Teaching Through The Arts

"The Dynamic Classroom: Engaging All Students through the Arts" is coming to Barnstable from July 30-August 3, 2018. Jeff Billard and Keith Caldwell, through Fitchburg State University and the Cape Cod Collaborative, will be offering "The  Dynamic   Classroom : Engaging All Students through the Arts," during the week of July 30-Aug 3 at Barnstable United Elementary School. Save the dates! This is a hands-on, participation-based course that provides ideas for engaging all students, including those with disabilities and diverse learning styles, through collaborative and cooperative learning as well as instructional strategies that can be implemented in your classes right away upon your return to school next fall. The course is designed for TEACHERS OF ALL GRADES AND ALL LEVELS.  In the meantime, please contact us if you have any questions or need more information! I also encourage you to chat with a colleague who has taken one of our courses with us - I thi...

By virtue of our humanity, we are all creative beings.  Creativity is as much a part of us as is our very heart, soul, and mind.  So, creativity itself need not be taught.  What CAN be taught are ways to recognize, develop, and nurture that creativity within us.  Students can learn (or re-learn in many cases) that they are indeed creative.  Students can learn to rediscover the inner child.  Students can learn to think creatively and critically.  So, as teachers we certainly can teach how to explore our innate creativity, how to think creatively, and how to use our imagination to foster an open mind, heart, and spirit.

​My philosophy of teaching is simple: make learning relevant and fun. As a teacher of high school English, my goal is to help my students to become better communicators. The desired outcomes in my classroom, then, go beyond simple recall and identification. Rather, the students need to develop ways to communicate effectively on an interpersonal as well as an intrapersonal level. That is, students must be trained to be independent, critical thinkers and problem solvers who can tap their creative and imaginative potential. Simply put, they must develop their thinking, writing, reading, and speaking skills - and creativity. To achieve this, it is critical that the students see the relevance of what they are learning, and have some fun learning it. Realistically, not every student is going to find everything that is taught in my classroom relevant all the time, and not every student is going to enjoy every lesson, every method and every activity. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to try ...

Art Therapy Teaches Students to Engage Constructively with Their Emotions This article on Lesley University's website provides yet another testimony to the power of the arts in education

Teaching Through The Arts: "Gamification" I Like the Sound of That and So Wil... : Walk into many high school classrooms a few minutes before class starts and what will you see? A large number of students will be on their c...

Walk into many high school classrooms a few minutes before class starts and what will you see? A large number of students will be on their cell phones, iPads, etc. and many of those will be playing games. So if they like playing games (and who doesn't?), then shouldn't we be figuring out how to take advantage of this in the learning process? Like making a worksheet into a "playsheet" perhaps. In her article "Beyond the Worksheet: Playsheets, GBL, and Gamification" (I love that term), Educational Technology Specialist Alice Keeler discusses how using electronic devices to play learning games in class has become a hot topic in education.  She defines the following terms as " GBL [Game Based Learning] is when students play games to learn content. Gamification is the application of game based elements to non-game situations." Keller also  goes on to discuss the use of playsheets instead of worksheets; it's a thought-provoking argument that may...

In this age of let's memorize this content or this form of writing so we can do well on the high stakes testing and pretend that we learned something valuable, it becomes more and more important for us to get our students to think and have a voice. Allowing students the opportunity to come up with their own ideas and cultivate a point of view can often get lost in the race to cover content. This activity called "Save the Last Word for Me" from Facing History and Ourselves is a way to facilitate thinking and voice for all of our students. I'm definitely going to use it this fall. Save the Last Word for Me Rationale “Save the Last Word for Me” is a discussion strategy that requires all students to participate as active speakers and listeners. Its clearly defined structure helps shy students share their ideas and ensures that frequent speakers practice being quiet. It is often used as a way to help students debrief a reading or film. Procedure Step one:...

