fayettevillearts.org

By Richard Dean Prudenti
The Morning News

FAYETTEVILLE – Picture this …

Students clustered in groups of three or four. A harmonious hum fills the classroom while participants in lively conversation simultaneously interpret an image by modern artist Joseph Cornell.

J.T. WAMPLER THE MORNING NEWS Cathy Von Hatten, left, and Shirley Gorman team up to refine their writing Thursday July 31, 2008 during an activity called Classifying Art at the Walton Arts CenterÕs Arts With Education Institute.

Is it chaos or the sounds of learning?

SARAH BERRETT THE MORNING NEWS Sean Layne speaks with local teachers about alternative ways to teach students to study for stardardized testing during a workshop titled “Putting Drama to the Test” as part of the Arts With Education Institute at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville Tuesday July 29, 2008.

“Most of us come to the table thinking the quiet classroom is the well-behaved classroom,” said Sean Layne, a national workshop presenter for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Partners in Education program.

“The arts can’t happen in silence,” he said. “We have to share our thoughts, negotiate meaning, compromise and collaborate.”

Playing the role of students, 20 educators from Northwest Arkansas discovered how integrating the arts in curriculum can be the best practice for learning. A variety of teachers including general classroom, art, music, English language and gifted and talented instructors attended the 17th annual Arts with Education Institute at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, July 28-Aug. 1.

The principles of arts integration apply to any age, so college professors also learned how they, too, can frame their classrooms lessons using drama, poetry, music and the visual arts.

Traditional teachers expect students to read a text, memorize content and regurgitate information. Assessment comes via verbal questions and answers, tests of multiple choice and short answer questions, and graded papers.

In arts integration, the teacher pushes the desks to the side and creates a level playing field where students learn from each other in groups. Interaction enlivens the subject matter for authentic learning.

“Arts integration is not another way to learn, but a more powerful way,” Layne said.

Reaching For The Stars

Virginia Scheuer of Theatre Squared in Fayetteville analyzed Cornell’s shadowbox painting, “Ideals Are Like Stars,” 1957-58, in her small group in preparation for a theatrical performance that would assess participants’ understanding.

“Why do you think the artist included a ram in the painting?” one group members asked.

The ram’s placement seemed awkward on the back of the “seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters.” Then, Scheuer said, “It’s almost as if the ram jumped on his back, commanding his attention.”

Aha!

“Art is a venue that prompts you to think,” said Melanie Layne, an arts integration specialist at the Bailey’s Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences in Fairfax County, Va. “We are gathering information and sharing ideas. My favorite question is, ‘What can you add to that?’”

Melanie Layne and Sean Layne are married, and together they tour the nation encouraging teachers to make the arts “unavoidable.”

“Even though arts integration is best practice, and all the research says to teach this way, it’s not the dominant way of teaching,” she said.

Coupled with the arts, Sean Layne introduced games that strengthened the group’s concentration and cooperation – life skills that he said are rarely explicitly taught in schools. Conversation requires concentration and group problem-solving requires cooperation.

Throughout the week the teachers exercised their imaginations through the use of their bodies. One-minute challenges, for example, resulted in the creation of “tableaus” – French for “picture” – ranging from representations of the color red to scenes from a tale from Greek mythology, Jason and the Argonauts.

“It’s not enough for students to read something and say, ‘I understand it.’ Do they really understand it? If you have to make a picture of it with your body, then I can really be able to tell that you understood it,” Sean Layne said.

“Lock your eyes. Freeze your body,” he often asked the teachers.

By week’s end, teachers interpreted and recreated in tableau “Ideals Are Like Stars” as a way to enhance their study of Jason and the Argonauts.

Jason’s Journey

The Walton Arts Center is bringing a Jason and the Argonauts performance – complete with action figures – to the stage as a family fun event Oct. 29. This is the reason the Laynes chose the story as a basis for training at the institute.

