Feature Stories
Arts Integration-Key for Survival and Growth
By Vicki Bean, M.A.
Caruthersville High School
President-Elect, Missouri Art Education Association
When many art teachers enter the public school "jungle," they are often under the impression that they are teaching "art for art's sake;" and if they can work art into the other classrooms, so much the better! However, it doesn't take long before budget cuts and state testing make them realize that art specialists teaching art classes could easily become an endangered species.
Although the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) supports the arts as core curriculum, fine arts classes themselves are in actuality often "left behind." Fine arts are often not considered "core curriculum" by state or local administrators. This occurs for various reasons, but especially when the arts have no regular state assessment for school administrators to worry about. Art specialists in elementary schools, arts classes in middle schools, and entire programs in rural areas have been cut or eliminated. Furthermore, professional development opportunities and monies are no longer available to arts teachers.
Due to these concerns, arts education integration has become a hot topic all over the country. For most public (and some private) K-12 arts teachers, integrating the arts into as much of the curriculum as possible is paramount for a program's survival. In these times of state assessments, vouchers, and a focus on teacher accountability, the arts must be deeply embedded within the core of interdisciplinary learning-embedded in such a way that makes the arts indispensable as a core curriculum subject.
An article posted on the Web site of the Vermont Arts Council states: "With integrated arts education, arts play a major role in helping students address broad curriculum themes and achieve robust habits of mind including such characteristics as imagination, discipline, collaboration, inquiry, divergent problem solving, empathy, and making connections. The focus is on enriching students' abilities to attain, analyze, discern, and invent knowledge. Integrated arts education acknowledges and fosters Multiple Intelligences."
The big question now is how to accomplish this integration. Timing is important and, obviously, there has to be collaboration between teachers. (This collaboration can be taken out of the school to community organizations and businesses, as well.) Easy ideas for collaborations that generate higher order thinking and help students remember and connect important information and/or events include the following:
- English/Language Arts: Writing about images or illustrating various types of writing examples (poetry, reports, essays, etc.)
- Math: Tessellations, grid drawings, Leonardo da Vinci and linear perspective
- Science: John James Audubon and biology, scientific illustration, symmetry, da Vinci's interests and inventions (anatomy, flight, building methods, etc.)
- History: Discussions of Winslow Homer and the Civil War, Diego Rivera and the Mexican Revolution, or Marc Chagall and early-twentieth-century world events
It is a good idea when beginning an integrated plan to look at your School Improvement Plan, and then develop a lesson and/or a unit that notes local, state, and national standards. The collaboration should promote students' abilities to examine a central theme, issue, problem, topic, or experience. Teachers should emphasize student skills, such as problem solving, analyzing knowledge, using imaginations, and connecting new ideas and subjects. Maintain your assessment criteria (elements and principles of art, aesthetics, and art criticism) and consider adding elements that address point of view, intent, and reflection. This will help create the type of "rigor" administrators are looking for in the classroom.
Yes, this type of lesson planning means more work at the beginning, but it could mean security and growth for your program. Once you have worked out and presented the collaboration, you should look for additional administrative support and involvement. The options for common planning times, more resources, and increased professional development opportunities may become more available to you.
Research in Support of Arts Learning
The Arts Education Partnership report Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning (Fiske, 1999), highlights some of the nonacademic benefits of the arts that carefully controlled studies demonstrate:
- The arts reach students not ordinarily reached, with methods not normally used, which keeps tardy, truancy, and dropout rates down.
- Students connect to one another better and experience greater camaraderie, fewer fights, and less prejudice when the arts are central to their learning.
- Arts education requires an environment of discovery that can rekindle the love of learning in students who are tired of being filled up with facts.
- The arts provide challenges for students at all levels, from delayed to gifted. In the arts, all students can find their own level of performance.