TSAA: Honing the talent in every child

Last week, I appeared on the ABS-CBN talk show Kris TV where I shared with the viewers my mother-in-law Carol Walters’ deviled eggs recipe. During the course of the segment, host Kris Aquino had inquired about my children’s schooling and I had mentioned that Sakura and Kenobi who will be entering Grade 2 and Kindergarten, respectively, are going to be enrolling in a new school called The Talent School of Academics and Arts.

The Talent School of Academics and Arts (TSAA) is opening its doors for the first time for kindergarten to second grade for the 2013-2014 school year. Their newly-built building is located past Buendia on Chino Roces in Makati City. Each morning, the children will be engaged in the maths, sciences and social studies as well as Mandarin. Their afternoons are spent doing the arts, which include dance, music, creative dramatics and visual arts. A school like this is the first of its kind in the Philippines with the likes of Audie Gemora and Ryan Cayabyab who both oversee the arts curriculum. It does sound like a performing arts school or an “arts” school much like “Fame” or the High School of the Performing Arts, however academics does play a big part of the curriculum. Each child after all has a talent that needs to be nurtured and developed, may it be in academics or the arts and learning through the arts has been scientifically proven to help children retain more information rather than the traditional approach to teaching.

In fact, I’m such a believer in TSAA’s philosophy because I witnessed firsthand the benefits of this kind of approach when I was still living in Los Angeles. When I was completing my theater requirements to minor in the program from UCLA, one of my most interesting classes was Teaching through Creative Dramatics, wherein we were taught how the pillars of creative dramatics such as improvisation, pantomime and story telling greatly enhances a child’s curiosity for learning. As part of our internship, we would participate in the Arts Bridge Program which is affiliated with several schools in the LAUSD system. According to the guidelines for the curriculum, for each grade level, we would then intern and develop lesson plans for the children using creative dramatics as a tool for learning and the results were astounding. Just google for yourself “Journal of learning through the Arts,” which is a peer reviewed publication on the research that backs up the theory and principles of arts integration and it will turn anyone into a believer.

Both my children seem to be at the opposite sides of the spectrum as my seven-year-old is very extroverted and the five-year-old tends to be more reserved. However with the research that’s proven how the arts significantly builds the left and right brain simultaneously, I really feel that this school might be a good fit for both of them since its progressive developmental approach targets a child’s strengths and hones their talents, be it academically or in the arts. I learned the traditional way in my early formative years and can’t, for the life of me, say I blossomed in that kind of environment. I owe it to my children to give them a world where they are encouraged to develop their curiosity for learning about the world around them.

(You can call TSAA at 511-0463; 808-8051 or 0922-5116060 or check out its website at www.tsaa.com.ph for more information about the school.)