WHY ARTS INTEGRATION?

What do we mean when we talk about integrating the arts with STEM subjects?

The logic is actually pretty sound.  Most disciplines--science, math, history--become art forms of sorts when participants, through passionate engagement, achieve a certain level of intellectual thought, creativity, and elegance of expression. In this sense, all quality learning ultimately becomes artful.  (Quality is key.)  As I see it, arts integration is less about superimposing the arts on STEM subjects than it is about reframing learning/teaching as an art.

One of the great benefits of experiences with works of art is that there is no single interpretation. By following a facilitator through one particular gateway into an artistic experience, a student gains access to an array of new systems for ordering and making sense of their own life experiences. They become more innovative, more aware of alternate perspectives, more attuned to nuance. Engagement with art is one of the richest and most lasting kinds of learning experiences available.

"An artist actively expands people's sense of the world, taking them into the verbs of art while avoiding the tripwires of the nouns. Entertainment happens within what we already know; art happens outside of that. Becoming a teacher puts you in a synergistic relationship with art; it is, in fact, one of the only sustainable ways to keep genuine curiosity alive. Art is learning, and learning is art." --Eric Booth

Some additional materials:

• An article about the need for arts integration published by the Kennedy Center: http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators/how-to/arts-integration-beta/why-arts-integration-beta/why-two-big-reasons-beta
• A video about arts integration and "artful thinking" produced by Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/stw-arts-integration-video
• A look at the STEAM-not-STEM movement from a research- and neuroscience-based perspective: http://steam-notstem.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Neuroeducation.pdf
• An overview of Harvard's Qualities of Quality project at Project Zero: http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/arts-education/arts-classroom-instruction/Documents/Understanding-Excellence-in-Arts-Education.pdf

Goddesses and Veggies

I come from a long line of strong, intelligent women—women who weren't always able to pursue advanced degrees but who hungered after knowledge and treasured the riches of the past. Among their ranks are pioneers who sacrificed everything to travel westward in their search for religious freedom, a great-grandmother whose fit of laughter jump-started her heart after a heart attack, and a grandmother who taught me, as she lay dying from cancer, that pain is a part of life but misery is optional. These women transformed knowledge into strength and good humor and wisdom. In my mind, they each embody Veritas—that towering goddess of Greek and Roman Mythology.

Growing up, I worshiped my mother—Valedictorian of her graduate class, deep thinker, powerful mover-and-shaker, and all-around goddess. I wanted to be just like her.

My mom came to Boston for the first time in September, 2009. Together, we walked the cobblestone streets of the North End, made the pilgrimage to Louisa May Alcott's grave in Concord, and ultimately stepped through Johnston's Gate (passing the word “Veritas” inscribed on the columns to either side). 

 I watched her stand in Harvard Yard and breathe in the scent of decaying leaves. I saw her pause at the base of Widener Library like a Greek Goddess come home, corinthian columns rising above her. She even snuck into one of the lecture halls. Standing at the very front, near the podium, she was swallowed by the emptiness of the room, but her presence was more than enough to fill it. With absolute gravity, she wagged her finger and told me to eat my veggies and never talk to strangers. Now she winks and brags to friends that she has “lectured” at Harvard. (Goddesses do tend to have a great sense of humor.)

Four years to the month after that experience, I entered Harvard Yard again—this time as a student. I found myself giving a non veggie-related lecture at a Harvard conference, and instead of standing at the base of Widener Library, I was suddenly ascending the staircase and beeping past security. I didn't feel much like the Greek Goddess I had seen in my mother, but I did feel a sense of responsibility to her and to all of the goddesses who came before her.

I think I was drawn to Harvard for two reasons (among others): First, I sensed a rich legacy of learning embedded in the very bricks and mortar of these buildings—buildings that have survived for hundreds of years and will probably survive for hundreds more. I felt a deep respect for the past. Secondly, I believed that tradition is meant to built upon and that metaphorical buildings are constantly being raised and leveled in the name of truth. I wanted the opportunity to contribute something to the larger body of knowledge approaching Veritas.

