The following text is from a conversation by Peralta Elementary School artists and teachers Calvert Hand, Pam Lucker, Trena Noval, Ellen Oppenheimer and Kelly Rozario, on April 1st, 2009, in response to the question: What skills, perspectives, values, and understandings will our students need to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future and how do we educate for success?:
Kelly: I use a lot of inquiry based learning in my classroom through art. It is a way I can always get buy in from my kids by starting with a place where they ask questions about what they see. An example? Currently we are studying the great depression and we did a gallery walk of images from the WPA photographers – Dorothea Lange and of musicians from that period like Duke Ellington and other famous people. We put up a gallery walk with these images on large boards around the classroom with space under the images for kids to write responses to what they were seeing. The kids walked around and added under each image what they saw, what they thought and what they wondered about the images -what was going on in them. We use this visual thinking protocol and looking at images of all kinds a lot to get our kids to talk about what they see and bring what they know to it – it opens up the door for learning and it peaks their interest. Looking at topics, history and ideas this way is interesting to me so it work for our kids – it gets kids to see details. In our gallery walk yesterday one of the kids wrote under the Dorothea Lange images “I see a poor man”. This opens the door for me to help him think deeper by asking “What do you see that tells you he is poor?” – it brings in other implications about what it means to be poor, which leads to compelling and inspiring conversations with my students.
Pam: I feel that art gets kids to really look at the world around them with new eyes. In order to solve problems our students need to be able to see what needs to happen around them. Our arts integration projects help get them to focus and really see the world as if for the first time – it gives them the opportunity to look at the world and really see the problems. With our project last year (looking at how the land in our community had changed over time) we had students look at the local environment 200 years ago, 100 years ago, today and what the future might look like – this project allowed students to envision what they wanted to see in their world in the future by looking carefully at history and studying their environment as it exists today.
Calvert: Art teaches kid to delve into the unknown – there is no absolute right answer. They are going to live in a world that we can’t even comprehend – they need to think on their feet and be able to solve problems. As teachers of this century it is hard for us to predict what they will need to solve and we have done too much rote instruction in educations – our students need to go far, far beyond that and that takes creative energy and thinking. Some of the ways we see arts teaching our kids to understand this is that it teaches them problem-solving skills, engages them and allows them to be persistent, be flexible, be creative and adaptable.
Kelly: Art allows you to look at the world in a new way so that you can appreciate it differently.
Calvert: The arts humanize all of us – sends a message to our students about their worth.
Pam: We have surrounded our kids with beauty on our campus and this in intentional, so that it can elevate their self-esteem. It is their own work that surrounds them, so it empowers them and makes them feel like they matter.
Calvert: Yes –these are the kinds of standards that we want our students to live with and rise to.
Ellen: The arts are also easily approachable for all different styles of learning. They provide different modalities for younger kids and give them very concrete and tackle ways to learn and develop.
Pam: Our approach to art at our school is central – as important as reading and writing.
Calvert: When kids come here they all can draw (this is how they start early on to communicate and express themselves) so we build on it and celebrate it and use it to teach them to read and write.
Ellen: Art is the thread that connects us all together.
Calvert: All arts, visual, performing, and literary are the historical map of how other generations have solved issues of their day and a way to reflect on what our issues are that we have to grabble with – these kids will do the same thing and when they grow up.
Trena: We need to make sure that we can find the resources and opportunities to keep arts alive in our schools since they are part of the whole. I believe this is one of our important challenges as advocates and activist for arts in the education. But this has not been an easy task. We need policy makers and a bigger audience to see what is possible through the arts to prove that what we believe about arts learning is true.
Pam: Collaboration is what makes my teaching get better. I teach in a deeper way, our artists add perspectives that I did not think about before. As a result the units I teach become deeper though collaboration.
Trena: Yes – this is what makes the arts integration so strong here is the collaboration. This not only deepens our understanding of what is possible in the classroom, but pushes us to be courageous – to push the boundaries of what has been done or what standards dictate that we teach. But I also believe that modeling collaboration becomes a problem-solving model for our students. They see their teachers working together through inquiry models to test the waters of what teaching can look like – to stretch beyond what we already know with a group of students and for all of us to move through territory together that we have not explored – this is when teaching gets really exciting for us as adults and when students respond in profound ways to the challenges they are presented with.
The world is big and full of challenges, and we need our children to grow up to be smart, confident and innovative thinkers.
