Sibyl Barnum is executive director of Arts Impact, a group that partners with the Puget Sound Educational Service District to provide professional development for teachers in King and Pierce counties.
Louis Allard, a second-grade teacher at Adams Elementary School in Seattle, takes part in an Arts Impact workshop at Seattle Art Museum, using his voice and body to convey a text's interpretation of characters.
Any Washington parent with school-age children knows that school is serious business for kids these days. The pressure is on for students to excel. Standardized tests, notably the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), are given as early as third grade, and kids are expected to hit the ground running in first grade, knowing how to read and to keep pace with a continual accumulation of knowledge and skills in math, reading, writing, science, social studies, communication, health, fitness and the arts.
School districts and teachers feel this pressure too, with a robust list of state mandated learning requirements for every grade level. Developed by the state’s Commission on Student Learning to improve the state’s education standard and to define expectations for student achievement, WASL testing, learning requirements and specific grade-level expectations are all invaluable tools in gauging how Washington schools are measuring up when it comes to teaching required curricula.
However, in striving for standardized education, it’s easy for parents, teachers and administrators to forget that children are also artistic beings, and that allowing children to explore their own creativity can enhance the whole child. It is through creativity, in all its various forms, that children learn best.
Though basic concepts of visual arts, music, dance and theater are included in learning requirements for Washington school children, teachers generally don’t get much training on how to integrate creativity and the arts into their curricula, so many rely instead on weekly arts and music specialists. A 2005 Arts Education Resources Initiative study conducted by the Washington State Arts Commission showed that although arts education is mandated by law, there are very few arts specialists in the public schools, especially at the elementary level.
The challenge, therefore, is for teachers to somehow balance an already demanding academic curriculum with a student’s innate need for creativity. While most educators agree that an arts education is essential to a child’s overall growth, in realty, arts education often ends up losing out in the fight for funds and time.
As a result, many districts and schools, principals and teachers, are turning to community organizations and partnerships to keep the arts – and more importantly – Washington school children’s creativity, alive and flourishing.
Arts Impact
Arts Impact is one such organization. Founded in 1999 as part of the Cultural Council of Greater Tacoma, it partnered with the Puget Sound Educational Service District in 2001 with the goal of providing professional development for teachers in Pierce and King Counties, specifically in the area of integrated arts training.
“If indeed our children are going to get an art’s education as part of their whole education, it really is going to fall to elementary school teachers to provide it,” says Sibyl Barnum, director of Arts Impact. “But teachers can’t teach what they don’t know.”
Arts Impact’s mission is to build competent and confident classroom teachers able to weave the arts into everyday classroom activities through a two-year integrated arts training program. “We try to encourage teachers to find an artistic medium with concepts that also exist in a core academic subject,” Barnum says. “If they can find a match that exists in both disciplines – such as symmetry, which exists in both visual arts and math – they can incorporate the concepts of art into the normal curriculum.”
Combining art with a core subject can allow children who are struggling to learn (using traditional methods) to shine and demonstrate their knowledge through alternative expression, and thus gain confidence. This integrated approach also eases the pressure on teachers to find “extra” time to teach the arts, as it becomes part of their daily teaching styles.
“Arts Impact is such a great opportunity for all of us,” says Anne McAntosh, a fourth-grade teacher at Centennial Elementary in Graham, Wash. “One of my students e-mailed me this morning to tell me how much she is enjoying math – for the first time – and loves learning about lines and line segments and rays.”
ArtsED Washington
Arts Impact has a waiting list of more than 300 Seattle-area teachers eager to get arts training. As a nonprofit organization, budget constraints limit the number of teachers it can train; therefore, Arts Impact tries to maximize its efforts by working with schools in which all classrooms are engaged or at least a team of teachers is interested. The idea is that the more people who are involved, the greater the chance they’ll achieve their goal of infusing the arts into their school’s culture.
Another local nonprofit working hard to keep the arts an integral part of children’s school experience is ArtsEd Washington – The Washington Alliance for Arts Education. Founded in 1982 and entirely volunteer-based until about five years ago, ArtsEd Washington focuses its efforts on many fronts – leadership, networking and communication, partnership, advocacy and professional development.
A leader in advocating for statewide legislation and policies supporting integrated arts education, ArtsEd Washington was instrumental in the the recent passage of CORE 24, an initiative requiring five additional academic credits for graduating seniors – raising the number of arts credits from one to two for the class of 2013 and beyond.
