Empowering students with language-based learning differences
Northern Virginia | The Arts
Northern Virginia
Siena Honors Creativity
The Arts are infused into every aspect of life at Siena and are integrated into academic classes daily—from English to math to science—as Siena engages its students' visual and creative strengths throughout the school day.
Exploring Your Strengths
Siena’s arts focus encourage students to explore their individual interests and strengths. Whether music, photography, fine art, or drama, every art class involves four critical elements: artistic technique, history, critique, and student independence. Students explore a wide variety of mediums while providing them strong background in basic techniques and theory. Students work with our accomplished instructors to discover where their interests lie and build upon their experiences and work each year, producing exceptional fine art, music, and photography.
In addition to classroom instruction, students typically take a range of arts-based field trips to several of the outstanding cultural institutions in the area. Past trips have included such events as: performances at the Kennedy Center and other DC-area theaters, a visit to the National Gallery of Art, interactive and participatory theater workshops at The Folger Theater, symphonic performances, and many others.
The play showed the amazing community that you have created among the students. They all rotated to cover for their friends and stepped up to help a friend when a line was forgotten or a cue missed. This teamwork and the overall excitement and joy that shone through the kids was one of the best parts of Newsies. Thank you for this experience. —Siena Elementary Parent on Newsies, Jr. (Spring 2022)
Elementary Haiku Projects
For National Poetry Month 2024, an elementary class from Siena Northern Virginia wrote haiku poems based on elements of nature and then painted watercolor illustrations to go with their poems.
Virtual Arts Exhibition, 2024
On April 25, 2024, Siena hosted its fourth annual Virtual Arts Exhibition to help celebrate its diverse community of artists. The full show featured over 90 pieces from Siena students, faculty & staff, parents, grandparents, and others across our Silver Spring and Northern Virginia campuses. Here are some of the students' pieces: