At
Mooreland Heights Elementary School, you can walk into any academic classroom and see some form of the arts being incorporated. You can also go into any of their varied arts classes and see those teachers incorporating academics. They work as a team, they cross plan their lessons, and they have been cited as a School of Excellence. They are a nationally recognized "Value Plus" school with award-winning teachers. That's why the Knox County PTA chose Mooreland Heights as the stage to launch this year's Reflections program.
At a press conference last week in one of the school's art classrooms, children worked on their Mexican paper-cutting project as Mayor Mike Ragsdale, Superintendent Jim McIntyre, PTA President Deborah Britt and Dr. Fred Patterson,Supervisor for the KCS Art Department, talked about the benefits of arts in education. Also squeezed into the classroom were members of the local media, Mooreland Heights Principal Roy Miller, and other county teachers and staffers.
The PTA's annualReflections Program allows students in preschool through grade 12 to create and submit works of art in literature, musical composition, photography, and the visual arts. Entries are judged by the PTA at school, county, state, and national levels. Last year, Bailey Kitts from West Valley Middle School received a national Award of Merit for her interpretation of the theme 'I can make a difference by....' with her photograph titled "Would you Pay to Die?" This year's student-selected program theme is "Wow!"
