You gotta have art!
Dance, music, theater and the visual arts enrich students' lives--
and may boost academic performance

By Roger Glass and Priscilla Nemeth
 

Who hasn't thoroughly enjoyed a remarkable dance performance or been inspired by seeing the works of a great painter or sculptor? And whether just to relax or to renew our spirits, many of us listen to a favorite piece of music or go to the theater. The arts play an integral role in our lives--so much so that we often take them for granted.

But what role do (or should) the arts play in educating elementary and secondary school students? Some educators will tell you the arts are crucial to developing well-rounded students. Others praise the arts because they strengthen critical thinking and other skills needed to excel in the classroom and in life.

"While we must be careful not to overstate the link between the arts and improved academic skills, the evidence is mounting that high-quality arts education programs can have a positive effect on student learning, motivation, interest and attendance," AFT president Sandra Feldman says.

A report released last year by the Arts Education Partnership, Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development, includes findings that indicate for certain populations--students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, students needing remedial instruction and young children--"the effects of learning in the arts may be especially robust and able to boost learning and achievement."

Maureen Kenney, director of arts education for Manhattan public high schools, notes that New York City has a "Regents Through the Arts" program, which trains teachers to use the arts to help students acquire the academic skills they need to pass the state's Regents exams, which test students in the core academic subjects. "There's a very close connection between the skills and discipline learned through the arts and what these kids are being asked to learn" in these core subjects, Kenney contends.

Kenney says she has studies demonstrating that arts education has had a positive impact on student achievement. "The presence of the arts in our schools, especially when integrated into the curriculum and presented as an authentic expression of culture, teaches students lessons that they tend to never forget."

While arts education has its advocates--armed with data showing its benefits to students--the funding for school-based arts programs remains on perpetually shaky ground. That ground is likely to get even shakier as states and school districts grapple with significant budget shortfalls.

"Budget cuts and competing priorities mean that these [arts education] programs are frequent targets for the chopping block," Feldman observes. "But arts are not extras, frills or add-ons."

MAKING KIDS 'ART SMART'

Making the arts an integral part of today's regular classroom curriculum is a rather abstract concept until you see what it means at work. At the Coventry Elementary School in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, five classroom teachers (grades 1 through 5) and four specialists (art, media, physical education and music), who call themselves the smART Team, are helping kids find the real lessons to be learned in the arts.

"We have been teaching reading and writing through the arts with a proficiency focus," says Cleveland Heights Teachers Union member Vincetta Dooner, a second-grade teacher who is on the smART Team. Rather than static skills drills or workbook projects, students in grades 1-5 visit Cleveland's Playhouse Square Center, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Orchestra to see the arts firsthand. These cultural occasions become the "prompts" for teaching reading and writing using a collaborative approach.

"If we're listening to Mozart, the music teacher is playing it, and I'm playing it," says Dooner. Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute" might become the vehicle for "retelling" and "summary" skills, as students are asked to recount the opera's story. "It's a lot more meaningful than a page from a workbook," Dooner points out.

Through the innovative use of poetry, music, sculpture, dance and theater to teach reading and writing, the smART Team drew the attention of USA Today's All-USA Teachers Team program for 2002. The team's approach to teaching the arts also captured the attention of Coventry Elementary School parent and photographer Janet Century, who has spent two years creating a photographic and videographic documentary of the program.

"After studying Picasso or seeing his work at the art museum and learning about Impressionists, [the students] come back and write about something they've experienced in the community," says Century. "It's a lot more relevant and interesting than something you haven't experienced." She says her second-grade son is far more responsive if he's "on the move and interacting with the environment."

The smART Team approach was implemented in 2000 for grades 1 and 2. That experimental program has since been expanded to include grades 3-5. The results? Attendance is up and discipline referrals are down for students on the team, says Dooner. Reading and writing have also improved through the use of this integrated arts approach. SmART Team students scored significantly higher on the October 2001 Reading Proficiency test than their school and district peers.

INCORPORATING ART INTO THE CURRICULUM

Just down the road, a group of Cleveland teachers has taken a slightly different approach to engage students in learning through arts education. Through training in discipline-based arts education, conducted by Cleveland State University, the staff at Newton Baker School of Arts learned how to take a comprehensive approach to art education and apply it to all subject areas.

Cleveland Teachers Union (CTU) member Sherri Pittard, a teacher and visual artist, helped write a challenge grant for Newton Baker School, a K-5 school, to get money from the Annenberg Foundation's Transforming Education Through the Arts Challenge (TETAC) to continue the school's work of transforming ordinary classroom subjects and curricula into discipline-based arts education. The arts help students, says Pittard. "I see it especially with students who struggle. If they can see [a subject] in a different way, they can retain and learn."

TETAC has served 25,175 students in eight states:  California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. Teachers in the 35 participating schools received professional development services, technical support and the expertise of arts mentors to help them develop curricula using a multidisciplinary approach called Comprehensive Arts Education.

