Changing Education Through the Arts

Presenters: Amy Duma, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC; Stephen D. Hockett, Fairfax County Public Schools, Reston, VA

This session is presented in separate parts. Use the buttons at the end of the transcription to navigate between each part.

III. Program Results

STEPHEN HOCKETT: I think one of the most powerful parts of the first years, besides that everybody was very invested in the development, was the fact that teacher teams from eight different schools that had a common interest and understanding and desire to integrate the arts É When you meet in your building, you think you're alone. You go to the Kennedy Center with teams of six and there are seven other schools that have — maybe not the exact same way of implementing, maybe not the exact ideas — but you know that you're not alone. I think that was an incredibly powerful piece of it, that teacher-to-teacher talking and being able to share strategies, it was very exciting. I saw incredibleÉnot just development in my staff, but energy that shared between these professionals. Because it does look different in every school, every school is it's own entity because we're all made up of individuals. But the bottom line is that the focus is there. The desire, the drive, is very similar — the excitement.

They only did meet monthly, and out of that my staff did a lot of turnaround training at faculty meetings. Other faculty members would see what somebody was doing. We didn't send the whole fourth grade team — I think the first year we had a member from each grade level from second through sixth. So there was a lot of sharing going on and there was a log of collegiality going on. We also had a steering committee at the Kennedy Center that met monthly to take back what was on at schools — because we had five sessions a year, so we didn't meet as a whole group at the Kennedy Center every month. So our steering committee would go back to communicate and share information and to bring that back to the study group.

AMY DUMA: The steering committee was made up of two representatives from each school. The reason we did that is so that if one person couldn't come, each school would always be represented when we had a steering committee meeting. And that helped us, as Steve said, with the communication between the Kennedy Center, as an outside organization, and the schools.

Now we're going on to year two. And what we did in year two was, we offered the introductory level course again as a summer institute, and then we offered what we called the intermediate-level course for the people who had been through the introductory-level course with us the first year. In the intermediate-level course, we did an Introduction to Curriculum Mapping. Again, some of the schools were doing curriculum mapping, some were not. Some were doing bits and pieces of curriculum mapping, and so we saw this as a way to help with the integration piece. If schools would do curriculum mapping, write down what they're actually teaching, month by month, in different subject areas, they would be able to look for connections between what's being taught in the art forms and what's being taught in the other subject areas.

This was just an introductory session that we did for them, but then we wanted to see from that what would happen — if the schools would be interested in continuing that or if they would decide that that was not needed. And all the schools, I have to say, have been very interested in doing that, and the schools that were doing curriculum mapping have decided to bump their efforts and actually do more of it in order to look for those natural connections.

STEPHEN HOCKETT: We always did curriculum mapping, so the new step for us we did vertical curriculum mapping. We've always talked about how in third grade we're doing this, this, and this. Let's tell the arts teachers, let's tell the music teachers. And that was great. But we started doing vertical curriculum mapping across grade levels, and we ended up with this document that allowed people to see what was going on in other grade levels at what times. They were able to share information. Talk about dialoging — there's so much we do as educators, and sometimes we go so fast that we kind of get stratified and we don't understand that a lot of the things that we need, and that we have to make our lives a lot more functional and easier, are right there in our own school. So I think that was a wonderful experience for us, and we continue to do that.

It's also changed throughout the school and at different grade levels how we're teaching and what we're teaching, and understanding that you introduce something at one grade level, you reinforce it at another. That whole process. Even though we know it cognitively, a lot of time we don't discuss it and it's not easy to practice it. The other piece I want to make clear is that right now, in year two, we have teams in our school. So we have doubled the number of teachers that are participating in CETA.

AMY DUMA: The other important thing about curriculum mapping is that in some of the schools it was what were considered to be the core subjects that were doing the curriculum mapping. By having the arts specialists also do curriculum mapping, it raised the awareness in all the other teachers that there's a scope and sequence curriculum in the arts as well, that they have things that they teach in a specific order. So when they saw that, they realized that it wasn't just the arts teacher looking for ways to connect with the other subject areas; they actually were teaching about the art form themselves. Then it became two colleagues looking at ways to find connections between their two different disciplines.

The other important thing we did during the intermediate-level course is that we decided at that point that we'd been working on lesson plans, we wanted to expand to unit plans, and after coming to all these wonderful ASCD conferences and reading the literature, we really wanted to go with the Understanding by Design process that Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins have developed. Well, lucky for us, Jay McTighe lives down the road in Columbia, Maryland, and so I called up Jay and said, "Can we go to lunch? We need to talk about this because we starting a program that I think you might be interested in, and we would love to work with you." So Jay became part of one of our sessions that we did. He did an introduction to his design process for the intermediate level teachers. That got everybody thinking again, in a new way, about how they might put together unit plans for the arts integration units that they were looking at developing.

