Eleventy-third. (blog 11)

1. What are the benefits^a and limitations^b of integrating the arts throughout the elementary school curriculum?

2. What issues are you encountering as you plan your unit?

3. How do you think these issues might present themselves in the classroom situation?

4. How are you addressing these issues now?

5. How will you address them in the classroom?

1.

a. The benefits of integrating the arts in the elementary system are many. Art has been proven to improve and broaden a child’s development in many areas, even some areas that may not appear very obvious. Early on, a child who is given the opportunity to draw and discover a lot of visual symbols will have better linguistic skills, which in today’s world is an asset in high demand. Secondly, activities like music and dance encourage kids to collaborate, and create interesting compositions. These sorts of activities expose children to other learning systems, rich learning systems. Finally, perhaps of greatest importance, is that art forms have a positive psychological affect on young minds. Children thrive with art. Art helps them build self esteem, and to explore their creativity, as well as to allow them to experience self expression that goes beyond test scores and essays.

b. The limitations of incorporating arts into the elementary curriculum are also, tragically, numerous. Money is always an issue because the art programs can be expensive and they are not seen as equally necessary as the core faculties of math, science, language arts and social studies. With insufficient funding, the programs can become quite barren and the learning environment is destabilised. Art programs are sometimes resented, or not taken seriously or enthusiastically. So the students are given little art time. In some cases, the educator is naive of or intimidated by the arts, and will therefore not provide the optimal arts education experience.

2. The issues I encountered while I planned the unit were:

i. Engaging all the students with myself and the material (provocation)

ii. Technical development/ skill building

iii. Maintaining relevance pertaining to curriculum

iv. Progressive, logical thinking & creativity & innovation.

3. In the classroom atmosphere I believe these issues will come about in much the same way as with my peers, however, the characteristics of the students and their reactions will change. In the peer workshop, my students were willing to participate in the silly provocation exercises I set out for them. In a classroom with younger students, with an established social hierarchy, kids may be more hesitant to be silly and get energized and imaginative about the assignment. My peers pointed out that some of the materials were hard to work with and that young children could hurt themselves, or get quite frustrated with the process. I’m sure that younger students would not be as polite when criticizing the materials I choose for them.

4. In order to address these issues now I will make a few modest changes, but I think I had a strong lesson, and have a few things to streamline, but that is normal because I am still new at this.

5. To resolve these issues in the classroom, I would organize the class schedule differently. I would describe techniques for working with wire upfront, and would offer more solutions to common problems to avoid frustration. To get kids to loosen up and participate with the provocation, I would try to make it fun for them, it is supposed to be a fun exercise anyways, but if they are being sticks in the mud they will lose participation marks. An unfortunate but natural result.

How was it ever decided that the curriculum should be split into subjects? I believe that human instinct is responsible for the notion of art as a separate activity from other fields. People tend to define things, and themselves and other people into as specific a title as they can, to facilitate a strict and clean-cut understanding of things. For example, all living things on earth are increasingly more specifically categorized by domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Similarly, humans themselves have been divided into, genders, races, sexes, ethnicities, cultural boundaries, etc. It is this never ceasing need to categorize which has laid the barriers in the field of education. Disciplines such as broad as Mathematics, Language arts, Social studies, Science and Physical education were easily defined and were understood more readily as separate entities comprising a whole. These lines were drawn so that the human urge to distinguish could be satisfied, and to bring a simplistic clarity. Art was drawn into an oversimplified bubble, and divided into two camps: visual art & performing art, which were divided into uncomfortable fractions: 2D, Digital, 3D, theatre acting, film acting, dance, music.