A Celebration of the Arts at NIST Bangkok, Thailand – NIST (the New International School of Thailand) has just completed its 2008 Arts Week. Students, parents, and staff experienced a wide range of performing arts through a series of workshops held September 15 – 17, and which culminated with an assembly sharing the week’s results. NIST invited special guests, Doug Goodkin and Kofi Gbolonyo from universities in the USA to lead the music sessions and speak to parents about the importance of the arts in education today. Doug Goodkin, from the San Francisco School of Arts, is an author, music educator, jazz musician, and expert in the Orff Schulwerk method of music education. Kofi Gbonlonyo is a lecturer in African Music Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a national of Ghana and an expert in African music and dance. Guest teachers or NIST’s own teaching staff led other creative and dramatic arts workshops.
ences for the students. And everyone was very impressed by the performances at the final assembly. NIST is an IB World school located in the heart of Bangkok. The IB curriculum is a holistic curriculum that develops students as rounded, reflective, and responsible individuals.
Students from year levels six to nine enjoyed three days of workshops, which covered the range of performing arts. Students selected these sessions from a list of 23 workshops in music, dance, drama, visual art and IT arts which included pottery, painting, mega murals, sticky tape sculpture, silent moving making, video and animated movie making, digital photography, the art of improvisation, African drumming, hip hop dance, and stepping. One of the year 6 students said, “I like Arts Week because it is fun and we get to learn new things we didn’t know before. I would like it to happen again.” A student in year 7 observed, “I got to do creative things and have fun. We learned many new things having so many workshops to choose from.” Parents also enjoyed a special evening session where the two dynamic, inspiring guest teachers talked about the importance of the arts in education. All in all, it was a week of wonderful experi-20-
