THE QUEST TO CAPTIVATE HEARTS AND MINDS IN THE CLASSROOM: TEACHING TO REACH AND FOSTER CREATIVITY AND ARTISTIC GIFTEDNESS IN CHILDREN
American University (AU),
This article speaks of a
"quest"—a quest borne of a conviction that all children have a right to a full and rich education and a belief
that there exists a process of education that can empower teachers to fulfill
that right. The quest is a journey that
compels teachers to do what they must to seek out potential and giftedness in all children: examine the essence of
what they do; explore new and different vantage points in their classroom
methodologies; and have the courage to attempt new pedagogies to enhance their
effectiveness. The quest harks back to
Don Quixote's pursuit of his dream: it is worthy, important, and significant.
The State of
National achievement reports
paint a dismal picture of formal learning among young Americans, i.e., many
American children are at risk of academic failure or underachievement. They consistently do poorly on tests that
require “complex reasoning, inference, judgment, and transfer of knowledge from
one type of problem to another (Elmore, 1996, p. 1). The National Center for Educational
Statistics' (NCES) Nation's Report Card:
Reading Highlights of 2003 shows that the achievement of 8th grade students
in reading has been depressed for some time and gives little sign of
improving. In 1998, 8th grade
students were reading at an average of 263 out of a possible 500 (the minimum basic scale score is 243). In 2003, 26 percent of 8th grade
students were still reading below the basic
level—a decrease of 1 percentage point from the 2002 reading level. Further, 37% of 4th grade students
were reading below the basic level in
2003. This represented a slight
improvement from the 1998 percentage, but no detectable change between 2002 and
2003. This low and vastly unchanging
academic achievement of
The
Teacher as Conduit
An analysis of achievement scores
of more than 100,000 students in hundreds of schools across the
It has ever been the mission of
teachers to seek out the potential of the students in their charges and to
teach to that potential. It is a mission
that has engendered success for those teachers whose students respond well to
traditional verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical forms of instruction. Increasingly, however, the mission has been
fraught with failure for those teachers whose students, for a variety of
reasons, find themselves unable to respond to traditional instructional
strategies. Today, more than ever,
teachers face complicated and intense challenges. Our multicultural society spawns diverse
learners who require varied and alternative instructional modes to acquire
knowledge and creates new expectations for teachers. In order to empower diverse learners,
teachers must understand how students
think to create experiences that actually work to produce learning
(Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001).
The nature of knowledge, the student's role in learning, and how these
ideas are manifested in the classroom are central to an understanding of
teaching and the fundamental changes occurring in today's educational
environment (Elmore, 1996). The
classroom can be a vulnerable place—a panoply of all the intelligences. Nevertheless, it is the “teacher’s most important
skill to find the intelligence and understand the knowledge that each student
possesses. This is not an easy matter…it
is really a challenge” (Oakes & Lipman, 2002, p. XXI). The teacher's very role in the classroom is
changing. In a book on teaching
effectiveness, researchers Oser, Dick, and Patry (1992) wrote: "The role
of the teacher is shifting from one of the deliverer of information—the solo
player of a flute in front of a less than appreciative audience—to a designer,
tour guide, and orchestra conductor.
Now, after over a decade, the
shift in the teacher's role has been realized.
Theoretically and practically, what does this mean? How do teachers assume the multi-faceted role
of guide, facilitator, and conductor?
How do teachers "teach to reach" their students?
The
Arts as the Journey: Arts -Integrated Instruction
One of the most often asked
questions in education today appears to be "what practices can be changed
to address the pressing issue of deficiencies in student
achievement?" Robert Rauschenberg
has stated, in the Foreword to The Power
of the Arts (2000), that "The hope for a fuller world lies in the
recognition of many more ways to teach and learn." Nova Institute (2001)
supports this statement: "when teachers develop new and diverse
capacities, they are “empowered to transform [their] work in the classroom, and
[their] teaching becomes more dynamic, creative, and ultimately, more
effective.” Admittedly, teachers must
teach to the standards…they have an obligation to do so, no choice really. But standing out among Rauschenberg's
"many more ways to teach and learn" is a pedagogy that champions teaching in, through, and about the arts,
with all the possibilities inherent therein.