By collecting arts education information and monitoring developments across the state and nationwide, ArtsEd Washington provides an informational network of essential resources for schools, individuals and organizations. On its Web site, it keeps an updated, though not comprehensive, list of both local and national funding opportunities for schools and programs related to arts.
“We’re draining our children’s souls when we leave out an arts education,” says Una McAlinden, Executive Director for ArtsEd Washington. “The arts have been deemed an ‘enrichment’ activity – we’re trying to show that art is not only necessary but is essential for our kids overall education.”
ArtsEd Washington thus works closely with other major agencies in the state, such as the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Washington State Arts Alliance, Washington State Arts Commission, 4Culture, Washington State PTA and the state’s teachers union to promote and improve education through the arts. ArtsEd also encourages community members to be a voice for systemic change.
In 2004, ArtsEd Washington began a free three-year training program for principals who wanted to learn how to sharpen their schools’ focus on the arts. “Principals are the key to systemic change in their schools,” says McAlinden.
Working with elementary school principals, and sometimes an entire school team, ArtsEd Washington helps customize a three- to five-year arts plan reflecting a school’s cultural and community characteristics. Each plan focuses on providing high-quality instruction in all four art disciplines, and in providing ongoing support for each principal and school to really bring about lasting change that can weather personnel changes.
Local Community Groups
There are also local groups working to form arts education partnerships with schools, like the Bainbridge Island Arts Education Community Consortium. Created in 1998, it’s one of 22 community arts education consortia around the state. Modeled after the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) and administered by the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council, the Bainbridge Island consortium has a roughly $85,000 budget made up of various grants, school district funds, community matching funds and private donations.
The Bainbridge Island consortium encourages elementary school teachers to participate as members, free of charge. Membership gives them access to an “arts menu” of teaching arts professionals and $400 per year to use toward bringing those artists to their classrooms. For instance, Ian Eisenhood, a second-grade teacher at Captain Wilkes Elementary on Bainbridge Island, brought in Vicky J. Edmonds, a West Seattle poet and teacher, who helped Eisenhood’s students compose their own poetry during four visits over the course of a month. Not only did this boost Eisenhood’s students’ writing and vocabulary skills, it also gave his kids a chance to develop their own voice while exploring metaphor, emotion and word structure.
“There was a real energy boost after Vicky’s visit,” says Eisenhood. “She seemed to infuse the kids with a love of words, helping them become more conscious of finding the right word to convey their ideas.”
The Arts Education Consortium also provides support for Bainbridge Island middle and high schools. Each year the group supports a visiting science program, Human History According to Salmon, at Sakai Middle School for fifth-graders. Students learn about salmon lifecycle and habitat by visiting Mercer Island storyteller and theater artist Peter Donaldson. While teaching them salmon science and history, Donaldson, a former teacher and curriculum designer, has students act out stories, through dance and movement, about people whose lives were based on salmon. “Students feel they, too, are part of this big circle of life, gaining a holistic approach to understanding both the science and their place in it,” says Bonnie Showers, program manager for the Bainbridge Island consortium.
The Bainbridge Island School District ranks toward the bottom of the state’s 296 districts for per pupil funding and thus is stretched thin with budget constraints for many programs. Nevertheless, Showers credits the community and school district for their continued commitment to the arts. “There is an appreciation of the arts as something that enriches life. We’ve gotten a huge vote of confidence as people see the effect arts integration has on a child’s growth, confidence, and understanding.” The consortium recently extended its principal training program to schools in both Suquamish and Kingston School Districts, also in Kitsap County.
Local school foundations, which exist in most school districts, also play a vital role in supporting the arts in education. In most cases, they offset budget cuts and provide a means to pay for “enrichment” programs. School foundations often have more flexibility in awarding money than parent-teacher organizations or other funding sources. They are an invaluable resource for teachers in getting support for creative projects, enrichment learning activities, and teacher training programs, especially in smaller, cash-strapped districts that lack administrative strength to help teachers win larger grants to pay for training.
While there is no question that people at every level of Washington’s educational system feel the pressure to meet standardized goals, a number of individuals, educators and community organizations are working hard to ensure that kids enjoy a well-rounded and rich learning experience – one that’s alive and thriving with creativity.
In the words of David Bentley, fine arts coordinator for the Mercer Island School District: “We want a teaching environment that doesn’t just provide a good education, but one that exceeds the ordinary and inspires students with the extraordinary.”
Dana Thompson is a Bainbridge Island writer and mother of two.