On my journey towards graduation, I have experienced moments of frustration, moments of illumination, and moments when I just wanted finals to end and I didn't feel anything remotely as noble as an obligation to Veritas. Luckily, Veritas is patient, and she never gave up on me. (Neither has my mom.) I entered Harvard Yard through Johnston's Gate, and on commencement day, I will be entering the world through that same gate. I hope I can learn to bear the standard of Veritas with the same strength, good humor, and wisdom demonstrated by all the goddesses who came before me.

And yes, I'll try to remember to eat my veggies.

Happy Mother's Day, Mama! 

Circles and Seasons

The process of coming full circle rarely feels circular. 

We imagine hurtling ourselves on linear trajectories—away from, beyond, toward—and when we land where we started, there's almost always a moment of surprised recognition. Point B is Point A!  We're back where we began, and yet something is different—or we're different (or both).

On my very first day as an Arts in Education student at HGSE, I wrote, “If we consider 'art' a term for a deeper form of education, then other disciplines become art forms of sorts when participants achieve a certain level of intellectual thought and elegance of expression. All true learning is artistic.” Then, on my final day in class, I found myself re-articulating the idea that art is a form of education and that education is a form of art. The words had remained largely the same, but the year had imbued them with a richer meaning. It had also chipped away at their formal exterior to expose a million living, breathing questions. Rather than becoming a conclusion, my full circle experience was—and continues to be—another beginning.

In a month, I will cut across the country as I leave behind five years' worth of Boston-based networks and resources and settle in the Salt Lake Valley, just forty minutes from my childhood home in Utah Valley. My flight will be direct, but my larger journey has been anything but linear. I left Utah in 2004 to begin life as an undergraduate, and now, after ten years in Arizona, England, Ukraine, Boston, Franklin, and New York, I am turning westward again. I will be coming “home” to family, to friends, to the community of my youth—but I'll also be stepping into a new life that is entirely my own. I remember experiencing the same strange sensation when I returned to the U.S. after eighteen months as a missionary in Ukraine. My home environment hadn't changed much, but I had, profoundly. Home felt both familiar and oddly foreign.

These recent years on the East Coast have also been marked by a brief transition away from Boston and, unexpectedly, back again. My orbits, both large and small, have tended towards circularity.

The earth moves that way too, of course—around and around in tight circles. Its larger trajectory is forward but circular, held always in careful orbit. I wonder: what is the force that holds my own intellectual orbit in place? What is the center point, the origin of that fierce gravitational pull? For me, I think it is Truth. When I recognize an element of truth (expressed in a conversation or a book or a painting or a lecture), I tend to feel a strong pull towards that thought or object or idea. I first approach it directly, squarely.  Then, inevitably, life turns my linear trajectory into a circular one, and I find myself circling that idea and viewing it from every possible vantage point in a 360-degree rotation. What was two-dimensional slowly becomes three-dimensional. I begin to learn. By the time I reach Point B and discover that it was Point A all along, the destination matters far less than journey.

When my flight descends into the Salt Lake Valley, I know I will catch a glimpse of the mountains and experience another full circle moment. I look forward to embracing that moment and using it as an opportunity to pull back from my tight, inner orbit and reflect on my larger orbit. I imagine I will feel a magnified sense of the mixed emotions that I'm experiencing now: gratitude, nostalgia, uncertainty, a waking anticipation.

In Salt Lake City, I plan to actively seek opportunities to challenge myself as an artist and also as a teacher-learner. (Both teachers and learners facilitate the exploration of ideas, and the two identities are almost impossible for me to separate at this point.)  I want my teaching practice to become an art, and I want my art to remain an important facet of my teaching.

In my mind's eye, the path ahead is relatively linear. Still, I know that one day in the not so-far-future, I will probably stumble into another full-circle moment. . . and another. . .and another.

The sun's gravitational pull gives the earth the axial tilt that creates the changing of seasons. As I continue encountering full-circle moments, I hope I will feel a profound gratitude for past seasons of my life and for the people and experiences that have guided my trajectory. I also hope I will feel a very real excitement about the seasons of my life that I have yet to encounter. In the words of C.S. Lewis, we are all born with a balanced desire for both change and permanence. We experience seasons, “each season different, yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme” (Lewis, p. 257). There is a beauty in finding our personal journeys echoed in the natural world and in seeing them reflected in those around us. 

That, itself, is both an education and an art.

Art in the 21st Century

For years, I have felt passionately about fostering quality experiences with the arts, and I have studied the trajectory of music history, in particular, with a growing sense of dismay.  

