19
June
June
It Takes a Village
No comments Posted in: UncategorizedTagged with arts, content areas, curriculum, integration, learning, teaching
I have a favorite song that I like to teach the little ones in my music class called “It Takes A Whole Village” and the words continue to say, “to raise a good child”. Of course we have heard this phrase many times and I don’t doubt that people believe it but I had an experience last week that brought to the forefront of my thinking taking this further than just the surface meaning of the phrase and applying it specifically to education.
Last week I had the honor of being invited to a retreat to discuss the future of CIAE (Center for Arts Integration) sponsored in part by UNC and the Colorado Council on Creative Industries and the Colorado Department of Education. The purpose of the retreat was a discussion around how the CIAE can have the most impact on arts education and integration and support schools in doing this. It was one of the most stimulating conversations ever.
The topic of the role the arts play in education has been debated continuously in many districts, usually around the sub-topic of budget. The hidden agenda with those discussions is really about the worth and purpose arts play in educating students and the value of the content of the arts. What usually takes place is a stand-off between arts educators who purport teaching arts for arts’ sake and the general education educators who don’t see the value of that (or at least give it a much lower priority than other content areas). Even the educators who love and value the arts sometimes minimize the value of the arts to merely being a vehicle to learn something else. Many well meaning colleagues have tried to support arts education on the shallow basis of the research that shows kids who take music classes do better in math or score higher on ACT and SAT tests.
In our state there is a huge “buzz” about the new content standards and the attitude of being overwhelmed with all that teachers are required to cover coupled with the pressure to “close the achievement gap” – a phrase that makes my skin crawl because of the interpretation of high stakes testing as a valid and accurate measure of achievement, but that is another blog. Anyway, it became apparent the the key to teaching and learning really is about the integration. Hello?? Is that a news flash? It shouldn’t be but even to me it was because I was looking at it in greater depth.
Our school has been working toward arts integration as a focus for 3 years and we are still pretty stuck in what activity could use music to help kids understand a math concept or what painting could be used to help kids write a story. This is pretty surface, shallow stuff. It IS integration but really at it’s lowest form. The power of arts integration into the general education contents comes from knowing the standards of both content areas. Only then will any singular lesson or activity really benefit the learning in both contents. Teaching content/subjects in isolation is not going to move students forward. Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing more of the same thing and expecting different results is something that we should pay attention to. Things like 90 minute literacy blocks at the same time every day are things that earn a second look. The power isn’t the 90 minutes vs. any other time allotment. The power might be in just not being interrupted or having students pulled out for this or that. Somehow, the causing factor of success gets blurred. Another obvious flaw in thinking might be segregating subjects. Such and such is “math” time, and such and such is Social Studies time, etc. Why? My thoughts are, just for the organizational benefit of tracking what materials are getting covered. Can’t Social studies also spill into the literacy time? Can Math blend into the science time? All of what is at the root of these routines are pretty much based in the obsolete industrial model of education.
Curriculum maps, pacing guides, unit structures are all some other organizational tools that maybe should deserve a second look at their value. If we are really meaning to differentiate our teaching for students then why should the pace of what and when we teach be based on some calendar or schedule? Students learn at the pace that is natural to them. We should be paying more attention to that and less to whether or not we always do the fraction unit in February or the poetry unit in November.
I know some of this thinking is radical. If we were to first and foremost let go of existing structures that may have possibly outgrown their use, then, and only then will we be able to move forward and begin to blend learning and knowledge together so that students can become all they can be. This most certainly includes the arts but why stop there?
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