VOICES FROM THE PUBLIC SQUARE - While I don’t believe that the arts are dead in California’s public schools, they are certainly suffering.
Cuts in arts programs in order to focus dwindling financial support for “core” subjects has eliminated positions for visual arts, music, dance, and drama instructors across the state.
One hope on the horizon comes by way of a couple of reform initiatives that are building in our state: integrative approaches to education and the common core. Integrative learning is a natural for the arts; learning through meaningful project-based lessons allows students to bring together the content from multiple academic areas and create art using that knowledge.
Examining a great work of literature through the creation of a collage, writing songs about geometry, understanding the civil rights movement through drama or dance—these activities allow students to have a personally meaningful and expressive outlet while building on standards-based instruction.
The new Common Core standards work well with the arts; asking our students to examine complex text, for example, is something we currently do in our arts classrooms while revisiting great works of art. Teaching our students to use new media and technology in their arts classrooms provides them will the skills needed for 21st-century careers.
To keep the arts vital in our schools and to earn an equal place at the table along with the core academic areas, it is up to newly minted arts teachers, along with those already in the field, to reach out and find willing teaching partners in their schools. Arts instructors must be fluid in adapting themselves to the extra planning and accommodations that will be needed in order to plan and implement meaningful learning experiences for their students, but the outcome will benefit us all.
(Dr. Laurie Gatlin is an assistant professor in the School of Art at California State University, where she oversees the Single Subject Credential program in Art Education. You can follow her on twitter at @lauriegatlin. This piece was posted first at ZocaloPublicSquare.org … connecting people and ideas.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 45
Pub: June 4, 2013