The Visual and Performing Arts Department at Cesar Chavez High School provides a climate that fosters academic rigor, artistic talent and appreciation, and academic responsibility amongst its students.  Courses offered in instrumental and vocal music, dance, drama and visual art nurture creativity, challenge talent, and encourage the pursuit of excellence, creating lifelong appreciation and understanding of the arts.

Instruction is focused on developing a strong foundation of knowledge and understanding through performance.  Courses are designed to develop and reinforce the fundamental skills required to demonstrate proficiency and mastery of both the national and state Arts standards with a parallel goal to demonstrate artistic excellence.  Students are given the opportunity to develop their internal artistic processes while promoting their self-expression, self-discipline, confidence and leadership.  As students mature and move toward high school graduation, the spiraling curriculum of these courses continues to challenge and prepare all individuals to continue studies at the collegiate level and beyond.

Course offerings at Chavez are aligned to the National Standards for Arts Education, which define the importance of an arts education:

• The arts are used to achieve a multitude of human purposes: to present issues and ideas, to teach or persuade, to entertain, to decorate or please. Becoming literate in the arts helps students understand and do these things better.
• The arts are integral to every person's daily life. Our personal, social, economic, and cultural environments are shaped by the arts at every turn - from the design of the child's breakfast placemat, to the songs on the commuter's car radio, to the family's nighttime TV drama, to the teenager's Saturday dance, to the enduring influences of the classics.
• The arts offer unique sources of enjoyment and refreshment for the imagination. They explore relationships between ideas and objects and serve as links between thought and action. Their continuing gift is to help us see and grasp life in new ways.
• There is ample evidence that the arts help students develop the attitudes, characteristics, and intellectual skills required to participate effectively in today's society and economy. The arts teach self-discipline, reinforce self-esteem, and foster the thinking skills and creativity so valued in the workplace. They teach the importance of teamwork and cooperation. They demonstrate the direct connection between study, hard work, and high levels of achievement.

Our success comes from the diligent efforts from a variety of sources: supportive administration, a passionate staff, eager students and supportive parents.  Such collaborative efforts truly represent what students are to learn from the performing arts experience, building a sense of community where students take initiative, leadership and a level of success that will develop interpersonal awareness and career readiness.

We recognize the need to guide students through understanding their academic responsibilities.  Having arts courses intertwined with the required and recommended courses allows multiple opportunities for students to benefit from a balanced sequential education.  Whereas a typical student may not see the correlation between required subjects and real life, it is through the arts’ classroom that a child will understand topics like the importance of daily attendance, which is often the first step for being a successful high school student.

Arrangements for student and parent visitations can be made by appointment.  For more information, please call Cesar Chavez High School at (209) 933-7480 to schedule at your convenience.