Teaching Artists in the High School: A Creative Approach to Student Self-Esteem

This thesis addresses the effect of teaching artists\u27 (TAs) classroom instruction in the arts on student self-esteem at Downtown College Preparatory (DCP) High School, an at-risk high school in San Jose, California, over the course of two semesters. The data collected and used to analyze these effects were student observations, student art work, student journal entries, student surveys, and data provided by a third party consulting company. The purpose of this study was to determine if having teaching artists working in an at-risk high school classroom environment could positively affect their students\u27 self-esteem through their arts programming. The results showed that there were some significant effects on student self-esteem as a result of the teaching artist work at DCP