The Spirit of Art

Posted on: November 13th, 2013 by Guest Blogger

By Peter Castillo, Principal, KCAA Dragons

Five years ago, the doors opened to the first arts-focused school in SW Denver. The most exciting mission was that it was to become the only K-12 arts magnet school in the state of Colorado. Today, we have secured two national Arts School Network awards, have increased student achievement regularly for the last 4 years, created our monthly First Friday event to coincide with the nearby Santa Fe art district and have had students receive awards for visual, choral and dramatic performance across the city and state.

The school now has its first 11th grade and will have its first graduating class complete in 2014/15. Our students have had amazing opportunities. They have gone to Washington DC, travelled to Los Angeles to speak with film producers and actors and now are doing their own research into their trip for this year to expand their artistic and cultural horizons.

Our middle school and elementary school are among the most unique in all of Colorado. Students in grades K-5 learn their core content material through the arts and our 6-8 grade students have 5 core classes (Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies and Exploratory Arts – which was a class designed just for our school). Our staff also gets into the action by performing each year for our students and community in the KCAA Staff Musical!

Please come and visit our semester-ending Formal First Friday will be on December 6th.  It starts at 5 p.m. in our KCAA Theater.