Adam: Great, thank you. So you take your jete role, you need to run that way.

Cristina: The power of arts education is that the students learn that it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay, to fumble. It’s okay to make bad work. In fact, you need to make bad work in order to get to the good work.

Cindy: We’re a state-wide charter, created so that students from across New Mexico could access arts programming, and academically prepare for college. They attend a dual curriculum program. They’re in the academic block in the morning, and then arts block in the afternoon.

Serena: [singing]

Serena: At two o’clock every single day, we work on our art, we hone it, we practice. And those periods are really us learning how to perform in front of others with a smaller group first. And when you get up and you don’t know your music, it’s not great, it’s not fun. You have to put the work in. It’s required. There’s no way to get around it.

Geron: The strengths and skills that these artists come to us with are hard work, and just a willingness to keep trying. They have perseverance. They take constructive criticism well, and they build on it.

Serena: There’s so much going around him, and despite all of it, he’s still happy, and he’s still playing.

Student: So I’m gonna disagree that he’s happy. I don’t think he really is wrapped up in his own fantasy either.

Serena: Being able to accept critique and not feel hurt by it is an important skill for us to learn, and we’re taking those critiques and learning how to put them to use.

Santana: So many times when you have people critiquing you, they will tell you, “Take it back to the beginning and start again, because you’ll discover things that you didn’t find before.”

Teacher: Good, all right. So when you get here, make sure you get a really clean pedal on the B-flat, but that was great. That’s the kind of energy you want.

Santana: I take their feedback, and I use it to construct something greater, rather than taking it hurtfully.

Brass: I kind of take it upon myself to come and listen to Santana play sometimes and give her a little bit of sage advice from the senior. The feedback is a second set of ears.

Brass: There are almost two conversations, two lines, two waves, and the real illustration.

Neil: When people say practice makes perfect, and practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. So if you practice the mistake over and over and over, you have just gotten really good at a mistake. So I think it’s important to recognize and then explain it to the students. As long as they’re learning from those mistakes they’re moving forward.

Class: [applause]

Joey: You will be seeing the fundamental students doing “Working in Silence.” So you’ll see the piece, the faculty will give a little bit of feedback, and then they will do it again.

Joey: I believe that you don’t end on a mistake. In the education process, you know, oftentimes it’s, “Okay, you did that wrong; tomorrow we’re going to move on to something else.” So even in my rehearsal process, it’s like, “Let’s correct that. Let’s end with a victory, or you getting something out of it.”

Kara: We’ve been getting to do them a couple of different times, which really helps, because then we get to take the feedback, and we get to apply it, and that is the whole learning process, is that if you fail, then you know, you can do it again, and you can just make big leaps and bounds and learn from that.

Camille: When we were working with this scene before in the classroom, we got a lot of negative feedback, and it was totally trashed. And our teacher said, “Well, it’s workable.”

Avonlea: Workable! [laughs]

Camille: And we’re like, “What does that mean?” So we decided together that we would change it, and decided to make something new and better.

Teacher: You haven’t pulled it off yet. Right now we’re scratching our heads and wondering why these two mutes [laughter] have bumped into each other. And yeah? So–

Joey: It’s hard to hear criticism, because who in the heck wants to fail? Who in the heck wants to do it wrong? So they have to think back, reassess, do it right. And then they own it.

Joey: Because you’re going to do it again, do you have a sense of what we’re asking?

Avonlea: Yeah.

Joey: Okay, go ahead!

Camille: This is the place to fail. If you’re gonna fail anywhere, it’s here and now.

Girls: Oh!

Camille: And because of your failure, you can go somewhere better.

Cristina: Great art comes from risk-taking, from being willing to fail. That’s something that is so unique to learning in the arts.

Adam: Failure is inevitable. Critical feedback is essential to growing oneself as a person in the world.

Adam: Good! So an attitude–

Cristina: It’s just so great to watch a student go through that process of struggle. Have a teacher believe in them. And then at the end, they really have a result that they can be proud of.

Class: [applause and cheers]