Jason and the Argonauts are on a journey to the land of Colchis (the end of the world) to break the curse of war, misery, blood and madness that has terrorized the island of Iolca, his homeland, for 20 years. Hercules is the captain and the men on board the Argo are called the Argonauts. Their task: to capture the golden fleece.

Cornell’s painting wasn’t created as a depiction of Jason’s journey. It does have elements that make appropriate connections to the story.

A closer observation reveals two rams in the painting. Why are the rams important, and why should they be part of the tableau?

“When something is on your back, it pushes you forward,” said Tina Hoisington, who teaches literacy for fifth- and sixth-graders at Old High Middle School in Bentonville.

Hoisington interpreted the rams as innocence and experience Jason needs for a successful journey. Notice the interpretation in the excerpt from a poem the teachers created, titled, “Jason’s Conflicting Guidance”:

“Where do I go?

Who do I trust?

Jason, calm down!

Take a deep breath,

trust yourself,

and you will find your way.

Innocence and experience

launch Jason’s journey.

… White light brightens the night.

Jason has rigged me to the stars

and I will connect him to his destiny.”

The class pieced together the poem from interpretations made while in small groups, following the formula, “When I see ‘x’ it makes me think of ‘y.’”

Each participant represented an object in the painting, and the group negotiated consensus on interpretations. The teachers then assigned to each other words or lines from the poem and performed the tableau for other educators following a teachers’ luncheon on the institute’s last day.

The show featured 21 additional tableaus, three per small group, that presented the story of Jason’s adventures according to a prepared text.

The groups selected their parts according to this riddle: “Everyone has to speak, everyone can’t say everything, and there is a little piece of each sentence that everyone has to say together.”

“Having no prior experience in acting at all, I felt that having a few lines was a doable thing. So I felt comfortable doing this,” said Cathy Von Hatten, an art teacher at Root Elementary School in Fayetteville.

Performance culminates the learning experience as much as it includes others in the learning process.

Mary Lou Miller, who taught first grade for many years at Root, responded to the final performance: “I think that is was amazing they could do this in such a short period of time. It’s unbelievable,” she said.

The teachers brought the story of Jason and the

Argonauts to life within a matter of hours.

All the more amazing was the equality of performance, said Missy Kincaid, director of donor engagement at the Walton Arts Center.

Normally one or two actors stand out as “stars,” but in this case, “You all truly made us believe that you couldn’t have done it alone. And, I think in your classroom that is going to be truly effective,” Kincaid said.

Lasting Effect

Laura Goodwin, the Walton Arts Center’s director of learning and engagement, said arts integration reaches all types of learners.

Goodwin asked the teachers, “Are you going to ever forget the details of Jason and the Argonauts?”

The teachers said the visuals, the movements and the sounds would have a lasting effect.

Jason arriving at the palace of King Phineas is a case in point. Phineas would not help Jason unless Jason rid the palace of the maddening Harpies who were tormenting the king. Hoisington was one of two teachers who represented the monstrous half-woman, half-bird creatures.

The siren-like way the Harpies spoke their names three times according to the text impresses the mind. “Can’t you just hear the sounds of the Harpies?” she said in a group reflection. She said the arts help “internalize” content.

Kassie Misiewicz, executive artistic director for Tricycle Theater for Youth in Bentonville said that arts integration breaks open the performance.

“So it’s not about the product in the end, but it’s about the learning that takes place” throughout the journey, Misiewicz said.

Her dream is that students will settle for nothing less.

“Wouldn’t it great for these students who learn (through arts integration) to become the experts?” Misiewicz said. “Then it’s not the teachers anymore saying, ‘This is our thing.’ It’s the students and parents saying, ‘This is the way we do it.’”

At A Glance

100 Percent Schools

Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville has been creating partnerships with public schools so that every student in participating elementary and middle schools can see a live theater performance of music, dance or other cultural experience each year.

At A Glance

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