• University of Utah’s Marriott Library Book Arts Program for Teachers
• Peter and the Wolf
• Flight of the Bumblebee
• William Tell Overture
• Arts Express Summer Conference

Today’s guests are arts integrators in the research practice partnership through BYU and the Provo City School District: a visual art teacher, a teacher from a Title 1 school, and a teacher in a dual language immersion program (DLI). Welcome to Elicia Gray, Lisa Galindo, and Jennifer Hildebrand. To learn more about this research partnership, please listen to episode 28. 

(Elicia Gray) I'm Elicia Gray, and I teach K-12. I mostly spend my time at elementary school teaching art integrated with other subjects, but visual art is my primary subject. I was interested in this research project because I seek collaboration with other teachers who know more about science than I do. I wanted to understand authentic science connections that I could make with visual art projects in the classroom.

(Lisa Galindo) I'm Lisa Galindo. I teach third grade at Provo Peaks Elementary. I just finished my masters of STEM education. I have always loved the arts, was invited to the group, and want to learn how to integrate arts with STEM.

(Jennifer Heldenbrand) I'm Jennifer Heldenbrand and I teach sixth grade at Canyon Crest Elementary. I have been teaching for several years and have always enjoyed doing art projects with my kids, but wanted to have a better understanding of how to pull art and science topics together.  

(Tina McCulloch) Okay, well,  what a nice diversity of backgrounds. . All of us together really do have some interesting backgrounds. But also that idea of I can take my STEM core and add some arts or as Elicia says I can take my arts and add some STEM  into it. It's all for the betterment of our teaching and to engage our students. So I would just like you to share a story of an experience that you've had in your classroom where you engaged your students in an arts integration and what extra outcomes happened. Whether it was you got to know your students a little bit differently or the content really came alive.

(Jennifer Hildenbrand) Our class looked at the phases of the moon. One of the things that I did was show a picture of the moon, probably a vintage 1930’s or 1920’s picture of the moon, maybe with a scarf around its head as if it were not feeling very well and looking a little pensive. That visual opened the door to a lot of discussion. One student in particular said, “I think I'm seeing a crescent moon. I think it's a waxing crescent moon.” The class stopped and thought: “Where does this come from? What's giving you this idea?” There was a shadow around the edge of that picture that was able to help the student think through tha ideat. From there, we learned the moon phases; we talked about why they occur; and students’ questions became quite intricate. The students wanted to know more—they were practicing inquiry-based learning. From there, we created some lovely, cyclical books that allowed them to create their own version of the moon phases.

(Elicia Gray) I think people forget that artists and scientists have a lot in common. When I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my students, I tried to approach these scientific principles the same way as I would approach art principles. For example: “Let's discover something new. Let's notice something new. Let's try to solve a problem.” Both artists and scientists are problem solvers. 

During the unit on ecosystems, my students studied deep sea fish. We started with this question: “What would keep an organism alive in the deep sea?” I was really fascinated by the idea of bioluminescence. That's one of the fun things that I get to do as an art teacher: I get to just really explore something that I want to know about and then share what I find fascinating with the students. I wanted to learn about  bioluminescent fish: Why do they light up in the dark? What artistic principles would be similar to or evident in that process? 

We watched a lot of videos about what deep sea organisms did. We found out why they glow in the dark. Sometimes it was to attract food or to attract mates or to defend themselves. The fish had all these really interesting, different reasons why they would light up. I had the students design their own bioluminescent fish that reflected one or more of those survival adaptations. The students got to decide what parts of the fish would light up. Other considerations were the size of the fish, the environment it lived in, and how it survived.

After considering these factors and making these decisions, the students designed and painted their own fish. We painted with fluorescent things, fluorescent tempera paints, and anything that was fluorescent. We put them in a dark room and lit it with a black light, and it was bioluminescent! Just like it is in the deep sea. That was fascinating.

I loved seeing the kids' reaction to that moment when the lights went out: “Whoa!” That “A-ha!” moment of creative ownership is priceless as a teacher—”We made that! We did that!” More importantly, each artwork was completely different, because it was something that they invented. Each fish was based on scientific principles that help them understand how something would survive in an environment that the students are totally unfamiliar with. This project was a way to really just explore a different medium, try out something new, and students had a blast. Those peer-to-peer conversations were very rich, because the students had all that science evidence for the artwork they were seeing.

(Elicia Gray) We displayed their bioluminescent fish as part of an art show. Ironically, my art classroom is completely devoid of windows. It's black, it's a deep hole. It was perfect. I put a little label outside the classroom door and we called it “The Deep Sea.” The rest of the art show was in the hallway, the gym, and other open areas at the school, and we had arrows going to the deep sea. All the overhead lights were off, and we turned on the black lights to allow the kids and their families to enter the deep sea. It was a riot, they loved it, and so did I.

Parents were genuinely surprised their kids were learning something substantial in the art classroom. We research ideas, and we talk about really important things and students  are given an opportunity to solve real-world problems in a format that they design. It's a really creative space if we make room for it.

(Lisa Galindo)  As a generalist classroom teacher, I mostly focus on reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. My experience with integrating the arts  is typically a culminating activity at the end of a unit to show what we have learned. After reviewing the third-grade arts standards, I found a musical standard about composers and how they paint a picture with music and sound. I thought, “How could that tie into what we're learning in science or math?”

I remembered, “We're learning about animals.” I remembered listening to Peter and the Wolf as a child. The composer used music to show certain traits about the animals, a topic that fits in with our science exploration of animals: we are learning how these traits help animals survive, etc. A lot of kids aren’t exposed to classical music, so I turned it on. The students were so excited. They were so engaged. They exclaimed, “This is fun!” The video I played had orchestra members dressed up as the animal character their musical instrument was being represented by. I was surprised how excited they were to listen to it. We cut it into two days, because it was too long. The next day at the door they asked, “Are we gonna finish Peter in the Wolf?” 

“Yeah!” They were really excited.  

I said, “We will stop every once in a while and analyze what animal we hear.” 

“Well, that's the duck.” 

“What's happening?”

“He's swimming.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because of the sounds, they were really fluid and flowing.” 

“What is the bird doing?”

“Oh, he's chirping?”

“What makes you say that? How does the composer get us to think that the bird is chirping? What sounds do you hear? Or with the wolf? How do you know that’s the wolf?”

“Well, it has kind of scary low sounds, and it sounds really scary, right?”

After that, I gave them two pieces of music and had them draw a picture of what they were hearing, using visualization skills. The first one we did was the Flight of the Bumblebee. I didn't give away the title of the musical work. Next, we did the William Tell Overture. I wanted students to think of an animal that those pieces of music reminded them of. 

I was really surprised that only two students drew a bumblebee for the Flight of the Bumblebee. Others drew a rabbit, or a mouse, or a squirrel, or a bird. One student said, “I couldn't think of anything, any animal, but I thought of the wind. That music made me think of a wind storm.”

I said, “Why did you think of a wind storm?” 

He said,  “Because it was really fast and strong.” 

I said,  “I can see where you're coming from. I really like your windstorm.”

I told the students, “Nobody’s ideas are wrong.” Then, we listened again. This time I told them, “The name of this piece is Flight of the Bumblebee.” They responded with, “Oh my gosh, I can hear it. I can hear the wings flapping and buzzing.” 

We repeated the experience with the William Tell Overture. Several kids drew a picture of a horse. Several other kids drew pictures of other animals. I said, “You know, it's all your interpretation of what the artist is painting in your mind. Nobody's wrong.”

Seeing their engagement, excitement, and their artwork felt exciting. I thought, “Oh my goodness, there is a whole movie that deals with this! Fantasia.” Now they're really excited to see Fantasia. Maybe we'll turn off the video, just listen to the music, and students can practice more visualization through drawing pictures.

During these hands-on experiences in class, every student was engaged in the arts. During normal, non-integrated lessons, there are students who are not engaged. The arts allow each student an access point—there isn’t a wrong answer. Students are discovering in these learning inquiries that their opinions are valid, especially when they can point to evidence justifying their conclusions.

All three educators agree that Arts Express Summer Conference, an arts-integration professional development conference through the BYU ARTS Partnership, is the best way to get immersed in arts-integrated pedagogy. A two-day conference focused on building arts skills, collaboration, valuable keynotes, and renowned presenters make this conference the best value for summer professional development in the state. It takes place at the beginning of June. Tina explains, “As the school year winds down and you are completely out of “teacher energy,” this conference is such a good way to start off the summer and start planning excitedly for the following school year.” 

(Jennifer Heldenbrand)  Arts Express helps combat end-of-year rundown and gives me that kickstart to enjoy my summer.