Art production, art criticism, art history and aesthetics are the disciplines that became the foundations for teaching and learning at Newton Baker. Teaching children how to look at a work of art can be a springboard for writing a paper, says CTU member Gloria Doering, a Newton Baker fifth-grade teacher. Looking at a work of art also includes learning about the life of the artist, the artist's style and other factors that influenced the artist's work. Kids begin to realize that the artists were inspired by "everything that happened in their lives."

"As much as possible, arts are incorporated into the curriculum," says visual arts teacher Pittard, who helps her colleagues link art objectives with the objectives of other courses. "For language arts, [students] might not use their theme books--they might use the biography of an artist. If they're talking about the city, they might pull a print of the city instead of just looking at a map."

So far, the results are good, says Pittard. "We're seeing higher test scores. We've noticed our students have higher-level thinking skills; they are prepared for more than the test, they're able to think on their own."

'IT WAS CAPTIVATING'

If you want to strike up a conversation with Miguel Rojas, just ask him about the Salvador Dali art exhibit he attended last spring. The exhibit demonstrated "how art can be used to express your emotions, your beliefs, even your worries," says Rojas, adding that the experience reinforced his desire to become a visual artist.

"I've always been into art because I like drawing," says Rojas, a junior at Manhattan's Martin Luther King Jr. High School. "But I didn't really have any idea about art or being an artist until I saw that exhibit."

For June Carrington, a senior at King High School, a trip to the opera when she was in the 10th grade was an eye opener. "When you're a teenager and hear Ôopera' you think, 'Oh, my God, I'm gonna fall asleep,'" she says. "I envisioned it to be dreary and boring. Instead it was captivating."

Both Rojas and Carrington, who wants to be a dancer, are members of their school's Arts Access Partnership Project, an arts awareness program that includes interdisciplinary residency courses led by artists from such prestigious cultural institutions as the New York City Opera, the Guggenheim Museum and Destine Dance Company. The high school's Arts Access Internship Class and Club offers students internship opportunities at cultural organizations and brings actors, musicians, record company executives and others to the school to talk about careers in the arts.

History teacher and United Federation of Teachers (UFT) member Neil Goldberg is the director of King High School's Arts Access project and the club's adviser. "I've seen arts education turn on and energize students who otherwise might be disenchanted with school," he says.

Arts Access receives funding from the Center for Arts Education, a broad partnership dedicated to sustaining arts education in the city's public schools. The UFT was instrumental in the creation of the center.

"The UFT has been a strong advocate for the arts in our schools based on the needs and concerns of our students, parents and members," says UFT vice president David Sherman, a member of the center's board of directors. "Children are shortchanged of a well-rounded education without exposure to, and learning about, all forms of the arts. And teachers are keenly aware of the positive impact of the arts on student learning and development."

King's Arts Access project also has a "Parents as Arts Partners" component. This spring, 10 parents will join their kids as participants in a Saturday program at the Guggenheim. "Having parents as partners in these projects gets them excited about the arts and is a great way to get them directly involved in their child's education," says Goldberg.

Rojas and several other members of the Arts Access Club recently had some of their own photographs exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum. "My mother wants me to become a lawyer," says Rojas. "She doesn't see me being able to make any money as an artist."

Seeing her son's work exhibited at the Guggenheim turned things around. It "opened my mother's mind to what I might be able to become and the opportunities that exist here in New York City for artists. Now I don't think she would mind me becoming an artist," Rojas says.

NOT JUST ART FOR ART'S SAKE

Buck Lake Elementary School in Tallahassee, Fla., brought arts education into every one of its classrooms thanks to money it was awarded as an Annenberg challenge grant recipient two years ago. The five-year program, which didn't end with the funding in 2001, has been "very, very successful on a lot of levels," says teacher Cynthia Braswell, a member of the Leon Classroom Teachers Association.

Even the very youngest students were quick to learn the vocabulary of art appreciation, Braswell says. "I would put a print out and children would begin analyzing it before I got there. They'd identify foreground, background, line and color, what the artist was trying to say--and I missed all the fun," she says. "So I began turning the prints [face down] until I got there."

Although Braswell was afraid the interest in art might flag once the grant ended, her fears were unfounded. Last year, Buck Lake faculty paired with the Museum of Fine Arts at Florida State University to curate art shows featuring seven local artists who depict the North Florida environment in their art.

"We designed a curriculum to use the art to teach science concepts in our classroom," says Braswell, adding that nationally certified teachers on the faculty conducted seminars and classroom demonstrations about the artists for their peers. And five of the local artists went to the school and worked with the children. One helped fourth- and fifth-graders paint a mural in the school library depicting the various types of natural environments found in Florida.

Students aren't the only ones to benefit, Braswell says. "Our faculty has become much more art conscious." The arts project has inspired teachers and "given us a new zip to our teaching." Integrating the arts into lesson plans, she concludes, has turned out to be a "natural, easy way" to enhance the curriculum.

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