Marisol has been able to expose our entire 1st – 6th grade students to the Studio Habits of Mind, a set of eight dispositions that an artist uses to understand and reflect about the process of art making (research by Project Zero from Harvard’s School of Education). Not only are our students are learning how to use the tools and materials, but they are creating works of art that convey their own ideas, learning to talk about the aspect of their work, and how to interact as an artist with other artist. Marisol has successfully integrated the arts into the content areas via her art class and the collaboration with teachers across all grade levels and has been able to push young artist to learn past their capacities and learn from their mistakes. She has introduced our entire school community to Art, making the learning visible. It is thanks to her efforts and her support of the Art is Education initiative that our students have been part of gallery shows and exhibits, even creating this environment at our home school for our community by hosting local art shows.

Marisol Pastor-Cabrera has been a key leader in returning the arts to Hayward Unified School District. Her leadership roles include her after-school art classes, followed by her leadership with Paintbrush Diplomacy and Geoff Landreau, in organizing workshops for teachers on how to integrate art into the curriculum, and finally her leadership in creating the teacher mentor program within schools and the visual and performing arts master plan. Marisol has been instrumental in using the arts to teach kids critical thinking skills. It is well documented that kids who have art education become better students in all of their subjects. They learn to value their own thought processes and creative ideas and to have the persistence to bring those ideas to fruition. As a result of these arts programs, many Hayward kids are happier, like school more, value their own minds and imagination, are more likely to plan to go to college, and better meet the hiring criteria in Silicon Valley.
For more information about Paintbrush Diplomacy visite:http://paintbrushdiplomacy.org/