(Elicia Gray) I feel like they pamper you. They treat you like you're a professional and they help you as an artist to really enjoy rich, professional experiences. The message and the atmosphere of the conference focuses on teachers nurturing their personal well-being through the arts as well. The conference teaches you how to teach arts integration to students and simultaneously offers teachers a really beautiful experience. It’s a personal and professional symbiosis.

(Jennifer Heldenbrand) I'll give you one more that I really enjoy. One of my passions is doing book arts, and the University of Utah’s Marriott library has a book arts program with a summer intensive for teachers. Recently the structure has changed to support shorter intensives throughout the school year. Learning how to put books together is a great skill as a teacher. My experiences with my students shows when we make books, that artifact is something they're going to keep and enjoy.

• Just do it: Jumping in is a great way to get started. If teachers feel daunted, ask for help. There are so many wonderful resources—arts educators are delighted to help teachers get going. But even if there isn’t an arts educator at your school, just jump in.
• Start with your interests. Whatever you’re fascinated by, that energy is going to infect your students. Find something that you really want to learn about and start there.
• Keep practicing: through the years you’ll get better and better.
• If something doesn’t work, revise! Change it! Try something else.

Jump in, and go for it. It’s normal to feel embarrassed or afraid about trying something new and not nailing it the first time. Modeling new skills is a great tool for teaching students to step outside their comfort zones and pass along our joy in learning to them. When our students succeed, we succeed. 

Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with you!

• BYU ARTS Partnership Newsletter
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Don't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade-level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

• The Arts Educate the Whole Child

“Being in the arts endorsement course saved my life.”

Marie Mattinson, visual arts educator at Edgemont Elementary School, is this week’s guest. Marie graduated with a bachelor's in psychology. She worked as a PE teacher and loved working as an aide for an autistic student. She completed the requirements for a teaching license while teaching part time (including special ed math, third-grade, and after-school programs). After teaching third-grade full-time for 12 years, Marie hit burnout because of testing and expectations. Colleagues

Lisa Gardner and Diane Ames convinced her to enroll in the BYU ARTS Partnership’s Arts Integration Endorsement program. “Being in the arts endorsement course  saved my life, really. I was happy again. I was happy to be with the kids and as I was happier, and we were creating things together in all art forms the kids were happy, and it created a cycle of everybody being better and happier.”

After being hired as a visual art teacher, Marie earned her master's in Art Education. She works to integrate science and math into the visual arts curriculum in all kinds of ways. Marie is a recent recipient of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson’s Legacy Award for Excellence in arts education for elementary visual arts instruction in the state of Utah.

Marie shares how the arts deeply impacted the learning of her own child: 
“My son was struggling with long-term memory, retrieval, processing and comprehension. His comprehension is really low. He has ADHD and I just watched him crumble as a first grader. As a second grader, he struggled to write and stay engaged; he hated school, he cried every day. PJ day was the best day because it was the one day we didn't have to have a tantrum about clothes. We had tantrums about everything else.

When he learned his vowels, he was in Miss Gardner's class. They learned through songs, so he can decode and read so well because of music. Then in third grade, our music teacher taught him multiplication through songs, and he can do multiplication because of songs. His French third-grade teacher used movement and dance, (she was also in the Arts Integration Endorsement class) and he learned French that way, because he's in the French immersion program. 

Then, I realized that I needed to be more patient and engage all the kids because if my kid was struggling, I needed to be a better teacher and be more patient. I watched him do so many things that he couldn't control. Instead of, ‘Why won't you just sit and listen?’ ‘Why won't you just do this?’ He can't. Before my lived experience with my son, I didn't realize that kids who struggle with ADHD and other things, they can't. They don't mean to be like that. Yet, the pedagogy that creates confidence in learning, connections, and success are the arts.”

Marie is passionate about educating the whole child. Students need to learn the skill of knowing how to care for other people, be empathetic and good listeners. Marie believes these skills are just as important as any academic curriculum you could ever put in front of them. Many lessons in her third-grade classroom focus on people: “Let’s look at cultures, let’s look at who is in our class. How can we learn more about them? How can we represent their beliefs and their interests in an authentic, empathetic way that celebrates them?” 

For example, including this social-emotional learning during math class: students can practice empathy and listening skills, collaboration skills. When students start breaking down or showing frustration because the math concept isn’t landing, teachers can help support that student’s emotions first, then work together on the math concept: “It all matters.”

Marie’s school is extremely diverse: the French dual-immersion teachers hail from Rwanda, Spain, Austria, Ukraine, Switzerland, Morocco, and two are from France; students are comprised of all different socio-economic backgrounds and neighborhoods, and include a lot of second-language learners, and students from Columbia, Brazil, Uruguay, Congo, and Haiti. 

Second graders are given a puzzle piece made from paper. They find out which country their ancestors came from. Students learn about their ancestors, where they came from: students find a picture of a monument or landmark from that country. Marie helps each of her 650 students—some of whom are first-generation immigrants—make a contour line of the monument on their puzzle piece, paint a value-scale, and fit all the puzzle pieces together. A discussion is next: “students talk about how different and diverse we all are, and yet! We all fit together, and we live together. We can share these great things with each other.”

Because Marie was first a classroom teacher before becoming a visual art educator, her collaboration with classroom teachers carries weight: “When I say, ‘I promise, trust me, this is going to work and it's going to engage your kids and you will be happier,’ teachers believe me. I do a lot of the work for them in the beginning. In fact, I dragged them. I've dragged a lot of people along. I'm happy to do it, because it takes a few years. I think one of the fifth-grade teachers, she took over one of the integrated projects that we'd been doing and did it on her own in her classroom. I mean, how great is that? She's doing it herself now.”

As the arts educator who chooses projects and curriculum and teaches visual art skills Monday-Thursday, sometimes teachers ask Marie, “Hey, we're learning this in science, do you think you could do that in your classroom? and I'll respond, “I'll see if I can fit it in, or no, we've got to do that on a Friday.” Fridays are for integrated projects—sometimes students spend two hours in the art room making clay ocarinas as part of an integrated project to complement the classroom curriculum.

Co-teaching is an effective way to integrate the arts with STEM: the classroom teacher reminds the students what was talked about in science or math and asks, “Why is that working?” Marie asks questions to relate the science or math topic to a visual art theme, so that the kids find the connections between the art and the science, or the art and the math.  

Marie explains the value of co-teaching, planning, and arts integration with STEM: “Why are we doing this? We could make a pretty picture if we wanted to, but that's not our goal. Our goal is to help students understand science. What is art doing to help you understand science or social studies? As other teachers see the artwork go up around the school, they talk and they're like, ‘How do we get in there? How do we get scheduled?’ And I say, ‘Well, we have to sit and plan because if we don't sit and plan, it ends up being me doing a whole bunch of extra artwork.’”

Professional development with arts integration strengthens student learning by cultivating arts skills and offering resources to teachers. The BYU ARTS Partnership sends a music educator, a drama educator, a dance educator, or a different visual art educator, to Marie’s school. The school’s teachers decide which units are not as strong or lacking some sort of integration with any art form. We send those ideas to those arts educators and they come with prepared lessons and ideas on how to integrate those. The arts educators work with each and talk them through the lesson and help create the unit’s lessons. The educators practice the lessons so that the classroom teachers feel more confident. Ideas start flowing from the teachers: “Oh, maybe I could do this!” “This gives me a little bit of a start.” The best part about this process is that the classroom teachers didn't have to come up with it all on their own, since classroom teachers are always short on time. The synergy among the classroom teachers, whole grade-level teams, and the arts educators creates a beautiful synergy of ideas and a product that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Amy Rosenvall is the district science educator who is part of this research. Amy says, “Well, the science piece actually means this. So how can we really make it authentic science and art?” So integration isn’t, “Here's this art project that represents the science, but the art is actually doing the science.”

For Marie’s master degree, she created a capstone study focusing on the ecosystems unit from the sixth-grade curriculum. She integrated every art form into that entire unit. Marie explains: “The data showed 100% engagement, every single time, whenever we integrated with an art form. This is a class that had 70% low economic status, seven IEPs out of 18 students, three students with autism. I think maybe three were gifted, which has their own needs to be challenged. So very, it was a really challenging class with 100% engagement. One particular student struggled with depression—his head was down on the desk all the time. Yet, he danced with Mr. Roberts, he painted with me, he did music with Mrs. Lee, and he did drama with Mr. Roberts. Even if the effort had been to engage this one depressed student, it is totally worth it.” 

