blog post - arts in literacy

Washington DC is blessed with an abundance of museums, theater, and architecture that a teacher can use to supplement through all kinds of projects and field trips. I will be writing about American University’s partnership with DCPS professional development in a course to encourage the use of art and architecture in classes.
The course has a variety of offerings including all day workshops, evening lectures, and a three week summer institute. Each year the course has a different focus, most recently a conference on developing a city-wide art curriculum. However, the 2005 program seemed most interesting: Incorporating Art, Architecture, Geometry, and History. This program centered on lectures and programs teaching instructors about the architecture of Washington DC, and taught them how to design a curriculum with original assessments that follows that particular course. As an English teacher, I saw many possibilities to connect this program with the curriculum. I envisioned teaching my students about the design of DC and reading some of Thomas Jefferson and other founding father’s documents, and deciding if the architecture of DC embodies their ideas. Furthermore, I could envision a math teacher using the math behind the monuments and buildings for countless lessons in geometry, algebra, or trig.
As I am sure many of my colleagues agree, many of our students are very visual. They demand instant gratification, and require pictures to augment their understanding. Using art or architecture to illustrate a concept is of enormous value. I used a beautiful book called, The Great Migration to illustrate the idea of migration – RAMP-UP’s unit 2 theme. The students responded to the powerful paintings by Jacob Lawrence. It assisted them picturing the idea of population movement.
I would recommend looking into the AU course http://www.american.edu/cas/soe/pdf/SETH_Annual_Report.pdf if you have the option of designing your own type of curriculum. However, it seems like a great investment of time, especially if you do not have the opportunity to use it. You can find out more about it at http://www.american.edu/cas/soe/tip/index.htm.
Additionally, Professor Robbins showed me an article about a Newark school program where students took a class: American Studies: Art Across the Curriculum. In this specially-designed course, the students gained critical thinking and discussion skills and a greater appreciation of American history, through observing and responding to artwork. This program seems excellent because it empowers the students through choice (they choose the artwork they like and can choose which to respond), and it encourages the students to interact with history. Although the skills the students learned are not the ones directly tested on standardized tests, it would be a great reward or way to encourage students that were resisted direct instruction.
With the National Gallery, Smithsonian portrait, Corcoran, and other smaller galleries, DC has a wealth of visual resources (many admission free) to supplement our instruction. In fact, while researching for this presentation, I felt very guilty that I had not used these resources. I am definitely going to use these resources for next year. Even if a field trip is not possible, there are many resources through visual, and multimedia interactions.
I would like to close this blog post by listing resources for teachers in only some of the many museums in the area.
• The National Gallery of Art has a huge education section with online, print, and multimedia resources. It also has opportunities for workshops, school visits, and student volunteer opportunities. http://www.nga.gov/education/index.shtm• The Smithsonian museums also offers myriad options including the Anacostia Community Museum, with lots of interesting African-American history. http://anacostia.si.edu/Resources.htm• The Corcoran Museum is the largest non-federal museum in DC. It has a program called “Artreach” which focuses on community art classes and beautification. http://www.corcoran.org/education/artreach.htm• The Arena Stage is a great theater that offers creative, interesting performances. They produced an August Wilson play earlier in the year. They offer a D.C. Ticket partnership that includes up to 35 daytime or afternoon tickets for only $3 per ticket. It also offers supplemental materials for teachers. http://www.arenastage.org/outreach/education/student-performance-packages/ Every DCPS high school and most jr. high and middle schools are members of the Ticket Partnership.
• The Folger Shakespeare Theater is valuable for teaching the Bard. Right now, The Tempest is playing. http://www.folger.edu/index_sa.cfm?specaudid=2
In conclusion, although teachers have so much on their plates, and so many things to deal with, it is vital to consider the arts from time to time. Especially with art and music being slashed in favor of test preparation, the responsibility of art education is falling onto core subject teachers. The Arts are so valuable to enrichment, that we must sneak it into standards-based lessons as much as we can.