance/cooperation.
4. In addition to research telling us the arts belong, so are Fortune 500 CEOs who are craving a creative workforce.
   

Please take a few minutes and click on this link to the blog post so you can read about his beliefs on the topic!

Please note: some of the information for this post is taken directly from the blog post that you can link to which was written and put together by Tanya Muzumdar and published in “concentrate”.