I have long felt the range of emotions when it comes to arts integration. My ambivalence arises from how it is approached within the system. Administrators use you to “fill in the schedule” with arts integration while allowing extra time for all the subjects that matter to admin. No one ever says that but it is easy to read between the lines. Schedules speak louder than words. My greatest complaint with the system is a lack of consistency and alignment of grade bands for arts educators at our school. Arts integration has been with us for a long time and I have learned to enjoy crafting those lessons, though lacking surety that I have ever done so well. Before I get into that narrative, I would like to go back and address my exposure, over the years, to how to create authentic arts integration.
This review goes back to 1997, when the Wang Center for the Performing Arts (now Citi Center) brought the Kennedy Center’s program, “Artists as Teachers”. Though I had read about arts integration, this was the first time that I had direct instruction in crafting lessons. The next direct work I did with arts integration was when the Wang Center’s education department, created their own “Artists Teach” outreach program in a small town five miles north of Boston, named for patriot, Paul Revere. The idyllic elementary school I was placed had calm and compliant children, giving me an unrealistic sense of what it was like to teach arts integration within the public schools. The teachers, though open to the idea of integration, were very much in control of what we did together. There was no collaboration, even though we both went through training as to how the trajectory of this partnership was expected to play out. And that was my initial experience as an arts integration specialist.
Fast forward to the year, 2004. I had a small business (Story In a Box) and as a storytelling TA, I contracted for birthday parties, events and workshops that served as a sideline business. Our daughter was eleven years old and just about to move to a middle school which gave me the freedom to expand as a teaching artist. I found a small dance company, who had a grant with the Boston Public Schools was looking for teaching artist. My body of work included some lesson plans, so I applied in the spring, and that summer was hired for the fall. I worked with this company for the next two years and found out what it really was like being a teaching artist in the urban environment. Students were not compliant; classroom teachers walked out of the room, some teachers didn’t welcome you or your ideas; this was their break.
Welcome to the real world of the teaching artist in public education. I am grateful that I had that experience. Now as a full time arts specialist, my opinion of arts integration continues to shift, grow and change. There are arts integrations I that really feel full of value, and that I have executed not just properly but extremely skillfully. Other times, like a recent attempt to connect Taino culture to dance, wasn’t realized, because I had to fit it in during my planning time and without the grade band for which I had planned. No assurances are ever given about a consistent grade band from year to year. It is hard to predict what grades you will teach year-to-year basis. Another sign arts education is an afterthought, for many of us.
One of my most successful integrations is linked to both literacy and science. Science is an easy match because it is so concrete. Students learn sequence, through the sequence of a dance and a series of creative movement activities. For younger dancers, I do an Eric Carle series (Very Busy Spider, Very Hungry Caterpillar, and The Tiny Seed) for a study in life cycles. This is best for Early Childhood, Kindergarten through first grade. For second through fourth, I have a successful unit on the water cycle and dance that I teach through the book, Water Dance by Thomas Locker. In both of these integrations, learning is primarily about the sequencing of events that explains why the subject can be taught authentically. Other subjects it does feel as though you are just “dancing” the content (including some literacy integrations) and though I don’t believe that is a bad thing, per se, it doesn’t exactly hold our dance content in high regard.