The arts have been shown to captivate and reveal the hearts and minds of
children, providing a direct pathway to their giftedness. Through both cognitive and affective domains,
the arts have opened doors to multiple aspects of learning, enhancing teachers'
ability to mine children's untapped potential. “One of the arts’ most important
contributions to the development of young people,” notes Fowler (1996), “is the
cultivation of their emotional and spiritual well-being. The human spirit is central to the
arts." "When I play
music," a young student has said, "I feel better about myself."
As well, the arts have opened
doors for teachers themselves, empowering them to "teach to reach"
their students through instruction that respects the multiple
intelligences. The teacher, it has been
shown, is the single most important factor in student learning and is the
essential conduit in arts-based instruction and arts learning. When teachers infuse instruction with a
multi-sensory approach and the arts are integrated into the curriculum,
research shows that students demonstrate both greater motivation and greater
mastery of curricular objectives (Deasey, 2002). Identifying key concepts in content areas and
finding ways that the arts can be used in both learning activities and
assessment is essential if we are to fully empower gifted students and those at
risk for academic failure or underachievement.
In a word, teaching through the arts can lead us to Rauschenberg's
fuller world, teaching to the standards and beyond.
Arts as the Journey:
Arts-for-Arts-Sake Instruction
In Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social
Development, a compendium of 62 studies published in 2002 by the Arts
Education Partnership, a strong point is made for the positive academic and
social effects of learning in the arts.
As noted in the introduction to the book, “Particularities lie in each
of the 62 studies” but the commonalties place the “arts firmly within current
discussions and debates about the education policies and practices that will
best bring about school reform and improvement as well as high achievement for
students.” Research shows that when
students study the arts, academic performance improves in subjects such as
mathematics, reading, and writing. This
is particularly true for students who are most at risk of struggling with their
school work or dropping out, including students with physical or learning
disabilities and those with English as their second language “Weaving the arts into the school day can be
a powerful tool to help close the achievement gap,” as noted in a Learning
Channel broadcast on Tuesday, March 15, 2005.
With the arts, we can help ensure that no child is left behind.
Arts-for arts-sake instruction
has two important roles: it is critical to the experience and the beauty of
making art and for the development of the artists of tomorrow and it can function for some children as
a powerful introduction to success in learning.
As noted in Renaissance in the
Classroom (2001), arts integration is “a powerful vehicle to cross the
boundaries of core subjects and arts concepts, affective and cognitive modes of
expression, form and content, processes and products, the self and the
world.” In his book, Strong Arts, Strong Schools, Fowler
(1996) has noted that more and better arts education is needed to produce more
and better artists, but more and better arts-integrated education is also
needed to produce "better-educated human beings, citizens who will value
and evolve a worthy American civilization" (and, it should be added, will
function as global citizens). Fowler
(1996) affirms the capacity of the arts to teach children to “think
receptively, aesthetically, creatively, communicatively, and culturally.” The arts can serve their own purposes and be useful across the
curriculum. They should not be thought
of as a luxury, they are essential to enhance academic education, enrich lives,
and a means to foster giftedness in all children. As author, Sally L. Smith (2001) notes,
"the arts have great power and can empower."
A Rationale for the Journey
Several current cognitive
learning theorists offer scaffolding for designing practical experiences to
reach children using diverse pathways towards knowledge. Theorists such as Howard Gardner, Jerome
Burner, and Lev Vygotsky provide justification for arts-integrated instruction,
as well as a focus and springboard for shaping arts-based methodology. The educational theories of these three
individuals focus on the means by which individuals process and think about
what they study (Borich & Tombari, 1997).
They also proffer intelligence as a consequence of experiential,
cultural, and motivational factors, critical frameworks in the process of
arts-based instruction. Viewing
intellect as pluralistic encompasses a broad spectrum of psychological
constructs, rather than as single, intractable measures, and affords the interconnection
of mind, matter, and meaning.