Marie shares a story about her experience with an art form she isn’t strong in: “In the Arts Integration Endorsement, I loved the singing—I struggle with singing, I'm not confident. I remember one time when I was teaching third grade, I was trying to teach my students a song. They said, “Mrs. M, can you just go get the music teacher?” I was like, “No, thanks a lot.” I remember Jen Purdy saying “You don't have to sing to do music.” That gave me confidence. Likewise, dance and drama don’t have to be a production. The integration endorsement was eye-opening: I learned to engage people in all the art forms without having expertise in all the art forms. When my students learned about ecosystems with the music, they didn't sing, they followed the flow of energy while Mrs. Lee ate a piece of cheese, drank some water, started playing her cello, and began walking around. It was incredible. Then students played the cups and did rhythms. Arts integration is much more than just being an expert in one form of art.

Because arts integration can create 100% engagement in the classroom, students deserve the arts. They deserve engaged learning—not the non-interactional learning that happens when reading a book and answering questions on a Chromebook—but the kind that happens when the class reads together and has a discussion, the kind that happens when Marie’s daughter sits in the backseat of the car and says,  “Mom, did you know this about molecules?” And I was like, “How did you know that?” Because Mr. Robertson taught us and we were bumping around and we were doing that.” This is the kind of learning that fills students’ cups, reduces isolation, increases engagement, and creates shared learning. The arts are socially interacting, collaborating, letting us see our humaneness.  

Marie tells a story of collaborating with a former middle-school math teacher who came to elementary school because of licensing issues. This teacher had taught only math for years and years. Marie explains: “She was terrified of literacy and I said, ‘No, no, literacy can be fun. I also struggled in the beginning. But teaching can be fun. We just need to integrate.’ She said, ‘I don't know…What about Disney shorts? Those are empathetic. They always have a lesson and they're engaging. They're colorful, you can teach all of the art forms, and you can get so much out of literacy.’  After watching the shorts, I came in and I taught and the class did a mind map of three different Disney shorts. Then she just said, ‘I didn't know literacy could be fun for me. This is the first time this entire year I've been excited to come to school. Because I can't wait to share this with the kids. And it's fun. It's a fun way to do literacy.’

How to mind-map:

• Mind Mapping with Tony Buzan (video)
• Mind Maps for Kids: An Introduction (book)
• The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Unlock Your Brain’s Untapped Potential (book)

Disney short films for mind-mapping:

• Lou (requires fee to watch)
• For the Birds

Disney is good at making social issues feel applicable and personal—students can empathize with topics like a lost sweater in “Lou.” Incorporating media arts into literacy and social-emotional learning becomes easy when difficult topics become humanized and real. Marie recounts that the teacher struggling with literacy felt surprised that sixth-graders could discuss topics like these, and Marie reminds listeners that third-graders are capable of meaningful conversations about difficult social topics, because it helps them become better people. Tina recalls that a professor of hers “never calls them children, instead she says they're ‘little humans.’ 
They are little and we're all having this experience together. What a beautiful way to think about that.”

Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with you.

• BYU ARTS Partnership Newsletter
• AdvancingArtsLeadership.com
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Don't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade-level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

• Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie
• Visual Thinking Strategies
• Critique as a part of Visual Thinking Strategies

Don’t forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

Heather Francis and Tina McCulloch discuss a specific arts strategy that Tina uses to help her students substantively inquire about different scientific phenomena. 

As a classroom teacher, Tina was experiencing rapid changes in classroom education: new theoretical models, new curricular materials, new state standards; she noticed herself and others losing their teaching identity. Arts integration proved a lifesaving practice. Her goal for this podcast series is to create a comfortable environment for teachers to move forward in STEM and inquiry-based learning through the arts. 

In 2015, Utah adopted new SEEd standards for the K-12 classroom. The rollout for materials distribution and testing has been slow: state standards testing for fourth and fifth grades didn’t occur until 2021. 

Previously, teaching STEM was based on a more formulaic model: teach facts, present worksheets, answer multiple-choice questions. The teacher presented content and found out what the students’ misconceptions were, then planned another lesson to correct learning or memorize new facts.

Now, students lead the investigation: they ask questions, create their own models, and the teacher facilitates class discussions. Students and teachers are both uncomfortable; the teachers’ instinct is often to jump in and try to rescue the struggling student, but the value of inquiry-based learning rests in the process of student exploration, struggle, perseverance, discovery, and making connections as a class.

To get started with SEEd concepts, teachers can ask students:

• “What are you curious about?”
• “What questions do you have?”
• “How can we construct knowledge together?”

Tina shares an example of her experience teaching to the new standards using the principle of presenting a phenomena. She explains:

“I showed them this flash flood coming down. People could hear it and they could hear the rumble. They knew that it had rained and you could hear the people talking in the background. Then the flash flood comes through carrying big tree trunks or rocks and just muddy, muddy water. My students didn't understand why that was such an unusual event. They didn't understand what precipitated it and why it was flowing the way that it was flowing; they had never been witness to this type of event. The video wasn’t enough—the students didn’t have enough context and experience to understand the magnitude of what it means to witness a flash flood. Yet, for the people down in San Juan County—and only one of my students who had hiked in that area and seen one—they see flash floods often. So when those flash flood warnings come out of those slot canyons, it's an important thing to make sure you know. So that's when I thought, “Oh, I really have got to come local,” and find better phenomena for my students to see by using events they could witness right here in their backyard that would drive their questions.”

Tina brought the phenomena home by incorporating the knowledge that many of her students’ fathers are involved in construction. She drew their attention to the east bench of the Wasatch mountain range by showing a news clip of a new-build home that slid off its foundation and landed in the street. She also shared how a local high school is sliding off its foundation every year that it’s a wet winter—it’s being rebuilt now. Her students realized that that’s the high school they will attend. Linking two local events that directly impacted her students’ lives made the difference for their learning. The questions began: “‘Now, Mrs. McCulloch, we live down here in the valley. We're okay. Right, my house isn't gonna slide if I leave the garden hose on?”

“I said, “No, your house isn't gonna slide.” Then we talked about why their home was safe. As we finished the whole unit, one kid said, “I'm always going to make sure that I never live on a mountainside.”’

Moving from earth science phenomena—a topic where students can clearly understand the impact—to other types of science proved tricky to maintain a high level of student curiosity. Often, phenomena were just a picture students would observe. 

Tina explains: “The last one I had was looking at a patch of grass, a single blade of grass, then grass underneath a microscope. I got very generic, boring answers (green, green and pointy, maybe three inches long). I wanted them to go deeper. They needed to go deeper. But I, as a facilitator, did not know how to do that.”

Students’ uncertainty played a role in their silence—students don’t want to let their peers know that they don’t know, even as teachers work to increase the equity in classrooms, encourage every voice, and validate each comment. Students want to have divergent views, as well as convergent views. 

Uncomfortableness is something that we need to become comfortable with. Teachers can learn to facilitate discussion, which becomes a rich opportunity for students to develop a whole bunch of inquiry-based questions: “How do we figure out how this phenomenon works?” Allow students to take their own questions and solve that scientific problem. In each classroom space, teachers can make sure students know that it is acceptable to throw out any idea and access your own schema, or reference the evidence in the picture or video by saying what you see.

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) help take students out of a scripted, right-or-wrong answer framework into a place of imagination and critical thinking. Typically used with works of art, Tina used VTS to create a bridge between observing artwork and studying science phenomena. 

To warm students up, Tina used Visual Thinking Strategies with Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, creating a great discussion in the classroom. Topics of discussion included agreeing to disagree, building curiosity and practicing observational skills. Students can use sentence stems, like “I noticed,” or “I think,” and then another person will make a connection with that and say, “Oh, and I see.” 

Philip Yenawine, an art educator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, began bringing in classes of patrons and students to view curated artworks. Together with a cognitive psychologist, Abigail Housen, Philip developed Visual Thinking Strategies. This series of open-ended questions expand students’ interpretation of artwork. Using Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie as an example, the class discussion might look like this (teacher-asked questions are bold; potential student answers are italicized):

“What do you see?” 

(Crickets)

“Anybody, what do you see?”

“I see some yellow and red squares.”  

“I see some blue and black lines.” 

“I see some big blotches of colors.”

“What makes you say that?” 
(Students get more descriptive in their answers)

“I think it looks like city streets.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, it looks like all those red and yellow, small squares are at intersections.”

“What more can we find?”

(This passes the question baton to a different student, inviting someone else to share their observations. At the very beginning, this process can be really slow (and uncomfortable). Teachers need to wait for students to answer. As Tina explains, “All of a sudden, once students realized I'm just paraphrasing what they're saying, they're getting more and more accepting of divergence.”)

“I wonder…”

(This bridges the gap between VTS in art and VTS in science phenomena.This question helps ready students to take the next step once they are facing a science phenomena question. Visual art is a comfortable place to start using VTS and practicing classroom dialogues; once science phenomena are introduced, teachers can use the same questions to guide students toward self-directed inquiry and investigation.)

