Arts IntegrationIt is a teacher’s responsibility to educate the whole child, to meet their every need for academic and personal growth. Arts Integration should be woven into a teaching philosophy as a moral imperative, especially for students who are at risk. From my own experiences with the arts in school, I have always found value in creative expression. I have played alto saxophone, piano and french horn. In high school, I was President of my Thespian Troupe (theatre). I hope to incorporate drama, music and movement to be an integral part of my future classroom.
Benefits for StudentsArts integration causes students to want to learn, which is evident as the arts leverage motivation and enrich communication to further student’s effort and develop persistence. Arts-involved students score higher academically, with more arts yielding higher scores and achievement building over time (Cornett, 2015). Arts-based teaching engages a wide variety of learners, makes learning more equitable, breaks cultural barriers and offers improvements in reading, writing and math for disadvantaged students (Cornett, 2015). In my inquiry from last semester, "See, hear, do! Instruction for me and you!", I investigated how to appeal to multiple learning styles in every lesson. I was able to ensure engagement and achievement by including movement, songs and kinesthetic learning that often included creating visual art (evidence for inquiry claims). Not only have I integrated arts activities (1) (2) at the Boys and Girls Club over the summer, but I have applied arts knowledge to meet learner's needs for the past year. “Driven by the need to find, introduce, construct, or reconstruct something new, creative thinking actively seeks expansion of possibilities”; creativity is finding a meaningful way to use an ordinary item in an extraordinary way (Cornett, 2015).Creative inquiry through artistic thinking and creating meaning promotes high level thinking that allows students to achieve Common Core standards, make connections across disciplines and create meaning in the world beyond the classroom (Cornett, 2015). Making connections across disciplines leads to more holistic and deeper understanding, which I hope to guide all my future students to. The completion of Common Core standards ensures their mastery, readiness level and achievement. Providing students access to success through the arts involves creative inquiry. Creative inquiry includes the following: (Cornett, 2015, p. 58). The following key words are a part of creative inquiry, as well as the Common Core standards: challenges, questions, problem solving, collecting and connecting details and facts, inferring and pattern finding, conclusions based on evidence, critique, and publication. How to Integrate the ArtsArts-based teaching is teaching with, about and through the arts. Quality AI lessons include those in which students learn about arts concepts/skills, are involved in applying arts processes and can receive and express new content understanding through inquiry with the arts. In order to effectively integrate the arts in my classroom, I will ensure I have a steady foundation for learning by including the following pillars. Pillars of Support for Arts Integration:1. Philosophy: Beliefs that include strong values for diversity, creative inquiry, active learning (head/heart/hands-on learning), and student independence. All students have the capacity to construct personal meaning through using a variety of materials and communication tools, including language arts and arts.
2. Arts Literacy: The verbal language arts, visual arts and performing arts all aim to communicate ideas, emotions and values. Literacy is the ability to understand and express thoughts and feelings. Students should understand the purposes of the arts (why), processes of the arts (how), the people (who), products or art forms and arts elements, skills and concepts. Knowledge of arts concepts promotes student’s development of creative answers and solutions, which contributes to their problem-solving abilities. 3. Collaborative Planning: Overlapping ideas, concepts and skills (like communication and inquiry) can be done through arts integration in each academic area that promotes interdisciplinary studies. “The goal is to engage students in arts-based creative inquiry leading to student-construct meaning or evidence-based conclusions—also called deep understanding or high-level comprehension," (Cornett, 2015). 4. Aesthetic Classroom Learning Environment: AI energizes learners with an engaging physical and psychological climate that provokes curiosity, surprise and a sense of mystery in an uplifting way. 5. Literature as a Core Art 6. Best Teaching Practices: Internal motivation can be enhanced through: a focus on understanding (not grades), interest/curiosity, choice, meaning and purpose, goals, and effective collaboration through group work. Engagement is concentrated focus for the purpose of understanding. 7. Differentiation: Equal instruction is unfair, as students should be treated as the originals they are. AI differentiated instruction develops individual differences by expanding on each student’s creativity through the communicative capacities of arts. 8. Instruction Design: Routines and structure should be maintained to place arts as permanent curricular members. Effective AI lessons follow an introduction, development and conclusion organization pattern. 9. Assessment for Learning: Arts assessment seeks to increase the quality of work and is a fluid process that produces a culture of excellence. Effective assessment focuses on strengths and needs, has authenticity in that students apply knowledge, is multi-factored to give insight of growth over time and is continuous, including observation, self-reflection and peer feedback. 10. Arts Partnerships: A web of mutual support is formed based on common needs and goals. (Cornett, 2015, p. 98-143).
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Literature
Teachers need to understand the barriers to parental involvement in schools from the outside point of view. The "institutional perspective" is based on a deficit model that claims children who do not succeed in school have parents who do not get involved in school activities or support school goals at home (Finders & Lewis, 1994). Building positive home/school relations is interfered with by diverse contexts of parents lives, including school experiences that cause parents to feel mistrust or a lack of confidence in school settings. Diverse economic and time constraints that prevent involvement include work that doesn’t allow for autonomy or flexibility, financial constraints that prevent full participation in school culture (the lack of a sense of belonging creates barriers for parents). Finally, diverse linguistic and cultural practices are a barrier to involvement because of a lack of English fluency and children translating for parents at conferences is against some cultural norms (placing children at equal status as adults creates dysfunction in hierarchy). Finders and Lewis (1994) suggest the following for addressing the gap between parents who participate and those who don't:
Family involvement is likely to increase student achievement when it is connected to academic learning, which Allen (2008) suggests can be approached in three ways: 1. Building Respectful Relationships
Connection at the Club
traditional Spanish dishes. Her mother struggles with the English language, so this could be a barrier in her participation at the girl's school. Linguistic and cultural barriers often discourage involvement. The student's illustration (above, in black) was accompanied by a detailed list of her family member's ages. All the students I talk to speak highly of their families, but almost all of them wish they could spend more time together. Knowing that the students come from busy homes, it would be important for their educators to provide them with homework they could complete independently.
