Saturday, June 17, 2000
Creativity key
Seeing arts as highways to learning
How often do you get the chance to see teachers dressed as daffodils, or bowing to their partners and galloping across a room, or bouncing along in an imaginary car improvising a script about a party?
I say when you have the chance to see this, take it.
To that end, I spent a day at the Arts Connection workshop, a summer camp of sorts for teachers put on by the Association for the Advancement of Arts Education.
Arts Connection brings in professional artists to help teachers use the arts in all areas of the curriculum. It reminds them that children learn in many different ways, and the arts can help reach every child. It tells them that children who create or perform something will never forget it.
Teachers say, in the last decade, the classroom has become a far less creative place. They say proficiency testing rules the day. They struggle to keep things child-centered, rather than material-centered. They remind themselves their mission is to embolden children as risk-takers, not just make them sure bets on a bubble-in test.
So, in a sense, this week at Arts Connection has been revolutionary.
It re-lit the flame of teaching for women and men who are being squeezed between proving that they are “accountable” educators and meeting what they know to be the true learning needs of the child.
The teachers danced, cut, pasted, wrote, sang, acted and remembered how good it felt to do those things.
They reveled in an environment where creativity was an ultimate goal, where work was supposed to engage the senses. And some of them, at least, saw how these wonderful things are receding from their own classrooms.
No matter what legislators and state administrators say, in their hearts teachers know one thing: The fight to improve children's minds shouldn't come at the cost of their spirits.
But what teachers need, to act on that message, is partners. Arts Connection gave teachers inspiration and practical advice to do both parts of their job: impart information and engage students.
The daffodil suit, for example, is a way to teach young children the parts of a flower. The galloping dance teaches multiples of four and eight, besides teamwork and timing. The improvisational car ride teaches the ability to quickly create a story line and think on your feet.
Actor Michael Lippert even shared a video of students performing a rap on types of governments (a much-dreaded proficiency-test section). Test scores on that subject matter rose from 20 percent to 93 percent for the rappers. No matter how hard those kids try, they will never forget the difference between a dem-oc-rah-cee and a mon-ar-chee.
Before we dismiss it as gimmicky, consider how many of us learned our ABCs to a song, or remember the number of days in each month because of a rhyme. I personally cannot forget Pablo Neruda's poetry after having sung it in a high-school Spanish class.
At Arts Connection, I saw happy teachers. As Our Lady of Victory School teacher Lynne Overberg reminded me, “This captures the essence of why we're in teaching.”
Krista Ramsey's column appears in The Enquirer on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, OH 45202, or fax at 768-8340, or e-mail krista_ramsey@hotmail.com.
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