Students move from ‘reading’ a work of art toward ‘reading’ a phenomena. Here’s what that looks like in Tina’s classroom: When observing water condensation, students really couldn't see what it was. Tina asked “What do you see?” and always followed up with “What makes you say that?” with the same student who offered an observation. This helps students think deeply about the why, create a “because” statement, and generate text evidence for their observational claim. After observations are made, teachers use reflective listening to paraphrase student statements—this helps the rest of the class understand what others observed, if they couldn't hear them that well, and it validates students’ observations.

Visual Thinking Strategies are most effective in an environment of non-judgement. This means that when students offer an idea, value-laden statements like, “That’s right!” “Good job!” are less effective in spurring a whole-class discussion. Validating students’ ideas looks like repeating back to the student what they said and adding, “What makes you say that?” This non-judgemental approach encourages all students to participate. In order to pass the baton to the next student, teachers can say, “Now, what more can we find?” and another student will speak. This strategy allows the eager students to talk, then after they have had a chance, the more reticent students will start talking. Tina reiterates the importance of teachers waiting: “If you are smart enough, you'll just pause. Usually, you can get that one reluctant speaker to finally make a comment, because he's been thinking this whole time. He's learning his voice is valid. Then, offer “Now, what do you wonder?”

Works of art are created from an artists’ individual interpretation of their lived experience—science can be more straightforward and less open to interpretation. What happens when students offer a unique interpretation of a phenomena? Unlike a work of art, is there a right interpretation of a scientific phenomena?

Phenomena offer an anchor during the VTS discussion: the focus of the conversation is for students to direct their inquiry in uncovering what actually happens with the phenomena. At the outset, yes, students may have lots of misconceptions. Students will need to come up with some ways to test those hypotheses. The inquiry comes from the students’ observations, ideas, and questions, guided by teacher questions like these:

• What would we need to study?
• What kind of texts would we need?
• Or what kind of experiments are we going to need to perform in order to figure out how this really, really works?

When considering a phenomena like density (and what happens in real life when putting a Gatorade or soda bottle in the freezer), students can think about questions like these: “What does density really mean?” “Is density the same as weight?” When Tina showed students a glacier, students can see that giant ice floes are mostly sunken in the water. A student observed, “So it's definitely very dense. It's denser than water.”

Another student made a connection: “We just did history and learned about USS Arizona, and how it's in Pearl Harbor. The ship sank…but how can it float?... but it sank.”

These kinds of observations are exactly what teachers want students to think about when exploring the world like a scientist.

Next week, tune in for an episode featuring Mr. Dance, an instrumental figure in thousands of people’s lives, nationally and locally. He integrates dance and science, dance and mathematics, into classrooms. Recently, he produced the Provo City School District dance concert. Some listeners in our BYU ARTS Partnership community know who Mr. Dance is. Listeners who don’t know—come and listen next week! You won’t want to miss getting to know Mr. Dance.

Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with you! 

• Native American Curriculum Initiative Mailing List
• BYU ARTS Partnership Newsletter
• AdvancingArtsLeadership.com
• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on Spotify
• Subscribe on Amazon Music 
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Pinterest

Don't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade-level, art form, or subject area at 

www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons

• Rocky Mountain Arts and STEM Think Tank

**Listeners, take note: this is not a STEAM podcast series, but a series of episodes focused on STEM and the arts.

Today’s host Heather Francis, with co-host Tina McCulloch, introduces a series on STEM and the Arts. This podcast is important because teachers need practical, applicable examples of what STEM plus the arts or the arts plus STEM look like in the classroom. The experts and teachers in this and future episodes offer insight and experience to our listeners.
Dr. Heather Leary is today’s guest and is a professor in the Instructional Psychology and Technology department at Brigham Young University. This episode explores the distinctions of STEM and the arts, and discusses Dr. Leary’s collaborative STEM and arts project.

Tina is an elementary school teacher with 13 years of experience who integrates the arts into her classroom because the arts create connection, are part of her teaching persona, and help students “recognize the interconnectedness of our learning.” 

Dr. Leary has a bachelor's degree in fine arts and began her career as a photographer. Over time, her STEM-focused personal and professional lives overlapped (doing research, working with classroom teachers, and doing professional development). STEM offers a powerful, systemic way to consider content, think about critical thinking and problem solving: STEM is a holistic and simultaneously fun, creative, and engaging approach to learning.

Integrating STEM with the arts helps teachers move towards transdisciplinarity, or emphasizing the natural connections and overlap from arts into science, arts into math, and arts into technology. 

Arts + STEM ←→ STEM + Arts

The relationship between STEM and the arts is symbiotic: the relationship goes both ways. Classroom teachers can integrate the arts into STEM-based content, and arts teachers can include science, math, engineering and technology into their lessons. Arts educators do just as much as STEM in art classrooms, and not in a superficial way, but in a powerful way—these connections show up in very deep, problem-solving ways, compelling teachers and students to think critically. The arts aren’t limited to just visual arts, but include all the art forms—theatre, music, dance, visual—and choosing an appropriate artform can support students as they work through problems.

As a dance math teacher, Heather Francis describes an example of a classroom application for using dance as a way to teach mathematical patterning to build the skill of mathematical visualization. 

In practical terms, students’ math problem might be: given the length of a flagpole’s shadow, calculate the length of a flagpole. Students likely have difficulty understanding that a flagpole has a shadow. Teachers can choose the artforms of visual art and/or dance: students can draw a flagpole and include its shadow, and/or perform shadow dances. This practice of artform-based patterning translates into larger applications, when students have their own interesting problem due to their experience with an art process informing their mathematical learning and the math informing their creative expression.

The SEEd standards are the new science standards for Utah elementary schools. The greatest influence in the classroom is the teacher, so effective professional development for teachers really spreads to the students. Dr. Leary describes how her research-practice collaboration with Provo teachers is influenced by the district’s emphasis on STEM education. 

STEM + the arts are mutually inclusive. Together with Dr. Leary, the arts and classroom teachers are exploring and defining what SEEd-focused teaching looks like using STEM and the arts. They have identified the following needs

1. Teachers need to understand the SEEd standards.
2. Teachers need collaboration to create arts adaptations to SEEd-focused lesson plans.
3. Teachers need continued support as they work to implement the STEM and arts lesson plans.

Teachers ask questions like these:

• How can I integrate this using _____art form?
• What are the standards I am responsible for?
• When do the SEEd standards overlap with the arts standards?

In order to build capacity for teachers and develop students’ skills and knowledge, Dr. Leary and the classroom and arts teachers collaborate to design and implement lesson plans, and collect data from these classrooms. This research-practice partnership is unique because it brings together teachers from different schools and different grade levels. Tina McCulloch works with Dr. Leary both as a classroom teacher and as a graduate student project manager, experiencing the project from both lenses.

Their project is a design-based research project. In design-based research, the practitioner and the researcher work together. The practitioner’s experience changes over time, and is used as a foundational place for theory development, resource creation, future research questions, and necessary shifts for application and practice. Considering the needs of classroom teachers is essential for a participant like Tina, who participates in this research as a practitioner (teacher) and researcher.

This research collaboration began in 2019, with Dr. Leary initiating conversations with three classroom teachers and one art teacher. These simple but powerful conversations, which offered these educators time and space to think deeply about the intersection of STEM and art, and what they could do, created an impetus for more collaboration.

Dr. Leary describes how teachers are really hungry to learn how they can do more transdisciplinary work. Teachers want to be able to teach in a very authentic, real-world, holistic way: when students walk out into their communities, they hear things, see things, and interact with things, and can start to form a larger, comprehensive perspective and picture of the world: “The world isn't just math, or just science, or just engineering, or just art or just technology, right? All of the disciplines are necessary for something to happen.”

This STEM + arts research work is designed to help teachers create that learning environment, that curiosity, that transdisciplinary approach to seeking information. STEM + the arts is a way to do that; it’s an iterative way to teach: learning by doing, making mistakes, creating a growth mindset with curious thinking and skills development.

Elementary SEEd standards are designed so that third grade aligns with fifth grade; fourth grade aligns with sixth grade. Teachers from these aligned grades talk to each other with these questions in mind:

• As a sixth-grade teacher, what do fourth graders learn that I can expect to build on?
• What should students know by fifth grade?
• As a fifth-grade teacher, how can I support your work with third-grade students?

Cross grade-level communication is essential for building teacher collaboration and laying a foundation for efficient teaching and supporting student success in their inquiries.

District support also means that teachers who have never talked with their arts coach, or art educator, or the science educators, are now having productive and meaningful conversations and input about long-term planning and overall learning goals. 

