New Program will Help Teachers Increase Role of Arts in Classroom
Lesley University News, 9/14/04
By Louisa Handle
Reprinted with permission from Lesley University’s Lesley Today.
(Sept. 19, 2004) – Cambridge, MA – A new initiative will help teachers at two Boston elementary schools reach students through the arts. The National Arts and Learning Collaborative (NALC) has received a two-year, $60,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to help train elementary school teachers to integrate the arts into the curriculum. The project is a partnership between NALC, Lesley University and the Boston Public Schools.
Faculty members from Lesley's Creative Arts in Learning division will provide professional development training to teachers at Boston's John Marshall and Charles Sumner Elementary Schools, which will help the teachers develop a curriculum with an arts integration focus.
Lesley Provost Martha McKenna, who serves as vice president of NALC, said that the group had been working on ways to expand work that NALC had been doing in an after-school program.
The goal is for students - especially those in schools without art programs -- to have access to the arts during their classes.
"NEA is recognizing that it is important for teachers to be trained in these skills by the university," McKenna said. "The teachers engage in a variety of projects in various modalities and they can bring what they've learned to other teachers. Our goal is to create a ripple effect."
As a pilot to the NEA grant, Lesley began conducting teacher training at the Marshall School in Dorchester in May 2003. Lesley Prof. Robert Shreefter worked with teachers on "Enhancing Literacy Skills through Bookmaking and Visual Art." Other offerings have included "The Arts and Special Needs Students" and "The Arts and English Language Learners."
Shreefter said that bookmaking projects are one way for students to integrate writing and a variety of other skills in a way that is practical and hands-on. "It allows kids to be involved in literacy in a novel way," Shreefter explained. Another project for second graders involved researching the Wampanoag Tribe, once indigenous to Dorchester. Before the students began their research, they started with their own lives, researching and photographing their own neighborhoods, and creating maps and collages.
"That way they would have a sense of the kinds of questions that they would want to know about the Wampanoags," Shreefter said. "Once they dealt with their own lives, it became easier. It was a way to use not only the arts but to start with the students' own experiences and to help them make connections."
All students, but especially English language learners, can benefit from a multidisciplinary, multiple intelligences approach to education, says Gene Diaz, a professor in the Creative Arts in Learning division. Diaz describes the project as a move towards democratizing the classroom so that all students have an equal opportunity to learn. "Students learn differently and they need to be able to express themselves and to communicate differently. This is about using movement, color, shape, sound and rhythm to help them communicate," Diaz said.
Lisa Donovan, a professor in the Creative Arts in Learning division, has been working to coordinate the program. NALC Director Meredith Eppel will serve as project director. The initiative builds on work that NALC has done to develop the Marshall and Sumner Arts and Learning Collaboratives in the Boston Public Schools. Programming includes an arts mentor partnership program between Boston elementary students and artistically talented teens from area independent schools, and professional development to integrate the arts into the curriculum in ways that comply with school-based initiatives, whole school improvement plans, and district and national learning standards.
Marshall School Principal Teresa Harvey Jackson said the programs have already had a positive effect. "We have lots of troubled students and their behavior has changed since the partnership began, which spills over to their class work and homework," she explained.
Boston Supt. Thomas Payzant praised NALC for "involving whole families in programming, and providing essential teacher training to encourage students to excel in school."
The new grant will allow up to 25 teachers to become NALC NEA fellows and to participate in more than seven professional development opportunities, including an Arts Integration Teacher Study Group, an Arts in Education Professional Development Series, and a weeklong Lesley summer institute, "Cultures of Collaboration: Symposium on Arts and Multiculturalism."
Teachers will also create arts curriculum that connects to whole school improvement plans and to the district's arts standards. Throughout the project, Lesley's Program Evaluation Research Group will conduct an external evaluation to measure its effectiveness.
"We feel that giving teachers these skills helps them address the variety of different learning styles," McKenna said. "It liberates students to be more successful."
The work starts this fall and will continue through the 2005-2006 academic school year. At the end of the second year, NALC will compile an Arts Integration Curriculum Resource Guide with curricula from both schools that will feature "best practices" and will be available to schools in the district.
Lesley University (www.lesley.edu) is a 13,000-student, multi-site university for women and men. Anchored by a strong liberal arts curriculum, Lesley offers undergraduate and graduate programs in education, the arts, and human services at its Cambridge and Boston campuses and at more than 250 sites in 22 states. Lesley's five schools include the School of Education, the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, the Adult Baccalaureate College, The Art Institute of Boston, and Lesley College, an undergraduate women's college.
