Links Mentioned In This Episode: 

• 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

Bob Smith, Alpine School District Elementary Arts Coach

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.

From Teacher & After-School Drama Director to District Arts Instructional Coach

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.

Artful Tip for Classroom Teachers: Draw Everyday With Your Kids

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.

Arts Integration is the Learning

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. 

Bringing Creativity, Problem Solving, and Collaboration into STEM Through Arts 

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. 

One-Page List of SEEd and Arts Standards to Facilitate Arts Integration 

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.

Collaboration between Arts Educators and Classroom Teachers is Key for Arts Integration in STEM

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.”

Accelerated Learning Happens When Arts Are in the Classroom

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. 

Arts-Integrated Classrooms Save Time

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.

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