A teacher in Provo District has a master's degree in STEM. At first, her approach to the new SEEd standards looked like this: “I know all about how to do the engineering process and how to have this phenomenon in my classroom.” Soon, she realized, “they [my students] need something more.” As a member of the STEM + arts research partnership, she understood that the ‘something more’ was the arts, but she had no idea how to implement the shift toward the arts. As she continued learning about arts integration, and because of the arts skills she learned because of her involvement with the partnership, she said, ““Now I can do a little bit more.” 

When Tina came into her classroom, she said, “Look what my kids did!”

They had done some watercolor painting of clouds. She said, “Because you were willing to show me what wet-on-wet looks like, and how to put some dry brush in there, and then how to sponge some parts off, we have this wall where the kids can talk about their cloud formations and they refer to it all the time.” 

The best part? The students want more. They are asking when the class will be doing the next arts-integrated activity. Because of this small success, this teacher has an intrinsically-motivated drive to learn more and invest more fully in deep learning through STEM + arts.

More on this idea of reciprocal symbiosis: Teachers are creating momentum by gaining new dispositions and realizing opportunities to access the full capacity of their school’s arts educator through artful conversations, opening the door to an arts-integrated curriculum: when classroom teachers get support from the art educator in their school, they work together to build a strong foundation of positive momentum for both other teachers and the art educator. These relationships and conversations are effective because they create multi-lateral momentum and movement: not just change from the top-down, but also—and more importantly—a bottom-up and multidirectional ribbon of change that creates sustainable longevity. Just like STEM + Arts ←→Arts + STEM, teachers + arts educator ←→ arts educator + teachers. 

In order to create longevity, support for the teachers, and grassroots change in pedagogical practice, Provo City School District had to be included: the district needed more effective ways of teaching STEM content (because of the updated SEEd standards), and teachers were starved for holistic ways to effectively teach to students’ curiosity. These related needs created an ideal environment for research and conversations among administrators and teachers about the how.

The district provides essential backbone support by assisting with dissemination—reaching a much broader audience than just three classroom teachers and one art teacher—which creates an added element of sustainability: a  district-supported partnership system that facilitates teacher growth and student achievement. Because district resources and personnel are built into the infrastructure of the research project,

• teachers are more likely to collaborate with each other;
• teachers are getting support from peers and administrators; and
• teachers are more willing to try new strategies, practices, and take risks and get better and better at new arts + STEM skills

A few years into this process, progress is evident because teachers have tried new approaches and lesson plans, they are learning and growing, and ready to share their experiences with other teachers, creating change at a district level.

This research partnership’s structure is unique because it covers both sides of the design-based research experience: the practitioner (teacher) side—what works in the classroom? How can we improve student learning and teacher practice by integrating STEM+Arts?; and, the research side—how is what teachers are experiencing useful for future design-based research projects?  What can we change about the structure of these conversations to improve efficacy for teachers?

Tina emphasizes how an informal learning setting—like this podcast—is an opportunity for a teacher to listen to it in the car on the way to school and maybe become inspired; maybe hear something; maybe go to the show notes and think, “I am going to dip my toe in. I am going to be brave, and I'm going to try something new.” Our hope and passion is that STEM + Arts ←→Arts + STEM series allows teachers a little bit of freedom to innovate, because the intersections of STEM + Arts really  

build critical-thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration skills. These are 21st century skills. We encourage other teachers to walk alongside us as we work to support students to be producers and creators. 

The collaboration between Dr. Leary and the teachers in Provo district is an open space: join the conversation now! The Rocky Mountain Arts + STEM Think Tank meets monthly, and is hoping to expand to include any teacher.

Goals for monthly conversations include:

• Tried-and-true classroom lesson plans/teaching techniques presented by teachers
• Question time/collaboration time
• Planning time/collaboration time
• Report back on trying something new in the classroom: refine, revisit, revise.

Reach out to Dr. Heather Leary ([email protected]) or Tina McCulloch ([email protected]) if you’re interested in joining the think tank!

Look forward to hearing from:

• Mr. Dance offers his experiences helping teachers integrate dance into science and mathematics.
• A classroom-teacher-turned-art-teacher integrates STEM into art and helps classroom teachers improve their art knowledge.
• A district arts coach shares ways he supports art educators to understand how classroom teachers are using SEEd standards
• Participants from the research partnership share how feelings and stories about this year’s STEM + Arts ←→ Arts + STEM journey.

Stay tuned for next time, and follow us on social media @everychildeveryart.
Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with you

• Native American Curriculum Initiative Mailing List
• BYU ARTS Partnership Newsletter
• AdvancingArtsLeadership.com
• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on Spotify
• Subscribe on Amazon Music 
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Pinterest

Don’t forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

• Elementary Lenses of Integration & Visual Arts
• SEEd Science Standards One-page Summary 
• Elementary Lenses of Integration Music
• Elementary Lenses of Integration Drama
• Elementary Lenses of Integration Dance
• Elementary Lenses of Integration ALL FINE ARTS
• Draw the Name of Your Favorite Animal Lesson Plan

The last episode featured Mr. Dance, Provo City School District’s Arts Coach. This time, we highlight the Alpine School District. Bob Smith works with all the district’s arts educators in all 62 elementary schools. Arts coaches support these teachers in their development and growth and coach classroom teachers who are new to the arts. Coaches like Bob help teachers understand meaningful ways that they can connect to their students through the arts.

Like Mr. Dance, Bob stumbled into the arts. His teammate said, “Hey, the principal signed me up for this weird program. It's got a lot of art stuff, I don't really understand it. Would you take it for me?” Bob came to the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts Academy and “found [his] people.” 

“We were drawing, we were dancing and singing and playing drums, and connecting to a really awesome curriculum. At the same time, we were diving into books, looking deeply into science, exploring different social studies topics, all in day one at the Arts Academy, and I was hooked.” 

Bob finished the Arts Integration Endorsement and continues his work with the BYU ARTS Partnership. 

The arts enlivened Bob as a teacher and after-school musical theater program director. He has always used the arts in his teaching: turning on music for writing, drawing every day—discovering a whole group of people who were teaching in an arts-integrated way, helped him become a better teacher and then a coach.

Only half of Alpine schools are privileged to have the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Progra, grant. In order to increase access to the arts, Bob creates simple resources that teachers can easily see, connect with, understand and apply to  transform their classroom.

Bob creates lesson plans, sends them through the arts teachers, and sends an invitation to classroom teachers to co-teach with Bob in their classrooms. For example, recently he sent out a lesson called “Draw the name of your favorite animal” with an invitation: “If you would like me to come and demonstrate this for you in your classroom, send me an email.” Since then, and after visiting five or six schools, similar projects in other classrooms are popping up. Other teachers are emailing, “We decided to take it on.” “We decided to give it a try.” Find the lesson plan here.

Bob describes the magic that happens in these art rooms and these dance and music and drama rooms. Someone who is trained in art forms—like dance, music, drama, and visual arts—can make magic almost effortlessly. The Arts Integration Endorsement offers teachers just enough to know it's important to know that it can be magic, but when they get back to the classroom by themselves, it feels… “Oh, what did they say?” “What did they do?”  “What was that exactly? I don't know that I'm super skilled yet.” 

Making bite-size chunks means that integrating the arts feels easy to use: draw every day! Turn on a video tutorial—teachers don’t have to be an artist or the teaching artist for this skill—students can work on developing hand-eye coordination, creating visual connections to a topic, and from there teachers can move right into writing. Instead of only drawing on Fun Friday, begin each week with a meaningful drawing project centered on a learning topic for the week, and add details to it every day. Then, when the class gets to Friday, students can write a paper about the week’s topic. Because they will have drawn out connections already, students will have so much more to write about. 

STEM means that teachers demonstrate the inherent overlap between multiple content areas: students really understand the application of math, they can visualize effects of science on evolving societies, they can comprehend a cause and effect visually and environmentally. By adding the arts to those content areas, connections light up. 

Teachers can give students an arts tool and a topic to discuss or explore or create. For example: when studying measurement, teachers can help students incorporate math through musical rhythms or visual patterns; incorporate science as students define words and sing vocabulary. The arts enliven STEM.  STEM subjects are inherently creative: adding the arts creates added value to understanding STEM. 

Building arts skills helps students think about questions like, “How can I represent this idea?” “How can I show my thinking?” “What tools can I use to communicate my ideas to others?” These are 21st century skills: successful adults are able to represent their ideas and communicate them with others. 

Bob shares an important example about his experience coordinating with his science team about the new SEEd standards in Utah: “Many of the arts integrators who are doing amazing arts integrated projects were curious about the alignment. ‘Can I still do landforms with fourth grade?’ So I asked our science educator, “Break these down for me.” And she started breaking them down. I still kept thinking, Oh, this is like 100 pages of standards. So I kept working, breaking it down until I just had a one page summary of each grade’s science curriculum. I put the science standards side-by-side with that grade’s arts standards, so now teachers can see a clear summary of the big objectives of the SEEd and arts standards alignment.”

