Applied Arts Program Core Principles:
(Adapted from NBPTS Career and Technical Education Standards)
The Applied Arts Guiding Principles center Five Core Principles which serve as the framework for all Applied Arts curriculum and assessments. Wilton High School Applied Arts teachers aim to embody all Five Core Propositions in their practices, drawing on various combinations of these skills, applications, and dispositions to promote student learning.
Applied Art teachers are committed to students and their learning.
Accomplished teachers base their practice on the fundamental belief that all students can learn and meet high expectations. They understand how students develop and learn. They consult and incorporate a variety of learning and development theories into their practice, while remaining attuned to their students’ individual contexts, cultures, abilities, and circumstances. They are committed to students’ cognitive development as well as to students’ ownership of their learning. Equally important, they foster students’ self-esteem, motivation, character, perseverance, civic responsibility, intellectual risk taking, and respect for others.
Applied Arts teachers are knowledgeable on the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.
Accomplished teachers have a rich understanding of the subjects they teach and appreciate how knowledge in their subject is created, organized, linked to other disciplines, and applied to real-world settings. While maintaining the integrity of disciplinary methods, content, and structures of organization, accomplished teachers develop the critical and analytical capacities of their students so they can think for themselves.
Applied Arts teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning.
Accomplished teachers assess the progress of individual students as well as that of the class as a whole. They apply their knowledge of assessment to employ multiple methods for measuring student growth and understanding. They use the information they gather from monitoring student learning to inform their practice, and they provide constructive feedback to students and families. They collaborate with students throughout the learning process and help students engage in self-assessment.
Applied Arts teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.
Accomplished Applied Arts teachers possess a professional obligation to become perpetual students of their craft. Committed to reflective learning, they are models of educated persons. They exemplify the virtues they seek to inspire in students—curiosity, honesty, fairness, respect for diversity and appreciation of cultural differences—and the capacities that are prerequisites for intellectual growth: the ability to reason and take multiple perspectives, to be creative and take risks, and to adopt an experimental and problem-solving orientation.
Accomplished teachers seek opportunities to cultivate their learning. Striving to strengthen their teaching and positively impact student learning, teachers use feedback and research to critically examine their practice, seek to expand their repertoire, deepen their knowledge, sharpen their judgment and adapt their teaching to new findings, ideas and theories.
Applied Arts teachers are members of learning communities.
Accomplished Applied Arts teachers participate actively in their learning communities to promote progress and achievement. They contribute to the effectiveness of the school by working collaboratively with other professionals on policy decisions, curriculum development, professional learning, school instructional programs, and other functions that are fundamental to the development of highly productive learning communities. They work collaboratively and creatively with families and the community, engaging them productively in the work of the school and cultivating students’ connections with the opportunities, resources, and diversity they afford.
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