In the intermediate-level course also, we were continuing to offer a choice of participatory workshops because teachers said to us, "That's what we really like. It's very practical. We can see examples of how the arts can be integrated with other subject areas." They all had their preferences about which art form they wanted to start with, which art form they felt most comfortable with, so we couldn't say, "We're only doing drama." We had to really keep including all four art forms, but that was fine with us. Then the studied groups continued, because that was such an important piece of what we were doing. They continued to develop an action plan for the year, and at this point, as Steve said, there were two teams in each school, two study groups, and they made their decisions about how they were going to work together within the school.

STEPHEN HOCKETT: You're going to keep hearing this — every school is different, which I think is also a strength of a program. We're not making cookies out of schools. Each school is able to develop and grow as they will. In my school, we didn't want the intermediate groups to feel separate. In some schools they met separately. We felt it was important — strength in numbers — that we also work together and we help to promote the idea of community. Because some of it was different. The delivery was different. The first-year group got the information in five sessions spread out over a year. The second group got the five sessions in a week, so they were actually focused for a full week on integrating the arts, so there was a lot of different information that they could share.

Out of this also came a restructuring of our committees in our school. I have a large staff, so sometimes when you think you're communicating and everyone's understanding and on the same page, you find out that, wait a minute, we forgot to tell somebody. So we restructured our school planning committees, and we made sure that CETA members were on every school planning committee. That way, the information that we were getting and that we were developing was delivered to teachers who were not part of the CETA group. And so the influence was there, and it kind of radiated throughout the school. And they were also part of our school steering committee. I think that was extremely successful for us.

AMY DUMA: This is the third year of implementation of CETA. We have another group that has joined the introductory-level course. We have two groups at the advanced level because we just bumped the other group up, they were doing so well. At the advanced level, one of the things that they said is, "We want more choice. We want to be able to choose, and we want to be able to go in depth in an area." So we started looking at courses, and the first course that they wanted to have was Curriculum Development with Jay McTighe So instead of just an introductory session, we had Jay working with us for a four-session course during the school year. He came down and worked with our teachers, where they actually had time to develop an arts integrated unit. We used their Understanding by Design exchange website. We had laptop computers available at the sessions. They could go on the website, they could design their unit on the website, so they had working time in between the mini-lectures that Jay would give about his process. Jay is coming back with us this summer to do a whole summer institute on curriculum development, and some of the teachers who have already worked on this course with him are coming back in the summer so they can plan another arts-integrated unit with him.

I'd like to just pause here for a minute and give you some insight into why we were choosing to work with people like Jay McTighe, and this is something that you could do as well. We were looking for people who are on the cutting edge in the field of education. We were looking for those people who had an understanding of what we were talking about when we said arts integration, and who had some understand of how important the arts are in education. People like Jay McTighe, people like some of the other people I'll talk about in a little bit that we got involved with, were very open to that kind of thing. Jay McTighe's on the cutting edge right now, let's have him work with our CETA program because that's going to be very helpful to us. Curriculum mapping is another idea that's been around for a while, but we thought that could be very useful for us, too. Study groups was another idea. And for some of those, we didn't necessarily bring people in because it got to be a bit expensive and we only had a limited budget, but we could buy their resources. We bought the ASCD curriculum mapping video resources with the facilitators guide, and that's what we use for curriculum mapping, and that was something we bought for CETA and was loaned out to the different schools so they could use it. So things like that were very helpful.

The other thing that we're going at the advanced level is, there are some hearing sessions, where teachers are just going to come together and they're hearing successful arts-integrated lessons and units. They bring examples of student work. They bring documentation so that we can see what they're doing in their classroom and so that everybody can get new ideas. We put together a notebook of lesson plans that are arts-integrated last year, and we gave it to all the schools in the fall so they could see what other schools were doing.

So we're trying to fill this network among the schools. Some of the schools were very familiar with each other — they're four in Fairfax County — but then there's one in Montgomery County, Maryland, there are two in Prince George's County, Maryland. They didn't know each other very well, so we're trying to set up a network among the schools, as well.

