The Arts
At Monte del Sol we believe the arts are critical to the intellectual, academic, emotional and aesthetic development of young people. We believe the arts 
provide a vehicle for learning across the disciplines as well as providing discipline themselves. At a time in our country when the arts are being cut for budgetary reasons, Monte del Sol has provided a rich selection of arts.
Students in grades seven and eight have a choice of Visual Arts, Choir, Theater, Photography, Moving Images, Radio Arts and Traditional New Mexico Arts, one art for each of four semesters spanning those two years. Choir is a full year selection. Once students reach high school, they choose an art for an entire year. There is a three year graduation requirement in the arts.
Students have received numerous awards including All State selection of three choir members, the selection as a Northern New Mexico Honor Choir as well as chosen to sing the National Anthem at a UNM basketball game in Albuquerque; through Moving Images student films won first place in the statewide" Desert Light" film competition and first place in both the National Geographic All Roads Festival and Espanola Showing Excellence. In addition films have been shown at Telluride and the Santa Fe International Film Festival. Visual Arts work has been shown in the Center for Contemporary Arts and the Georgia O'Keeffe Education Annex; Students' Photographic work shows in a number of galleries around town including at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Under the tutelage of Santero, Frank Lucero, Traditional New Mexico Arts students have won awards at Spanish Market as well as showing at the Center for Museum Resources.
Distinguished visiting artists in every artistic discipline have collaborated with Monte del Sol or come into classes as guest teachers, including poets Martin Espada, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Vince Kadlubek, John Brandi, Joan Logghe, Miriam Sagan, Ann Valley Fox and Keith Gilyard. Visiting authors include Greg Mortenson and Pat Mora, plus several of our History students were selected to read portions of A People's History of the United States at the Lensic theater in a special evening with Howard Zinn. Visiting performance artists include the Pilobolus Dance Theater, Lumbre de Sol, The Santa Fe Jazz Festival musicians and a number of members of the Santa Fe Opera. Documentary filmmakers, Cynthia Lukas and Kell Kearns spent three sessions in our Creative Writing classes filming students as they composed and read their poems on peace as part of a contribution to a film produced by Lukas and Kearns to bridge peace between young people in the USA and in Iran.
Additionally, students in high school have an opportunity to delve deeply into the arts through a chosen mentorship with a Santa Fe based visual or performing artist and hundreds of mentors from the wider community have volunteered with our students since the founding of the school in 2000.