The beginning and end of a class at the School for Young Artists is structured as a learning experience. Children have to learn how to take leave of what they are doing. Too often in their lives they are expected to simply stop what they are doing and comply with the demands of schedule. At our school, transitions are about letting go in a constructive manner and engaging in the next thing in as positive a way as possible. We help the students learn to make transitions.

Students find out that when their ride arrives, it is time to begin the change. We block the student’s starting something else. Each student is taught to be responsible for saving the work they value, or consciously abandoning what they don’t want to save. We urge the student to protect what they care about by putting it in his or her personal cubby. Transition time becomes a life lesson.