Petaluma Arts Center

Approximately six hundred students have participated in this SKB program.

The Petaluma Arts Center (PAC) in Petaluma, CA implemented a program to enhance its Docent Program with Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). VTS includes methods to enhance art instruction and critical thinking that are used with Common Core strategies in schools. The program trains docents and teachers to interact with students on Arts Center tours to interpret and articulate their experience with the art. This interaction teaches critical thinking skills students can apply to all of their visual experiences. Docents, students, parents and artists all report rewarding results from participating with the VTS methods.
SKB contributions to the Docent program provided training and materials for the docents to lead student visits to the Center. Typically the students are broken up into groups of fifteen students and into smaller subgroups to interact with the art, the docent and each other. Then the students are given the opportunity to make art themselves.