Intelligence is multidimensional.
The Theory of Multiple
Intelligences, presented by Howard Gardner in Frames of Mind (1983) and Intelligences
Reframed (1999) and Jerome Bruner’s constructivist theory of learning—whereby
knowledge is constructed by experience—posited in his many works, including Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (1986),
offer conceptual frameworks for arts-based instruction.
Verbal-linguistic
skills—e.g., describe, write, tell
Logical-mathematical
skills—e.g., organize, encode
Spatial
skills—e.g., design, visualize
Musical
skills—e.g., listen, play
Bodily-kinesthetic
skills, e.g., demonstrate, physicalize
Interpersonal
skills, e.g., interact, collaborate
Intrapersonal
skills, e.g., imagine, individualize
A
naturalist perspective, e.g., explore, relate.
Constructing lesson plans and
implementing them within this multi-faceted framework makes learning exciting
and comprehensive. And it is especially
through the arts that this framework can be achieved.
Lev Vygotsky stresses social
interaction as an essential component linking knowledge to comprehension. In Mind
and Society (1962) he stresses the importance of children’s interaction
with peers and learning by doing within the social community of the
classroom. Arts-based teaching,
manifested in multiple symbols, allows the student to interact with ideas and
words in a social context.
Finally, Stanley Greenspan’s view
of emotional experience as the foundation of intelligence provides important
rationale for arts-based instruction.
Greenspan stresses the link between behavior and emotion that inheres
within the very process of “learning by doing” (1997). He emphasizes emotional
experience as necessary for developing the highest qualities of the mind and
views the arts as a venue for enhancing and respecting emotional experience
within self and for others.
An Arts-Integrated Teaching and
Learning Model: Imagination Quest (IQ)
In 1997, Imagination Stage, Inc.,
a premier professional children's theatre and theatre arts education center in
In 1997, IQ was a response to a rather depressed picture of academic achievement painted by national and local data. More recently, IQ has turned its eye to another statistic. A study by the Education Commission of the States (ECS)(USA Today, July 5, 2004) reported that while many states are complying with the No Child Left Behind education reform law, no state has assured that there is a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom, as the law requires, and only 23 states even have a definition of what "highly qualified" means. Further, many teachers can be called "highly qualified" by receiving as little as 5 hours of training—even if the training isn't in the field they teach. IQ has responded by intensifying its training of teachers in innovative arts-based instructional strategies and techniques that are solidly linked to the requirements of their curriculum and to established standards of learning—both in content and in the arts, thereby placing "highly qualified" teachers in the classroom.
IQ is based on the arts as an integrative
element in instructional pedagogy. Four
key points inform IQ:
All
children have the right to succeed in the process of learning;
An
unshakeable respect for the varied ways that children learn;
A
commitment to the arts as an important pathway to knowledge; and
A
belief in the value of studying the arts for their own sake to uncover and
stimulate creativity in all children.
IQ's philosophical perspective is
strongly grounded in the current research and current cognitive learning
theories described above:
For example, an IQ arts-integrated third grade literacy
learning lesson, based on the core reading book, The Rough Face Girl (an Algonquin version of the Cinderella story), might use an activity
called "juicy words." In a
sentence from the story, "The step sisters walked haughtily through the
town," the word "haughtily"—a new vocabulary word—is the juicy
word. To strengthen the students'
understanding of the juicy word, a student is asked to read the sentence aloud,
then "become" the haughty stepsister, physically interpreting the
meaning of "haughtily" by strutting around the classroom in a haughty
manner.
In an IQ arts-integrated sixth grade science lesson, entitled,
"Motions of the Ocean," developed by an American University IQ intern, a living tableau might be
created by the students to manifest the vocabulary words and terms that the
students use in a unit on Earth’s Waters, e.g., frequency, crest, trough, wave length
and height.