Bob offers a single takeaway for teachers regarding SEEd standards: choose a specific phenomenon and use the arts to explore it. For example, look at animals that change color and ask a question.

• “What's the science behind it?”
• “What meaning is there behind it?”
• “How can we capture that and represent different aspects of that in the art form?”

Once students find their passion, curiosity, and excitement and after they have “embraced it in their body through movement or through drama, through visual art, or singing about this interesting thing,” teachers can add in the teaching elements.

Bob explains, “Share those big rocks and those big essential standards that you are trying to really hit home in your classroom with your arts educator. The job of your arts teacher is to build skills in your students. In your collaboration with them, the arts teacher will make visible what your students are capable of in that art form. Then you are going to see some natural connections.”

He continues, “It's so amazing to see principals giving time to the arts educators to collaborate with the classroom teachers. If you're a classroom teacher who wants the support of an arts teacher, or an arts teacher who wants to connect more deeply in the classroom, make a plan together. Talk to your principal and say, “Can we set up a regular time to meet so I can check in regularly to see how my kids are evolving in this art form in the art room.” When the arts educator and classroom teacher have that opportunity for side-by-side time, they can really make it purposeful with these big rocks—the essential standards—to really make connections and nail inquiry-based learning for the students.

Bob shares an example of what this arts collaboration looks like using the SEEd phenomena of rocks. For example, a classroom teacher wants to use watercolor for different types of rock like sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. This teacher thinks, “Watercolor would be a great way to explore a type of rock. But I don't have time to teach them how to watercolor. That will take extra time.” The arts educator can (or already has) built those skills in the visual arts classroom, then the classroom teacher can get right to the integration part because those art skills are already the foundation for the exploration. 
A Story of How the Arts in the Classroom Allow Teachers to Truly See a Student's Point of View 

The arts are fun, plain and simple. For example, put a box of scarves in the middle of the classroom: colorful, beautiful scarves. Teachers can say, “Kids! Explore these for just a minute.”  Students fiddle with it for just a second. Pretty soon, they're tossing it high in the air and catching it, and laughing and giggling.

Then teachers can say, “Now, I want you to show me the water cycle through these scarves.” Or, “I want you to show me the plant life cycle through these scarves.”

Bob shares what might happen: “Students look at this play thing. They have to reimagine it as a seed, a sprout, a leaf, a flower; or they have to somehow turn it into clouds, precipitation, rivers and oceans. That critical thinking is huge. But it's fun! It's so amazing to see teachers light up when their kids get it when they are smiling and having fun and creating and coloring and they're having a blast.”

The arts are good for the soul. In Bob’s words: “I was sharing drawing skills and telling teachers to ‘Draw with your kids all the time!’ One teacher did a typical Valentine's activity. Each student had a paper heart. Inside the heart, the teacher wanted them to draw meaningful things: what the students loved, what they cared about. The teacher drew her dog, she drew her kids, she drew her family, she drew her favorite place to go. She told her first-grade kids to ‘Go ahead!’ 

A boy started scribbling black and brown.

He was always the kid who was told,  ‘Be quiet.’ ‘Stop touching other things.’ ‘Stop touching your neighbor.’ ‘Sit back down in your seat.’

The teacher was really close to telling him to stop, get a new paper, you're doing it wrong. But! She had learned from watching her school’s art teacher to ask the kids to give a description. For example, ‘So, tell me about your work.’

And she said to this student using black and brown inside his Valentine’s heart, ‘Okay, talk to me about how you're coloring yours.’

And he said, “I'm coloring like this because that's what's in my heart. Everybody hates me and everybody thinks I'm doing a bad job.”

Her heart broke. She realized, ‘Yeah, I have been doing that.’

That boy’s permission to express himself with just a few crayons and a drawing allowed his teacher to see into her student, looking beyond the walls that sometimes show up as rambunctious energy and misbehavior. She saw a kid who just wants to connect with people. The arts are a tool for social emotional learning, good for our emotional well-being, and are a safe space to express ourselves.”

These stories illuminate the way that the arts play a role in teachers’ authentic assessment of students’ personal needs and their academic journey. Through student drawings, tableaus, movement, written words, and the songs that they create and sing, students show how they’re doing, what they need socially, and how they grasp the standards. This relational, observational data that really helps teachers capitalize on student needs.

The arts give teachers permission to let children be children and explore. Teachers guide explorative learning by introducing a purpose. Students can work on interpretation and the expression of learning. 

Often teachers say, ”Oh, we don't have enough time to do art.” Bob tells them, “You don't have enough time not to do art.” Here’s why: the accelerated learning that happens when teachers bring the arts in—and the connection that sticks with kids—is going to stay with them so much longer than mere regurgitation. Reminding teachers that the arts are not one more thing, but a different, beautiful way to teach that gets students excited, allows for play, and allows for creating and learning in a meaningful way.

Bob concludes: “We look at programs that need our attention: literacy, math skills. But if we really look at the heart of where students are actively engaged, really paying attention, and excited about what they're learning, it's in the arts rooms. When we find that beautiful balance of building students’ skills in the arts room, helping the classroom teachers see those arts skills that their students now have and giving teachers a few tips on how to employ that skill—then, classroom learning happens on a deeper level. That’s a win.

Share this podcast with colleagues! Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with you.

• BYU ARTS Partnership Newsletter
• AdvancingArtsLeadership.com
• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on Spotify
• Instagram
• Facebook

• The Brain Dance by Anne Green Gilbert
• Utah Teaching Artist Roster
• Building an Arts-Rich School
• Performances & Exhibitions
• First Steps in Teaching Creative Dance to Children by Mary Joyce
• Dance Integration—36 Dance Lesson Plans for Science and Mathematics by Kaufmann & Dehline
• Jana Shumway Dance Lesson Plan - Utah Animals
• Creative Dance Integration Movement Resource
• Tricks for Using Picture Books for Dance
• Water Dance by Thomas Locker (Bookshop.org)
• Art Should Be a Habit, Not a Luxury by Arthur C. Brooks

Heather Francis and Tina McCulloch have been working with Mr. Dance for over 10 years. Chris gave Heather her first teaching job out of college at Rees Elementary. Chris taught Tina the Brain Dance, which created a big change in her third-grade students. 

Now retired, Chris was the Beverley Taylor Sorenson (BTS) arts integration coach for Provo City School District for over 20 years. He worked to facilitate the BTS grant through collaborating with principals and supporting BTS arts educators. As the Provo City School District arts coordinator, Chris supported arts-integrated classroom activities and professional development for Pre-K–12th-grade drama, music, visual art, and dance teachers. 

Beginning with no job description, Chris made a flier of skills and activities he could offer to teachers as a district arts coach. He went to all 13 elementary schools, and hand-delivered a flier in every teacher’s box. He “had a few bites.” Those few initial interactions rapidly snowballed: now, Chris is a high-demand educator, packing as much Pre-K-6th grade dance integration as he can into his limited 30-hour workweek. 

• Learn and share information
• Highlight BTS educators across the district to promote the arts
• Support educators in creating and publicizing school arts nights, performances, and exhibitions.

For example, Chris recently assisted in planning a district-wide dance concert involving all the students in all Provo’s secondary schools and two elementary schools. Ballroom, creative, and modern dance were included. It was an incredible experience for the elementary students—“just amazing that they got to go to Provo High School and dance in front of a full house of families and friends.” This was a magnetic performance bursting with positive energy that was felt by each participant and audience member. Tina recounts, “Chris planted in the hearts of these little elementary students that this is a lifestyle. This is a way I can carry the arts throughout my life, and the positive energy feeds on the arts and makes a positive cycle for artful living.”

“Chris is amazing. He has a way of working with students and teachers to help them become more aware of their bodies and minds. And to integrate core content into his kinesthetic dance activities. He didn't come from a dance background originally, which makes his story even cooler. And I think it's helpful because he knows how to approach students who also don't come from a dance background.”

Chris was the carpool dad for his daughter, who joined BYU’s Children’s Creative Dance Program beginning at age 3. Chris’ wife supported his hobby of teaching by  working in the business world. Instead of sitting in the car, Chris observed his daughter’s dance class and corrected papers. He listened and watched Miriam Bowen teach the class for three years and witnessed his daughter develop creativity, communication, and problem-solving skills. Finally, it clicked: “Well, that's exactly what I want for my students.”