Continuing with participatory workshops — and, in fact, this year we're working with a museum educator by the name of Peg Koetsch, who's also doing a session here at ASCD on museum education, on a three-series course on how to create their how their own exhibits and that will show what they have learned in the arts as well as other subject areas. So another example of performance-based assessment, and looking at it from the perspective of how do museum curators put together an exhibit.

Then, of course, the study groups are continuing to meet. And the new pieces that was added at this point is something that we call Arts Coaches, which is an opportunity for classroom teachers who are involved in CETA to request to somebody who is an expert in the art form. And that person is either an arts specialist at one of the schools or a teaching artist who works with the Kennedy Center. What we set up this year for Arts Coaches is that we found another one of those wonderful people that we could work with and had an understanding of what we were trying to do in our program, by the name of Laura Lipton, whose expertise is mentoring programs. We were setting this up as a coaching program, so we had some training sessions with Laura Lipton for the teaching artists and the arts specialists who were going to be Arts Coaches.

Then, the way that Arts Coaches works is, there's on-site collaboration between the classroom teachers and the teaching artists and the arts specialists. First of all, there are one or two planning sessions that they take part in. Then there are four classroom sessions. And within the four classroom sessions there is some choice of how they want to work together. The Arts Coach can do a demonstration lesson for the teacher. There can be team teaching happening. And in the third one, which is where we hope they're moving to, the classroom teacher would teach the arts-integrated lesson with the Arts Coach observing and gathering data. Then after each of the four classroom sessions there are reflection sessions, where they sit down, just like in a good mentoring or good peer coaching program, and they reflect on how it went in the classroom session. What were the effective instructional strategies being used in order to integrate the arts-integrated lesson or unit?

This is the first year of this program. There were six Arts Coaches that we had going out to five different schools. Some of them are still in the process, but we're learning a lot, as you always do in the first year of a program. So far, so good. It's really worked out well. It's something that we've always wanted to do as that extra follow-up, that going into the classroom to assist the classroom teacher. I think one of the reasons that it's been so successful is that it's entirely voluntary on the part of the classroom teachers. They're the ones who are saying, "Yes, I'd like an Arts Coach in my classroom. Here's what I want to focus on." We put together a little mini-brochure that had all of the Arts Coaches listed along with their areas of expertise, being very specific. So, for example, a teacher could say, "What I'm really interested in is that I want my kids to believe to compose songs about whatever." Well, they're the expert in whatever, but they need help in figuring how to help students compose songs. In our little brochure, they could figure out the expert who would be able to help them compose songs. So that's the Arts Coaches program.

STEPHEN HOCKETT: It's a positive spin on mentoring. One of my music teachers is an Arts Coach and he has done these sessions that Amy's talking about. He is also brought wonderful reasons to school. It also sets a mood for sharing information and relying on each other and working together.

We were talking about documentation and evaluation; we decided pick a few things that we learned. It does look different in every school. We know that this program looks like school it's in. We've had an increase in vertical team meeting and vertical planning. We've restructured our team meetings to a point where we've given one afternoon where the arts teacher specialists stay in one room and we are now rotating grade levels through to meet with them monthly, to make sure that they're dialoging and discussing. When you come to Hunters Woods, you might walk into the music room and think that you're going to walk into a general music class, and you'll see Mr. Ware teaching about the Revolutionary War and music objectives at the time. This has really had an incredible effect, with everybody taking responsibility for the education of all children.

I don't know how it is in your schools and I don't want to assume, but in elementary schools art and music is kind of a feel-good class and it should be, just like everything else, but it didn't really have the punch with parents. You talk to parents about what's going on in art or music and they're not quite as concerned as if you were to talk about was happening in math. So what we've done as a result of this is, in our school, we've communicated with parents about the importance of the arts, how we're using them, and the integration and curriculum delivery. And we explain that, if a project is due in music it's equally as important that that project be turned in and that homework be followed through on. And what has really happened is that, in a year, out of 857 kids, I've had two parents to be concerned about that. I got a call the other day from my boss who said a parent called and said your expectations were too high. And I said, if that's what they have to say then that's great. I'm glad. I don't have a problem with that. I attribute that to this type of instruction. What we're saying is that the arts specialists and classroom teachers and PEs, everybody is sharing responsibility today for all kids.