An IQ art-for arts-sake high school lesson on Shakespeare might focus
on phrases from the plays of Shakespeare to make the bard’s text accessible and
exciting, and to introduce the characteristics of iambic pentameter. Students
work in small groups, moving creatively in rhythmic patterns and presenting
phrases for calculated effect rather than as dialogue, e.g., for "A horse,
a horse, my kingdom for a horse," the groups would speak in unison, moving
in a circular pattern, arms linked, and shuffling to the side in the rhythm of
a heart beat.
Conclusion
As the world leader Vaclav Havel
said over a decade ago “None of us—as an individual—can save the world as a
whole, but…each of us must behave as though it were in our power to do
so.” In the quest to captivate the minds
and hearts of all students, to serve
the unique quality of intellectual and artistic capacities—the giftedness and
talent—that reside within each child, teachers must, as Gandhi, advises
"be the change [they] wish to see in the world.” Teachers must embrace the quest. Like Don Quixote in his pursuit of his dream,
they must have their armor scrubbed and on straight; their helmets ready; their
Body, Voice, Mind, and Imagination firmly in place, with the full conviction in
the value and importance of what they can do to be the change they wish to see
in the world…of education…Teaching to
Reach.
REFERENCES
Barth, R. S. (1990).
Improving schools from within: Teachers, parents and principals can make the difference.
Borich, G. G.
& Tombari, M. L. (1997). Educational
psychology: A contemporary approach,
Bruner, J. S. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds.
Burnaford, G., Aprill,
A., & Weiss, C. (2001). Renaissance in the classroom: Arts
integration and meaningful learning.
Deasey, R. J. (Ed.).
(2002). Critical links: Learning
in the arts and student academic
and social development.
Elmore, R. F. (1996). Getting to scale with good
educational practice. Harvard
Educational Review, 66 (1), 1-26.
Fowler, C. (1996).
Strong arts, strong schools.
Goldberg, M. (2001a).
An interview with Linda Darling-Hammond: Balanced optimism. Phi Delta Kappan, 82 (9), 687-690.
Greenspan, S. (1997).
The growth of the mind and the endangered origins of intelligence.
Nation's Report Card: Reading
Highlights of 2003.
(Online)
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/Vol_5/5_4/3_3.asp.
Marzano, R., Pickering, D. J., &
Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works.
novainstitute. (Online) January 2001. http://www.novainstitute.net.
Oakes, J. & Lipton, M. (2002).
Teaching to change the world.
Oser, F. K.,
Dick, A., & Patry, J. (1992). Effective and responsible teaching: The
new synthesis.
Smith, S. L. (2001). The power of the arts: Creative
strategies for teaching
exceptional learners.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). (1st ed.). Mind and society.
Wright, S. P.,
Horn, S. P., & Sanders, W. L. (1997).
Teacher and classroom context effects on student achievement: Implications for
teacher evaluation. Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, 11, 57-67.
GAIL HUMPHRIES MARDIROSIAN
Dr. Gail
Humphries Mardirosian is Chair, Department of Performing Arts, and an Associate
Professor of Theatre, now in her 22nd at American University (AU) in
Dr. Humphries
Mardirosian is an education consultant, having developed curricula for several
colleges/universities and arts centers around the country. She recently completed the Business Plan for
Educational Programming at ISI, a new multi-million-dollar professional theatre
and center for the arts for children.
Publications include her presentation in Prague (2004) at the World
Congress of the Czechoslovak Arts and Letters Conference (An American Voicing of the Silenced Theatre of Josef Topol); as
well as articles in the Journal of Teaching Psychology, a commissioned
paper for the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and
Improvement, National Institute on the Education of At-risk Students, and a
handbook for teachers entitled Have You
Roared Today?. In summer 2005, she
presented a paper entitled Parallel
Power: Periklean Athens and Antigone from Page to Stage at American University
for the European Cultural Council in
Dr. Humphries Mardirosian has served
the
e-mail: theatro@theatroedu.gr
tel/fax: (0030) 210 6564109