Advertisement
Arts: Wherefore Art?
The arts vacuum in public education is filled by locals who come to the rescue.
by Sara Bernard
Credit: Rob Colvin/Getty Images
This is a multipart article. Click here to go to the beginning.
Here's the good news for art educators: Though an unintended consequence of NCLB has been a slow stripping from the school day of anything that smacks of "extracurricular," the national tide is turning. Case in point: The 2007 National Teacher of the Year, Andrea Peterson, is a music teacher.
As America begins to recognize (or recognize again) that the arts are essential, not peripheral, to true education, arts programs will become part of the solution to the very underachievement that NCLB targets. This year, beleaguered champions of arts education will find their visions finally -- if gradually -- realized, as the growing conversation about art education's intrinsic value plays out in partnerships between community arts organizations and schools. Beyond simply filling in the gaps, this fruitful connection to expertise will offer students rich, meaningful experiences that will likely improve on traditional models for art class.
Take for instance, Big Thought, an umbrella organization managing multiple partnerships between schools and cultural centers in Dallas, Texas. The organization promotes initiatives such as Dallas ArtsPartners, providing access to cultural institutions for students and tools for teachers. "In Dallas, we're seeing an increase in arts and music education," says Gina Thorsen, Big Thought's vice president of research and development.
Though she concedes this trend is atypical for a large, urban school district, she and Big Thought's executive director, Giselle Antoni, travel the country coaching other communities to pool their resources and follow suit. "Arts and cultural organizations have resources that our schools don't have and that can be used to great benefit in the classroom," Thorsen says.
John Abodeely, arts-education manager at the Washington, DC, nonprofit organization Americans for the Arts, has seen a distinct rise in these types of partnerships in recent years. Rather than the old alliances between professional artists and classrooms, which took the form of an occasional artist-in-residence, he says, "the depth of service is much greater." Arts organizations are working side-by-side with teachers and principals to develop arts-integrated curricula that tap into the flexibility and innovation possible in after-school time.
ArtLinks, in Napa, California, is just such a program. Leslie Medine, executive director of its parent organization, On the Move, recounts an after-school mural project ArtLinks made possible. When students at the local Salvador Elementary School discussed the content of their mural (with the theme "School as community"), they discovered that if they were to paint a flag for every nationality represented at the school, there would be twenty-one flags. "That's not necessarily something that would have happened in social studies class," Medine says.
Granted, it's a paradoxical time for arts education, with cutbacks on the one hand and a growing amount of support on the other. But therein lies the hope -- and the challenge, explains Deborah Reeve, executive director of the National Art Education Association. Though times have been tough, she says, "there's a change in the air."
Gina Thorsen, in Dallas, concurs. "Perhaps a pendulum swung too far in one direction," she muses. "Now it's swinging back."
arts in the schools on the rebound in Marin County
Submitted by Ethan Hay (not verified) on September 11, 2007 - 18:55.
Great article.
I am an educational consultant living in Sausalito, California. As a former director of a community nonprofit art center, school counselor, corporate trainer and curriculum developer who now specializes in arts education in the schools, it is gratifying to see increasing interest in arts programming in the schools.
During several years of dramatic cutbacks in arts programming, I found parents coming forward, again and again, to fund private afterschool classes and ongoing art groups for their children. I have met with children in private homes, studios, community rec centers and churches when adequate space for the arts has not been available in the schools. Finding adequate accomodations has been challenging, but interest in the arts and performances has never been stronger.
In 2007 especially, there has been a definitive turnaround in offering arts in afterschool programs and through artist-in-the-schools residencies. For example, Marin Youth in Arts, a nonprofit arts education agency, places artists within the Marin County school system. They are now developing comprehensive arts enrichment programs within the schools and offer an expanding variety of artistic media through the services of local artists.
It will be an achievement when the arts are integrated fully within the academic curriculum at the lower grades, and not seen as a once a week "special" activity or a once-a-year project.
Special activities and single projects such as murals are an important feature in schools and should continue. They offer intrinsic benefits that extend well beyond the immediate activity. But as one who has lectured and consulted on the impact of art as necessary for building visual literacy, developing essential personal and social skills, providing outlets for growth and public service, it is important that the arts become recognized as an essential part of school curricula, and indeed, a life well lived.
-- Ethan
Ethan Hay, MA
New Xings - creative solutions
PO Box 1867
Sausalito, CA 94966
(415) 332-1430
Post new comment