The arts, much like sports programs, are what keep many students in school. Some students live for their time in theater productions, band, orchestra, photography club, dance or other arts classes. Without those opportunities to focus on and be with others who share their passions, school would hold little meaning for them.
Unlike sports programs, however, those arts classes and programs are often threatened with cuts when budgets get tight, and budgets are always tight. We do our students a great disservice when we undervalue the role that the arts play in their lives and we consistently ignore the research showing that the arts are crucial to learning, academic success, and emotional, social and mental health.
A few years before I started teaching, I took a theater class based on the work of the extraordinary actor and teacher Jacques Lecoq. Central to that teaching was our teacher’s description of a clown as someone who was at the center of all possibilities and able to move in any direction. I realized that that is what I wanted for my students — for them to have the knowledge, skills and confidence to move in whatever direction they choose.
My challenge was to help each of them gain what would be useful to them within the context of a 25-person classroom. I wanted my students to be engaged members of our learning community who took on, as their own mission, supporting their classmates to be as successful as possible so that we were all working for the benefit of each other. I wanted them to take great joy in the process of learning. The arts proved to be the strongest asset I had in meeting my learning goals for the students.
The arts help students to practice critical thinking, and to communicate across cultural and language differences, to share who they are. Students learn and practice problem-solving skills when they are working in the arts: how to fill in a blank page, to shape a lump of sculptural clay, to put a play script on its feet. Art also provides a means for students to process their emotions and build emotional intelligence, which is essential for personal growth and mental health. There is extensive research that education in and access to the arts leads to better academic performance and helps students to develop self-confidence and a wide range of skills that will serve them in their future. There is not room in this column to provide a full range of examples of how integrating the arts can play out in preschool through graduate school, but I will share an example of the arts making a profound difference in an investigation of homelessness in my third grade classroom.
One morning, a group of students came into the classroom clearly excited and upset. They walked through a park each morning on the way to school and had come upon some men who had been sleeping there, part of the increasing homeless population in Seattle. The kids were scared and threw rocks in the direction of the men (though the men had done nothing to them). We spent the next several weeks as a class investigating homelessness; it became a central theme for all of our subject areas (English language arts, math, science, social studies), and the arts played a major role in our investigations.
The students worked in pairs to “create” homeless characters out of paper and to develop biographies for them, which included explanations for how they became homeless. They kept journals of their character’s life on the streets, tracked the seasons and weather as their characters sought shelter, and wrote poems describing what it was like to be homeless. They wrote stories of what their characters were experiencing, and “interviewed” them about their hopes and dreams, and what they missed most.
We were also reading about homelessness, and the students would write to their homeless character, sharing what they had learned from their research. When the kids wondered about how the city responded to homelessness in the winter, we invited the mayor in to speak with us. The children encouraged him to open city buildings to the homeless when it was really cold. The city did just that not long after the visit.
We also interviewed a homeless teenager and the social worker who worked with her, and she talked about what it was like for her to be homeless. She shared her hopes for the future, and then she played the piano for us and wept when there was raucous applause. The students shared what they had learned from that visit with their characters, and each wrote thank you notes to the teenager and the social worker.
In the middle of our unit there was a massive earthquake in Japan. The students immediately thought of the people who were suddenly homeless. They organized a food and clothing drive, got donations from local businesses and joined Seattle’s response to that disaster while educating other classes about the challenges the homeless in Japan would be facing.
And finally, as we explored homelessness among children, they were shocked to consider that there were kids who were homeless in the city. Deciding they needed to take action, they, with help from adults, designed and created two quilts to donate to a school for homeless children. We invited students from one of the classes at the school to meet with us, and after treats and some spirited play, we presented the quilts to them. After they left, my students remarked at how those children who were homeless were kids just like them.
The students made a significant learning journey, from their first sighting of homeless men in the park, to coming to a realization of what it meant to be homeless, and wanting to engage with and help those who are homeless. They made that journey through the arts — through imaginative play, through journaling and creative writing, through role playing and interviewing guests who helped us learn more. The students gained factual information but, more importantly, they gained empathy and the knowledge that their first impressions of others were not always the full story. They also learned that community means all of us, including the homeless, and that we are responsible to and for each other.
The arts offer a lifeline, a breath of fresh air for students who suffocate when forced to memorize the unchallenged, dead writing in textbooks and on test pages. They offer students many ways to interact with their classmates and with the larger world. When we think about having students developing what are identified as 21st-century skills that will serve them in the future — such as cognitive flexibility, active learning, unlearning (letting go of what is no longer relevant or accurate), critical thinking, problem solving, flexibility, self-awareness, empathy, the ability to work with others and communication skills — the arts are central to developing those skills. By fully funding arts-specific classes and integrating the arts into other subject area lessons, we are inviting students to bring their whole selves to their tasks, which leads to deeper and more enduring learning.
Doug Selwyn taught at K-12 public schools from 1985 until 2000, and then at university as a professor of education until he retired in 2017. He is the chair of the Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution education task force. You can reach him at dougselwyn12@gmail.com.