Just quickly, another piece that came out of this is museums. We've done museums all along. They were the third grade museum, ancient civilizations. They were the fourth grade museum, Virginia history. And we really changed as a part of CETA, and in the last two years, each year we've had a school theme. Last year it was "Change" and this year it's "Patterns." And we have all-school museums, and we have three of them. In not that everybody works, works, works for three weeks so that they have something to put up on the wall. We've found that through looking at our curriculum, if we do patterns, we might have "Patterns in Life." We have five galleries, and under those topics, you have something from every classroom that will fit in each gallery. And when parents come to the all-school museum, you have kindergarten parents looking at fifth grade work, and sixth grade parents looking at second grade work. In a school like ours — our center draws from six schools and our magnets, we have 29 school buses that come in, because they draw from all over the county — we've really been able to develop a true community, a school feeling, through this type of integration and all-school approach.

I want to just talk about a second about school system support. As we have proceeded through the program — we talked about learning through substitutes — in Fairfax, our fine arts director was really excited about our involvement. And so they started paying for our substitutes. That was at the beginning of the second year. At the end of the second year, Rogers decided that every department, you know, fine arts sometimes gets a little pot of gold that it can share during the year with the schools — and the philosophy always was, 132 elementary schools, we need to divide it evenly, give it to everybody evenly. And then he came to the realization that we've got these four schools that are really focused on integrating the arts and on improving the structure and delivery. And so they decided to give us more. As a result, the four of us get funding and some extra staffing to go even further than we could have even imagined, which is wonderful.

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ÉI believe in my heart that that's why our scores are going up and our kids are being successful. And then we've had a decrease in negative student behavior. Children are engaged and children enjoy learning and children are not being told to sit still in a chair and do timed math tests. Things are not compartmentalized; things are integrated so that it's making connections with what they are learning and its making sense. They are being successful, most importantly.

AMY DUMA: We have just a couple of minutes for questions. Do you have any questions that you would like to ask us?

How does our program compare to the Waldorf model? I would say it's very similar. The Waldorf model is very much integrating the arts. I would say, though, that I don't know the specifics enough of how they define arts integration per se — if their definition is the same as ours. But as you can tell, our definition is pretty broad. I would say that our two programs are very compatible.

Are we planning on expanding? Well, that's one of the big questions. What we're looking at for next year is possibly replicating CETA as a model program within some of the local schools. It's kind of an interesting process, because we started with these eight schools that were arts focus or arts magnet schools, and we started with them because they had this common belief that we had in arts integrating and the importance of arts in education. Now we have a waiting list of schools who are not necessarily arts focus or arts magnet schools but want to become part of CETA because they're seeing the results. So we are looking at possibly beginning the replication next year, but it would be local again before we go national.

STEPHEN HOCKETT: We talked about teacher leadership, I know that a number of my teachers who are part of this program have gone out to other elementary schools in the area and actually done in-service training, whether it's on curriculum mapping the arts coaching piece. I think your question probably referred to our formal expansion. But informally, we're certainly able to grow the philosophy.

AMY DUMA: One of the things, too, that are resources for you, if you're interested in starting something like this … We've shared with you the process of how we got going. If you were interested in doing something like this, you could follow that process as well. The other thing is that there are some national resources available through the Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center's website is up here. Another website is in your packet, which is the Arts Edge website that is again part of the Kennedy Center. On the Arts Edge website there are things like arts-integrated lessons and units that have been tried and tested by teachers. There are many sites where they choose a topic and they will pull together resources that explore that topic that have to do with the arts.

One of the reasons I mentioned the Kennedy Center site is because we've been doing professional development for teachers for 25 years. We finally got to the point where we could do something like CETA. It's a very slow process. But we also have national resources that are available. We have a brochure of some of our workshop leaders, who are available to tour across the country and to the kinds of workshops that we utilize within CETA. Those are the kinds of people that we utilized as we were doing the participatory workshops part of CETA.

We're also getting into what we call video workshop packets at the Kennedy Center. We have two of them that focus on how to integrate a particular art form with other subject areas. There's a videotape of either the workshop leader working with teachers in a workshops, or the workshop leader working with students in the classroom, showing how the arts integration strategies work. And there's a teacher's guide, too, that shows the process, and there's a facilitator's guide that goes with it for facilitators. If you wanted to bring together a group of teachers, you could do that. So we have one that is finished. It's called "Words Alive," and it's a creative way of getting kids engaged in developing their vocabulary, developing their writing skills. The second one that we're finishing, which will be done in the fall, is called "Living Pictures: Integrating Drama Across the Curriculum." It's about the drama strategy of tableau, and how you can integrate that strategy with visual arts, with language arts, and with social studies. We did taping at one of our CETA schools with the teaching artists working with groups of students from grades two through five. So there are some national resources available through the Kennedy Center site that would help you get started in something like this.

Thank you very much for joining our session today. We appreciate it.

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