I love learning new terms and putting language to concepts; it helps me to learn it better and also helps me to explain it to others better. Allowing students to move so they can learn and think has been a constant theme in this blog, and the term "embodied cognition," thinking with and through our bodies from the article "The Body Learns"   by Annie Murphy Paul on Slate.com discusses the importance of getting the body involved in the learning process. In a series of experiments carried out more than a decade ago, Arthur Glenberg of Arizona State University " found  that children’s reading comprehension improved when they acted out a written text , using a set of representational toys (a miniature barn and horse, for example, accompanied a story about a farm). Glenberg then  demonstrated  that the same procedure could work on a digital platform: In a 2011 experiment, he showed that having first- and second-grade students manipulate images of toys on a comput...

In our age of showing results through data, the Wiley H. Bates Middle School is doing just that. Check out their results after integrating the arts for just four years. Click on the link for Edutopia to read what they've accomplishes. It's worth the time. Arts integration has been shown by several rigorous studies to increase student engagement and achievement among youth from both low and high socioeconomic backgrounds   (Catterall, Dumais, & Hampden-Thompson, 2012; Upitis & Smithrim, 2003, cited in Upitis 2011; Walker, McFadden, Tabone, & Finkelstein, 2011) . Arts integration was introduced at  Wiley H. Bates Middle School , in Annapolis, Maryland, as part of their  school improvement plan  in 2008 after the district applied for and was awarded a four-year grant under the Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) Grant Program. Since arts integration was first implemented at Bates, the percentage of students achieving or ...

Integrating arts modalities into the academic curriculum is as important a priority as any issue facing American education.   For both the student and the teacher, the arts offer the opportunity to reflect on both content and process, and play an integral role in joining fact and meaning in a person's education.   Learning through and with the arts inspires the creativity and imagination that is so essential to think critically, love deeply, and to live fully in a diverse and complex world. Check out the following link from the Arts Education Partnership that  "offers a snapshot of how the arts support achievement in school, bolster skills demanded of a 21st century workforce, and enrich the lives of young people and communities." Preparing Students for the Next America: The Benefits of an Arts Education

The National Association of Secondary School Principals recognizes the importance of integrated arts education.  Click on the following link to read "The Arts: New Possibilities for Teaching and Learning" by Dr. Lauren Stevenson published in the Principal's Research Review: Supporting Principal's Data-Driven Decisions.  As we have said so many times, being able to cite the research gives authenticity and credibility to educators advocating for arts integration in the everyday curriculum. http://www.nassp.org/portals/0/content/53584.pdf

We need to stop boring our students and work to instill a love of learning and an excitement to be in school. I become more and more convinced all the time that this is the foundation of a great learning environment-fostering a place where kids want to be. A place where they really want to come everyday. Is this a bit pie-in-the-sky? Maybe, but I choose to believe that we can make schools places that crackle with excitement instead of snooze in boredom. I remember taking math in high school; I got good grades, but I was bored stiff! In fact I hated it and learned very little. It's not that I hated the subject; I hated the unimaginative methods used to teach it--ones that were mired in the outdated paradigm that we still throw at our kids today: drill and kill and make no relevant connections to why we were studying this stuff. Why do we do this to our students? Why can't we find the joy in learning? Why can't we put the reasons why we need to learn this stuff out on the t...

How much time do our students spend in their seats? A good question to think about as we move back into our classrooms. Another question is how many of them need to "move to think" as Sir Ken Robinson reminds us. Henry David Thoreau knew it back in the 19th Century as he wrote in his journal: Get Moving!How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move my thoughts begin to flow--as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of thought--burst forth and fertilize my brain. . . . Only while we are in action is the circulation perfect. The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical wooden dull to read. Take stock of your students when you go back to school and see which ones need to move around to get their thoughts to flow. The dividends may be huge.