As the divide between elitist sub-groups and the general public has widened over the course of the 20th century, critics began predicting the death of classical music, and even institutions as ostensibly "popular" as Broadway seemed destined for extinction. 

Thankfully, an unexpected shift took place around the turn of the 21st century, aided, in part, by technological advances, an ever-widening global community, and a generation that tends to gravitate towards eclecticism.  

Broadway grossed more in 2012 than it ever had before.  

Classical music sales skyrocketed.  

In many ways, 21st century technology is giving birth to a new world--one which widens and improves accessibility, feeds creativity, and invites a previously passive consumer base to reactivate, participate, and contribute directly to the larger cultural capital.   The era of top-down passive reception (standard television programming, concert halls, hospital-like museums, etc.) seems to have ended, and this new era is characterized by grassroots participation, the mixing of genres, and the crossing of previously impenetrable boundaries.  

It's a wonderful time to be a classical composer seeking to activate an upcoming generation of listeners/participants.  

It's also a wonderful time to be an educator.  

In my future position as the Performing Arts Director at a new charter school that will employ a student-driven, project-based blended learning model, I look forward to encouraging active participation and collaboration on multiple levels: 1) with other art forms, 2) with other disciplines, and 3) with the larger external community.  

My hope is that our school can build a unique, experiential arts program that gives young students the agency and resources they need to begin shaping the future of the arts.

More quotes to mull over. . .

"That in-between place, between what you know and what you don't know, is an overlooked but crucial area in arts learning. It is sometimes called the liminal zone (Latin for 'threshold'). It can be the threshold of discovering, surprise, learning, and delight. Our creative selves come out to play in the liminal zone. Most people are a little wary of this zone, even anxious within it; humans naturally resist change and feel a little cautious of the new. It is a habit of mind to be able to adjust that tendency. We must be more skillful in slowing down passage through the liminal zone." --Eric Booth

"Institutional thinkers see themselves as debtors [who] have been freely given a world charged with meaning and calls to commitment. The institutionalist admires the excellences of what has been delivered to him. The contrast between thinking institutionally and current intellectual fashion is stark. The postmodern stance rejects inherited values as cultural oppressions. As a result, the anti-institutionalist has no capacity for genuine admiration. [An institutionalist] is moved by a central fact--that there is something estimable and decisive beyond me. What is it, larger than myself, into which I am drawn? To think institutionally is to be attentive to precedent. It is to see yourself as 'at once receiver and legacy' [in an] implicated life with others beyond the Self." --Hugh Heclo

Art, Reflection, and Belief

Just a few provocative quotes about education:

"An artist actively expands people's sense of the world, taking them into the verbs of art while avoiding the tripwires of the nouns. Entertainment happens within what we already know; art happens outside of that. Becoming a teacher puts you in a synergistic relationship with art; it is, in fact, one of the only sustainable ways to keep genuine curiosity alive. Art is learning, and learning is art." --Eric Booth

"Reflection is essential to learning--to life. Unfortunately, we live in a belligerently anti-reflection society. The etymology of the word 'reflection' is to 'bend back toward.' We must help students bend an artistic experience back towards themselves." --Eric Booth

"In the believing game, the first rule is to refrain from doubting. We return to Tertullian's original formulation, credo ut intelligam: I believe in order to understand. The monopoly of the doubting game makes people think the doubting muscle is the only muscle in their heads, and that belief is nothing but the absence of doubt.  But the believing muscle. . .puts the self into something.  By believing an assertion we can get farther and farther into it, see more and more things in terms of it or 'through' it, use it as a hypothesis to climb higher and higher to a point from which more can be seen and understood--and finally get to the point where we can be sure it is true." --Peter Elbow

Artistic Legitimacy in the Field of Education

If meaningful learning is an art (which I believe it is), then teaching is the art of fostering artistic exploration, and arts education is the art of fostering an artistic exploration of art itself. The two terms (“art” and “education”) are intrinsically matched. Is it any wonder, then, that formative artistic experiences are deeply and uniquely educational or that moments of profound understanding are often facilitated by teaching artistry?