The Boys and Girls Club makes an active effort to involve parents and families in their club. Last night, (6/7) the student's families were invited to "Family Night." They painted a large canvas together, directed by the Club's art teacher, of a pond and lily pads. I spoke to one girl who was able to attend with her mother and brother, she enjoyed the night and was proud of her painting. It is excellent that the Club develops a relationship with their student's families and makes them feel welcome and involved. Literature
Equity, not culture, should be at the center of diversity conversations. Diversity initiatives in schools often avoid equity issues. A multicultural curriculum should include attention to racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, economic inequity and other serious institutional issues. Any meaningful approach to diversity or multiculturalism relies more on teachers’ understandings of equity and of justice and injustice than on their understanding of a certain culture (Gorski & Swalwell, 2015). Equity literacy is a framework for multicultural curriculum development and efforts to create equitable classroom and schools. To develop equity literacy, the following behaviors can be accumulated:
(Gorski & Swalwell, 2015, p. 37). In the classroom, an equity literacy curriculum focuses on the following essential questions: What makes something in/equitable? What (local/regional/global) inequities exist? How have they changed over time, and why? What individual and collective responsibilities do we have to address them? How should we live together? Content should be taught through an equity lens in an integrative and interdisciplinary way to students of all ages from all backgrounds (Gorski & Swalwell, 2015). In the classroom, student's behaviors are often misinterpreted. Individual students’ learning patterns can be manifestations of cultural expectations that occasionally differ from our own (Dack & Tomlinson, 2015). As of 2015, white students are the minority in U.S. public schools, but middle class white educators are the majority of teachers (Dack & Tomlinson, 2015). Teachers should join students in becoming “multicultural”- learning to live in and honor more cultures than the one into which you were born. Differentiation is essential to the academic growth and motivation of students from all cultural backgrounds. Teachers should recognize and appreciate cultural variance to help all their students build positive, productive lives by learning about and looking for culturally influenced learning patterns while recognizing individuality and planning instruction and curriculum that is inviting. Learning is inviting to all students when teachers demonstrate the following:
The immigrant student population has grown significantly in the past 30 years. Teachers need to teach with an understanding of the role of culture and language in learning (Villegas & Lucas, 2007). Villegas and Lucas (2007) suggests six qualities as a framework to respond effectively to an increasingly diverse student population: 1. Understanding how learners construct knowledge.
6. Advocating for all students, (Villegas & Lucas, 2007). Connection at the Club"One way of planning for the inevitable variety of approaches to learning in culturally diverse classrooms is to develop a series of continuums along which students may work and which reflect cultural as well as personal patterns... The idea when using the continuums is to plan for a range of approaches that reflect a variety of points on these spectrums, rather than favoring only those approaches that are familiar and comfortable for the teacher," (Dack & Tomlinson, 2015). Inspired by Dack and Tomlinson's insight, I created a simple continuum to gather the perspective of some of the students at the Club. By considering student's learning preferences, I could better plan activities that inspire their engagement. As a teacher, this would be an excellent way to gauge students needs in the classroom. Villegas and Lucas state that learning about student's lives, including their favorite activities, concerns and strengths will allow educators to respond effectively to an increasingly diverse student population (2007). While at the Boys & Girls Club, I have been recording anecdotal notes and observations about student's behaviors, aspirations, interests and struggles. Data-driven decision making can be performed if this practice is held in the classroom and teachers respond to student's interests to engage them in learning through responsive instructional methods and authentic tasks. For example, for one of my arts integration activities (not featured below) we played "Two Truths and One Lie." I was able to discover more about student's families, their pets, their favorite shows and their friends. I am able to use that information to make better connections with students and to provide more engaging activities. Arts Integration"The Chair"A Brief Description of the Activity: “Person A sits in a chair. Person B take on a role, for example, a celebrity. A must figure out who B is and vice versa.” I modified this activity for my student’s age group (K-3rd). There was one chosen student at a time (“Person B”). Person B performed the celebrity, character or animal that they are familiar with as they whole class had the opportunity to guess what they were acting. Any student could be “Person B,” they acted on a volunteer basis and were chosen by who correctly guessed Person B’s role. I modeled the activity by being Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story as I exclaimed, “To infinity, and beyond!” What Went Well: The students were able to display their own interests by choosing the character or animal that interested them. The students made connections between who liked similar shows. I was able to include a science fun fact as a young boy was “a bear catching fish,” so I told them about bears who hunt for salmon as they swim upstream. The students were excited and active in the game. I witnessed the majority of students participating, the ones who chose not to act were laughing with the other learners. Potential Improvements: The students were shy to speak during the game, I believe they connected the activity with charades. Some learners were not very expressive in presenting their characters, so it was difficult to determine who they were mimicking. I would suggest that you preconference with students to give them ideas for acting out the characters before they perform for the class. Classroom Integration: This could be integrated in a classroom by performing historical characters. To engage students, the teacher could dress and act like a person from the current unit being studied. Students could offer performance arts as an alternative to traditional testing. Also, the game could be used as review for a unit on important figures. Differentiation: This activity allows for differentiation in instruction through its’ appeal to multiple learning styles. Auditory, kinesthetic and visual learners will be engaged. The “celebrity” option can be specified to a specific movie, time period or academically-based theme. The activity naturally differentiates for age, as the students determine the degree to which they are acting. |