As educators we are in the communication business--whether it's with students, parents, administrators, colleagues it doesn't matter. In order to communicate well, we need to have the language to help others understand. To that end I'm always on the lookout for cogent, succinct language that will make any point I'm attempting to make accessible to the given audience. Lately I've been on a search for such language to explain how stress, anxiety and fear will shut down learning. Mindfulness Educator Lori Corry gave me an insightful lesson and introduced me to the MindUP curriculum from the Hawn Foundation . Here's the language that I understood and think others may as well. When we are calm and peaceful the filter [amygdala: an information filter regulated by our emotional state] is wide open and information flows to the prefrontal cortex, where the brain's so-called executive functions take place. On the other hand when we are feeling negative and stressed...

Stressed employees dread coming into the office each day. These workers are often distracted and produce substandard work. Workers can use several strategies to reduce their stress levels and work more effectively. So begins Eric Thompson in his blog post "8 Ways to Reduce Stress at Work" on officespaceforrent.org --a worthwhile read. Most of us can probably relate to this regarding work, but with a few minor modifications it would fit in school as well and look something like this: Stressed students dread coming to school each day. These students are often distracted and produce substandard work. Teachers can use several strategies to help reduce student stress levels and help them learn more effectively. Brain research is telling us that this is true from a physiological standpoint: students cannot learn when they are stressed out--it's just not possible. So the solution is to take the time to help relieve student stress so they can be ready to learn. H...

I see this term start to show up more and more in the educational lexicon, so I thought it might be a good idea to find a working definition and put it out there for the readers. This is from the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders : The term executive function describes a set of cognitive abilities that control and regulate other abilities and behaviors. Executive functions are necessary for goal-directed behavior. They include the ability to initiate and stop actions, to monitor and change behavior as needed, and to plan future behavior when faced with novel tasks and situations. Executive functions allow us to anticipate outcomes and adapt to changing situations. The ability to form concepts and think abstractly are often considered components of executive function.

It's becoming more clear to me all the time that as educators we need to provide a safe container in order to facilitate learning for the students who are entrusted to us. It's not just a "nice thing to do" for the kids as more and more brain research is telling us that students cannot learn when they are under great stress. The prefrontal cortex which oversees executive functions is compromised when a person is under great stress and when this happens...learning does not. It seems to be just that simple. One solution is to make sure our classrooms are safe and comfortable places for students to inhabit. Reducing stress at our classroom doors is the first step to laying the foundation for learning to take place. Mindfulness training is the next...but more on that in another post. Scientific American's article "Stress Relief Can Be the Key to Success in School" by Clancy Blair goes on to say, "An even more insidious effect [of stress] is the assau...

As educators we are always searching for new and specific ways to gauge student learning and formative assessments fit that bill.  These strategies from stemrecourses.com are some of the best I've come across. Check them out. The quote from Easley & Zwoyer is right on in the sense of not making judgments but finding out what students are thinking which is part of the essence of great teaching and powerful learning experiences. It also addresses how we need to get away from being disseminators of information which is something we have been championing here for years. TWENTY-ONE WAYS TO INVESTIGATE WHAT STUDENTS ARE LEARNING "If you can both listen to children and accept their answers not as things to just be judged right or wrong but as pieces of information which may reveal what the child is thinking, you will have taken a giant step toward becoming a master teacher, rather than merely a disseminator of information." -Easley & Zwoyer, 1975 Proof Po...

Economics is not a subject that I'm remotely interested in and was even less so when I was an eighth grade history student. But why do I remember it so well even to this day? The teacher taught it to us using a comic book. This simply underscores my belief that having fun in class and delivering concepts to students in a way that they enjoy and are interested in makes for some serious learning opportunities. To that end I highly recommend Reading with Pictures (thanks to our reader Mat for bringing it to our attention) -check it out and see if there is something there your students might enjoy learning from. Remember learning Geography in the old way with lots of those window-shade roll-up maps and memorization? If I could have learned this way I think I would have enjoyed it and it would have stuck with me. Take a look. DINOSAURS ACROSS AMERICA REVIEW Geography, like many subjects, can be boring, fraught with the nasty notion that simply memorizing states and capitals con...