Chris wrote a grant. Doris Trujillo, who is a teaching artist, visited his school for 10 days. As a parting gift, Doris gave Chris First Steps in Teaching Creative Dance to Children by Mary Joyce. The following week, Chris went to class holding that book—with ZERO experience teaching dance. He explains: “I read what Mary Joyce wrote in the book to tell the students. I read it, and they did it. Then I read the next thing, and then they did it, and  then I read the next thing, and they did it. It was amazing!” Chris’ positive momentum kept on dancing: he attended dance integration workshops sponsored by the State; traveled to Seattle to learn from Anne Green Gilbert’s two-week dance workshop; began teaching dance workshops to teachers. The “powerful women” who taught Chris to dance have been a momentous source for growth and influence for his development from a carpool-dad-turned-novice-dancer to ‘Mr. Dance.’

Chris’s advice to teachers out there: “Do not be afraid of being the fool. You have to let your ego go. It's so important to bring dance to these kids.” Letting the ego go helps create an atmosphere of “Yes! I can do this!” for every student, no matter their dance experience or level of self-confidence, even the reluctant students who cling to the classroom walls. Chris’s lived experience learning to integrate dance—his journey of transforming from a ‘regular’ classroom teacher to ‘Mr. Dance’—models this very “Yes, I can. I can do it!” attitude. 

Additionally, listeners, the way Chris held his posture as he described the way he used Mary Joyce’s book—holding his hand out in front of him as if reading aloud from a book—was full of energy and purpose. For the teachers who believe, “I am not a dancer. I am not comfortable in my body or expressing things using my body,” Chris’s example as a teacher who began as a complete novice serves as a totally attainable inroad toward dance for teachers who are uncomfortable with this art form. Dance is for everyone. Unexpected joy can happen when teachers set aside their ego and move their bodies. Chris relates an example of the unique experiences teachers have when they first dance with their students—a second-grade teacher wrote him a lengthy message explaining the feelings and emotions she embodied when she danced. She “felt freer than she's ever felt in a long, long time.” 

BTS educators in Provo District reach out to every teacher and ask: “What's the best way that I can communicate with you? How often? And how can I best serve you?” This way, classroom teachers decide what fits their teaching needs best: face-to-face meeting, email communications, or collaboration during Friday PLC time. The point is that arts educators honor the needs of the classroom teacher, and vice-versa.

Research shows the most effective learning happens in co-teaching environments between classroom and BTS teachers. Chris encourages principals—especially those with first-year BTS arts educators—to create this specific type of collaboration: put the classroom teacher together with the arts educator, to co-teach. 

Typically, BTS educators initiate conversations with classroom teachers. For those educators not in a BTS school, teachers can reach out to a visual art planning time technician—or other arts educator— and say, “Hey, I'm studying the water cycle in a couple of weeks. Is there anything you can do to help me with that?”

The research is clear: the more arts are integrated into the classroom—regardless of the art form—student retention and engagement are much higher. For example, let’s say a school has a visual arts BTS educator, and a non-visual arts/generalist teacher needs support with integration. That generalist teacher can reach out  to that BTS educator and collaborate on what is happening in each others’ classrooms to support learning in both classrooms. 

“Mr. Roberts has been working with my class since 2016. Eight years now, wow. He is amazing. He finds books about all different subjects, such as science, literacy, or social skills. He is so creative in designing ways for the students to dance to the books and learn something at the same time, from how plants grow to the rain coming down, rhyme scheme, and being kind, he finds ways to incorporate movement into these lessons.”

Chris spends lots of time reading children’s books because they offer a rich starting place for integrating science, math, social studies, and language arts. Chris describes his process: “As I read a children's book, I may exclaim, “Wow, this says all kinds of verbs in it! Just look at these images. We could dance to these verbs and images! So, when I see a children's book that has a lot of movement potential I buy it and I use it. 

1. Consider Content Standards

Consider the grade; what is developmentally appropriate for the grade; consider what they're studying in their science, and in their math, and in their language arts and in their social studies. So I use books like that, that way, picture books mainly. 

Use the lesson plans on advancingartsleadership.com

Jana Shumway’s (Jordan School District) lesson plans 

Dance Integration 36 Dance Lesson Plans for Science and Mathematics by Karen Kaufman and Jordan Dehline. This book contains incredible lesson plans. 

Chris walks in nature—listening, observing, paying close attention to that environment. His mind quiets and ideas come to him. 

Notice that most scientists, mathematicians, neuroscientists, Nobel Prize winners—they all have hobbies in the arts: violin playing, or watercolor painting, or dance. This illustrates why arts integration into STEM subjects is critical: the arts bring those subjects to life. It's hard to imagine doing science without adding a visual, musical, literary, and/or physical movement component. Handing students a math or science book to read doesn’t enliven these content areas: inviting students to express learning through paint, creating a mind map, or getting out of their seats and moving with the idea. 

For example, look at a math class on angles: teaching the language acute angle and equal angle and obtuse angle. Show students how to make those angles with their bodies, using their arms: Make a 90-degree angle. Use your arms to show me an obtuse angle. This makes learning more fun and creates muscle memory, so that when students need to recall, it looks like this “Oh, yeah, I did this way. I can close my eyes and remember that time in class.” They can recall the hands-on, arts-integrated experiences—a painting they did, a song they sang, a dance they created. The arts make learning come alive. 

Listeners, please note: as he speaks, Chris is moving his arms in different angular sizes and shapes. He is replicating what he has seen students do while taking tests and trying to remember information. This is evidence that movement matters: students are using the proprioception senses of their bodies to remember a space that they held or a shape that taught them the knowledge they need in that moment.

Tina shares a teachers’ experience witnessing changes in her students after implementing more dance into her classroom. The students embody a key outcome of arts-integrated teaching that the arts make learning come alive: 

“As she watched her students, she noticed that dance strengthened students’ abilities to listen and follow complex directions. In all areas of instruction, it is crucial for students to be able to follow multi-step instructions. This ability saves time, and builds working memory. In dance students are able to easily self-evaluate their ability to follow these complex instructions. And the feedback is always immediate.”

Chris shares an article by Arthur Brooks titled Art Should be a Habit, Not a Luxury. Just like exercise and sleep, engaging with the arts is critical for a full and happy life. Coupled with routines for self-care, the arts in teaching add vitality to teachers and classrooms: teachers feel more refreshed at the end of the day; teachers feel joyful. “Teachers need to gauge for themselves by asking, ‘What am I doing for myself to keep me vital and running on my 100% for my students?’”

When students witness a teacher feeling that aliveness and vibrancy—a teacher who is feeding themself physically, intellectually, soulfully, and socially—students grow too: students are happier and leave school in a different mindset. Arts-integrated learning helps school shifts away from drudgery toward joyful and artful learning.

Chris shares five aspects of self-care that can help teachers live wholly and teach artfully:

1. Physical Care: Teaching is a highly demanding job. Being physically present, eating nutritiously, getting rest, and making time for exercise are important ways teachers can rejuvenate and live sustainably. unless they're completely there and putting the right fuel into their body, getting the right exercise, and just taking care of their physical self.
2. Emotional Care: Teachers need a friend, someone important, close, and safe that they can lean on during a down day. Healthy emotional expressions—like turning on some music in the kitchen while they're making dinner and dancing—helps teachers tune into their emotional self.
3. Social Care: There's also the social part that they need to take care of. It is important to keep key people in their lives that support them, that offer them the help they need or the listening ear.
4. Mental Care: There's also the mental part of them. The intellectual part of them that they need to keep abreast to have good science such as good neuroscience and solid educational philosophy.
5. Spiritual Care: Last, I think it's okay to talk about a spiritual self . So like I described before to you already I take long walks in nature. Right now, my wife and I are empty-nesters so we just do it on our own, but I know a lot of classroom teachers have kids, so I encourage them to take walks  with their kids. Take a family nature walk, because walking in nature has a more powerful effect than walking in the mall.

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Don't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade-level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

Dovie Thomason at the Arts Express Summer Conference 2022 

Today, we have a treat for you—-a sneak peek of what you’ll get at Arts Express Summer Conference from one of our fabulous presenters, Dovie Thomason, a Native American storyteller and author. After we tell you a bit more about Dovie and her experiences, we will share a recording of one of the stories she performed and recorded for the Utah Division of Arts and Museums in 2020, titled “Frog’s Teeth.” 

The Story Behind the Story “Frog’s Teeth”

This story comes from a series titled “Stories Grandma Told Me.” This is not a story Dovie heard from her grandma. It was a story given to her when she was the mother of a child beginning to lose their teeth. The person who gave Dovie this story received it from her father’s traditions as part of the Oneida First Nation in Ontario, Canada. 