Unfortunately, not every experience with art is educational, not every teacher considers him/herself an artist or even an educator, and not every teaching methodology or artistic process produces something worthy of the title “art.” What, then, creates a sense of legitimate artistry? How do we move from merely teaching to becoming educators or from practicing art to becoming artists? I do not wish to delve too deeply into semantics; I simply wish to review my own history as a sometimes-creator of art (both musically and educationally speaking) and to highlight a few key moments wherein teaching and musical expression transformed into something greater—something that, for the sake of this essay, I will label “art.”

According to my mom, I began singing before I could speak. By humming a few bars of my favorite lullaby, I could indicate that I was ready for a nap. When I was hungry, I would imitate the sound of a microwave, and Mom would catch the cue and start preparing my formula. Singing was a simple and effective form of communication. Its function was utilitarian.

At age six, I started piano lessons, and two years later, I joined a children's choir and became involved in musical theatre. I remember attending symphonies with my parents, cycling through my ever-growing collection of Broadway CDs, and reading about Mozart's prodigious talent with a sense of awe. In my mind, Mozart was an artist; I was just an everyday person who happened to sing and play the piano. (Doctors have diplomas; teachers have certificates; Mozart had the patronage of a royal family and an illustrious childhood career. What did I have to prove my legitimacy?)

Then something happened. Although I had been plunking out original melodies for years

(“Tromp of the Estrian [sic] Camels” was a personal favorite!), around age nine or ten, I began conceptualizing music in a different way. Lines of music would surface unexpectedly in my mind, complete with lyrics and basic harmonic underpinnings. One day, as I was humming an original melody and toying with accompanimental patterns, a second melodic line overlapped suddenly with the first. I stopped short. Would the two melodies work together?

With all the energy of a budding young scientist eager to test an important hypothesis, I grabbed two tape recorders, locked myself in the bathroom, and recorded myself singing the first melody into Tape Recorder 1. Then I played back the recording while singing the second melody and capturing it all with Tape Recorder 2. The result? Successful counterpoint! The ten-year-old me spent the rest of her evening feverishly finishing the piece and signing her name triumphantly beneath the title. For the space of a few, short hours, I had become an artist. The experience had granted me momentary legitimacy.

My unofficial experiences as a teacher began almost as early as my experiences with music. By the time I was five, I was lecturing neighborhood children, feeding my little brother all sorts of well-intended but completely false facts about life, and organizing summer schools at my home (I appointed myself Principal and my mother Cafeteria Lady). At that age, my approach to teaching was anything but artistic: When I felt that older neighborhood children weren't giving all four feet and forty pounds of me adequate respect, I would scowl and storm off. (Somehow, my summer school projects never lasted more than a day.) Mrs. Huish was my first grade teacher, and I adored her. She was a great educator with her imaginative writing assignments, her exotic accent, and her stories about Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. Me, though? When I taught, I was just “playing pretend.”

Then, at age twelve, I began teaching private piano lessons. One especially precocious five-year-old found her way to me and displayed a remarkable capacity to synthesize each new idea. She was soon playing more difficult pieces than I usually assigned my eight and nine-year-olds, and she was hungry for more. I realized that I wanted to feed that hunger. I wanted to help her along the same path of discovery that I had traveled myself. In helping her become a legitimate artist, something crucial occurred: I became a legitimate educator. And over time, my teaching became yet another facet of my art.

I wish I could say that, since that time, I have always felt legitimate. But over a decade later, when I was consistently mistaken for a student at the performing arts academy where I worked as a teacher, I didn't feel terribly legitimate. Nor did I feel very legitimate as an undergraduate when I heard my first string quartet performed. (I slid backward in my auditorium seat, in fact, mentally willing all of the poorly-written and badly-executed phrases to disappear off the performers' pages and melt into merciful silence!) Even now, I feel my sense of legitimacy falter when I exercise faulty judgement as a steward of young minds or enter an unfamiliar realm of the musical world. Artistic qualifications on a resume don't always add up to a neat sum total.

Perhaps, then, as educators, our goal isn't to become legitimate “artists” after all; perhaps our goal is to continually increase the quality and frequency of meaningful artistic experiences until we can reliably foster such experiences for others. We master the art of fostering an artistic exploration of art through consistent effort and the process of trial and error. Art evolves into a science which, in turn, fosters further art. The cycle itself becomes a self-sustaining artform which transforms us, moment by moment, from teachers and artisans into educators and artists.