But what teachers need are committed professional artists who can partner with them to bring the best of the expressive arts into the classroom to get the best out of the students. The practice of making art is a manifestation of the multiple identities of young people, the power of expression that burns within them. It addresses that cloying feeling of being denied. The making of art satisfies their human needs as it guides them to fully understand and practice self-reflexivity and freedom, the expression of their multiple dimensions of identity. To transcend oneself and one's group is to reach out for the fabric that joins people together, to pursue the human chorus whose song will never be captured or contained.
Art is the human attempt to unify our lived and our unlived identities.
Too often, those of us charged to offer these youth guidance and purpose, look at these students and see only their strange clothes, their unsavory attitudes, their unusual use of language and dismiss them. This means challenging and changing the culture of the educating institution. This can be a formidable task. Today it is generally accepted and understood that during the classroom experience the most meaningful culture your students ever experience is the one that you create. We must look beyond the surface culture that our students exhibit upon entering our classroom.