We thank Jean Tokuda Irwin and our partners at the Utah Division of Arts and Museums for granting permission to use this recording and for introducing us to Dovie and sponsoring her at Arts Express this summer as a keynote speaker and presenter. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGD_KkI4Ibg

Dovie Thomason Biography 

Coming from the rich oral tradition of her Lakota and Plains Apache family, Dovie Thomason has had a lifetime of listening and telling the traditional Native stories that are the cultural “heartsong” of community values and memory. Both wise and mischievous, Dovie unfolds the layers of her indigenous worldview and teachings with respect, sly humor and rich vocal transformations. 

When she adds personal stories and untold histories, the result is a contemporary narrative of Indigenous North America told with elegance, wit, and passion. Her programs are a heartfelt sharing of Native stories she has had the privilege of hearing from Elders of many nations and are woven with why we need stories, how stories are a cultural guide in shaping values and making responsible choices, how stories build communities and celebrates our relationship with the Earth and all living beings. 

The oral tradition she gifts to listeners inspires delight in spoken language arts, encourages reading, supports literacy, can be used in classrooms to motivate better writing as students experience storytelling techniques, literary devices and effective communication. All of this takes place while they are exploring their own narratives and family values. Dovie has represented the U.S. as the featured storyteller throughout the world. 

In 2015, she was honored as the storyteller-writer in residence at the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba in Canada. Dovie has used her storytelling to advise the UCLA Film School on narrative in modern film, NASA on indigenous views of technology, the Smithsonian Associates’ Scholars Program and the premier TEDx Leadership Conference. Her role as a traditional cultural artist and educator has been honored by the National Storytelling Network’s ORACLE: Circle of Excellence Award and the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers’ Traditional Storyteller Award.

• Register for Arts Express
• Dovie Thomason’s Website
• More stories by Dovie on the Utah Division of Arts and Museums YouTube Channel
  • “Turtle Learns to Fly”
  • “Dog’s Tails”
  • “Bear Child”

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Don't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts. Search by grade-level, art form or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

Coming soon

Amplify Native Voices in the Classroom is an asynchronous and interactive online course developed by the BYU ARTS Partnership. The course includes approximately 14 hours of instruction, two projects, and several discussion board activities. Teachers can earn 1 USBE credit for successful completion of the course. The course is open to all educators from Pre-K to High School.

By the end of the NACI PD course teachers will be able to

• Honor and analyze their own culture and Native American cultures by creating a [artistic artifact] that explores culture and identity;
• Empathize with Native American Tribes in Utah by reflecting and synthesizing what they learned while exploring interactive timelines that represent the past and present context of each socially and politically distinct tribe
• Select accurate and authentic resources by practicing strategies for identifying culturally responsible resources
• Articulate their own principles/framework for culturally responsive teaching that elucidates the connections they have made between their own culture, their student’s cultures, their teaching practice, and the NACI model through a written reflection, artistic work, or video presentation.

Each course will be moderated by a facilitator from the BYU ARTS Partnership Leadership Team. You are given one year to complete the course.

The course is available for teachers publically beginning June 7th, 2022. You can register for the course on MIDAS for USBE or relicensure credit or email [email protected] for more details. 

Turtle Island Art Collective

Heather Francis and Brenda Beyal speak with two artists from the Turtle Island Art Collective, Crystal Begay and Alan Groves. Crystal is an artist who specializes in Plains Indian-style moccasins. Alan is a teacher and artist who works with quilt work and beadwork. The Turtle Island Art Collective’s mission is to empower Indigenous artists, showcase Indigenous artists, and inspire Indigenous youth.

How Did the Turtle Island Art Collective Come to Be?

In a suburban or urban area, it can be difficult for native children to learn about their traditional culture and develop an identity as an Indigenous person. Art is a non-threatening way that they can learn about their traditions and cultures.

There are two parts to the Collective’s Mission Statement: One is to provide a space for Indigenous, specifically Native-American, artists in the digital realm. The second is to try to empower native kids and connect them with artists who have similar stories.

“It is hard growing up in an urban area where you are removed from your cultural heritage,” Crystal said. “Children do not see it every day. They don’t learn it in school. They’re not learning the language in school. Through the creation, sharing and learning about Native American art, they are better able to live their cultural heritage. The Turtle Island Art Collective is a vehicle for this exposure and empowerment.”

How Art Helps to Connect to Our Culture

Alan describes how difficult it can be to grow up where there are not many other Indigenous people. He was drawn to art. His first love was graffiti art. “It had meaning. They were saying something,” he said.

As he began having his own children, he and his wife talked about what they want for their children and they came to the conclusion that art is the way they could help them connect to their people and to their culture. “That’s my draw to Native American art. There is a story behind the colors you use and the patterns you use and the images you use. There is a definite story there.”

Offerings and Reciprocity

How does reciprocity occur between Native American artists or between artists and those who enjoy and learn from their art? Is it possible to exchange artistically in a way that is mutually beneficial to both parties? Can artists truly reciprocate by responding to a positive action with another positive action?

There is a lot of effort, love, and pain that goes into the creation of Native American art. Supporting artists can be a way to reciprocate – supporting financially and, in return, obtaining a piece of culture and art. But, a question comes to mind, “What is appropriate to pay Native American artists?”

Alan acknowledged that some create art and are desirous and able to make a living from it and that the decision to do so is up to each individual artist. Because of the time and care that goes into creating these works, Alan generally chooses to gift his art, after he gets to know somebody, at least to some extent. “And that’s been one of the blessings of actually doing it through digital means is that people can message me from around the country and share their story with me,” he said. The reciprocity comes from the learning about each other and creating from those stories.  

Trading can also be a meaningful and rewarding way to experience reciprocity. One artist may trade work for the work of another artist. One artist may trade natural goods to be used in art for the works of another artist. Lives and stories are shared.

When Alan first started creating two years ago, somebody traded him a box of porcupine quills that were already dyed. “A big giant box had thousands and thousands of quills in it. But they're all mixed up. There's thirteen colors, and they're all mixed up. And so I'm sitting there at my table sorting quills. And my daughter just sits down next to me. She's in high school. She just sat down next to me and she's like, ‘Do you need some help?’ And I'm like, ‘Sure.’” 

He recalled that his daughter sorted the whole box, taking her the entire summer, “We would just sit down and I would start making stuff and she would start sorting stuff. And then when we got done, we had all these bags full of quills. And then we got done and I said, ‘Okay, what do you want?’ And she said, ‘I want one of these medallions you've been making.’ Well, that was two years ago and so I finished it yesterday and I gave it to her today and she was so excited. But the idea is this idea of offerings, that when somebody does something for you, that you can't do for yourself, then you provide them with an offering. And it can be big and it can be small.”

Native-Inspired vs The Inspired Native

It has been a widely accepted idea to be inspired by Native art. We have seen beaded garments at Walmart, geometric designs inspired by Native symbols on pottery and homes, mass-produced dream-catchers, figurines, and t-shirts with pan-tribal representation of Native culture. But, times have shifted. Crystal said, “I think it’s important for Native artists to have a voice.” Now, we are inspired ourselves. We don’t just need representation in media or consumer products, we need space to represent ourselves the way we want to be represented. 

There was a time when the United States tried to take the Native American culture away through legislation during the period of allotment and assimilation. This period of Native American relations in the United States was a huge failure. Following this failure came the period of self-determination beginning in the 1970s. At this time, representation of any Native American idea, person, or tradition—authentic or not—in American life may have been applauded. 

But again, times have been changing, according to Alan. Now, we are realizing it is important to not just represent the culture, but to represent it in accurate and authentic ways—the way native individuals and distinct tribal groups would like to be represented. “It’s not enough to be a mascot of a team,” he said. Alan said he wants to share what it means to be him through his art. “The story I’m telling is my story now,” he said.

Communal Success

Even those of us who are non-Native can feel connected to and inspired by Native art. Communal success comes when artists and those who support the artists are working together so that the art benefits all of our lives, whether we are Native artists or not.

According to Alan, this success comes when you find your right way to give to your community. This goes beyond purchasing a t-shirt with a Native American print on it: “You’re just taking the art without taking the lessons to go with it,” he said. When teaching art to students, the teaching is more about just the art: it is about the stories and lessons that live with the art. It is about the interaction that comes with the process of creating art. Communal success can occur when artists are engaging in positive ways with Native communities. 

Supporting the Turtle Island Art Collective can also help create this communal success. As native and non-native children get more exposure to Native art,  this success and connection will carry over to them and their stories.

Resources

• Turtle Island Art Collective Website https://turtleislandartcollective.square.site/
• Turtle Island Art Collective Instagram https://www.instagram.com/turtle_island_art_collective/?hl=en
• Turtle Island Art Collective Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TurtleIslandArtCollective/
• Alan Groves Instagram @al_groves https://www.instagram.com/al_groves/
• Crystal BegayeInstagram @creativenativeboutique https://www.instagram.com/creativenativeboutique/

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Don’t forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade-level, art form or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.