Creating From The Inside Out

How ArtEsteem Works

ArtEsteem engages students and supports their positive development – body, mind, and heart. Our programs help keep children/youth interested in school through creating individual and collective educational excellence across academic subjects. In addition to art classes for kids, ArtEsteem Art Instructors provide professional development consulting and hands-on training for educators in art curricula –and also in support of academic subjects (e.g. science and social studies) – to help teachers develop visually engaging and hands-on methods that improve student involvement, comprehension, and critical thinking.

ArtEsteem’s fun and widely applicable art-enrichment classes, that also provide education in emotional literacy and life/social skills, are valuable for kids of all backgrounds. Bridging grassroots and governmental social-improvement efforts, we strive in particular to provide art classes in schools that cannot afford them by linking resources and creatively raising dollars through grants and other fundraising efforts. Being able to offer art classes in under-funded schools is helping remedy the effects of socioeconomic conditions that can block academic and personal achievement.

Participants discover how to self reflect and dream, as well as focus on their tasks and “follow through” by completing their art projects. Our methods guide students to think practically about the world and their abilities to manifest positive and creative outcomes. Classes also build students’ language and math literacy, aesthetic appreciation, and listening and performance skills. Our students learn – through dialogue, reading, and writing – conceptual understandings of social, historical, and cultural topics to engage and inform their minds, and develop the whole child, in expansive ways.

We Don’t Do Art Just For Art’s Sake …  ArtEsteem students are propelled to see themselves differently, internally/personally as well as in relation to the issues of the world, and they are encouraged to experience themselves as active change agents. Participants can become more able to self manage, make positive choices, and exercise awareness and kindness with self and other. ArtEsteem invites participants to feel powerful in helpful, beautiful, and productive ways instead of feeling and acting worthless, powerless, or out of control.