Memo # 5: Why It Matters

Performing Arts In The Classroom:

 

 

“Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig”

 -Stephen Greenblatt

I’ve been thinking a lot about the healing power of writing. I realized that I constantly make the excuse that my school works takes up so much of my time that I have none for creative writing. I spend money on books full of prompts, story cube dice, and picture cards and have spent time perusing the internet for free prompts with the intension of waking up each morning and writing non-stop for thirty minutes. But I never do. Instead opting instead to stay up late and “de-bunny” the long work or school day by watching TV and then sleeping in to prevent a sleep hangover.

However, each week in our class, we have no excuse. We are given a prompt and we get an opportunity to write about what’s going on in our lives in relation to the framework given to us. I look forward to this because it’s pure therapy. Not only do I approach it with fear and come out with something I am often surprized and proud of but I feel as though the light bulb has been lit and some emotional purging has taken place. My shoulders always feel less heavy after class, after I’ve been able to search my soul and write it down.

I know that writing heals not only because of how it makes me feel but also because I talk about my experiences in class with all of my friends and co-workers. I received a text message the other day from my friend Karen that contained one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received that said this; “Today was the first time I wanted to write my thoughts down in a journal. This comes from you. It was a day things came together and I want to make a record of it. I am happy. Thank you.” I often talk about my classes and what I am learning in them but what made my encouraging writing stick with Karen? I believe this is because of my delivery. When I speak passionately about something, it’s a performance, an authentic one where I am playing me, but a performance all the same. This is because my words come alive in my soul firing me up to give speeches of advocacy.

The Significance Of Art: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aaSCptnSIE

I learned to be a passionate speaker through the art classes I took in growing up and later in high school. Dance, Theatre and Music showed me how words can have movement. How they can breathe life into the world and into beings. I was a shy teen because I was told that being different made me weird and so when I started to grow into my own I thought the best way to survive was to become a wallflower. The arts were always there to look forward too and it was through them where I saw that the imagination I had that made me different was what created art and writing that I was most proud of. My performances and writing were where I could truly to be me and I was always moved by what I was creating. The arts and creative writing guided me away from the wall and showed me what it felt like to be myself. It still does that for me to this day.

I learned differently than other students. I needed a hands on, options given, creative way to do projects. I needed to express myself. I could only show that I understand something through creations. I always did better on an essay question, a monologue or a collage poster that I did on multiple choice or true/false questions. There are many other students out there that are the same way. The education system was changing as I was departing its confining halls so I was able to escape relatively well-rounded but students of today aren’t as lucky.

Educational theorist too have noted that the system has tended to focus on only the logical and language facets of learning leaving other ways of learning, ways that can reach students like me, off their chart on how to grade intelligence. “Each schema the child holds is actually the sum total of all the impressions, associations, experiences and emotions that that child has about the topic. Therefore any visualization or imaging activity that a teacher guides children through will necessarily result in a wide variety of images about any topic because the responses totally depend upon the schema of each individual child and just how fully each child’s schema has been activated or brought to the conscious mind but the stimulus” (Cecil, 38)

 “Howard Gardner has made it that much harder for segregationists of education to support their logic of banishment when a child struggles in a rigid curriculum by discovering seven patterns for solving problems and fashioning products, also known as learning.” He starts with the two that traditional schools use; logical-mathematical thinking and linguistic capacities. But his last five which deal with culturally valued ways of knowing and acting in the world are banished from the curriculum.”

“These included spatial-representation intelligence (representing time, space, objects and spirit through symbols, drawings and other media), musical-intelligence (communication through song and rhythm), kinaesthetic intelligence (communication through one’s body to solve problems and make things, interpersonal intelligence (understanding the communication of others) and intrapersonal intelligence (understanding of one’s self so that choices can be made and they can act on those choices) (Kweiler, pg. 81). So in other words, when we are able to look at students from this much wider range of intelligence capacities, we increase the rubric for what makes a student smart while showing them that we understand the way they feel most comfortable communicating and showing us what they know.

 

Another problem is how separated all of the school subjects are from one another when in reality, we rely on all of them working together every day. “The school day is fragmented (you go to separate spaces reserved for science, math, etc.) but the arts provide an opportunity for students to come together and connect the various strands of their learning. This happened not only among the various strands of their learning but also across all subjects. The school musical, for example, obviously brings together learning and students in the visual arts for set design, musical training for vocal and band performance and theatre mavens contributing dramatic expertise. But students doing tech theatre are putting to use physics and mathematical concepts and acumen, just as theatre students are using the analytic skills they’ve acquired in their humanities and history classes to make sense of the script” (Davis, 92).

In the Common Core Standards emphasis on writing across all disciplines and for real purpose in order “to build a foundation for college and career readiness, students need to learn to use writing as a way of offering and supporting opinions, demonstrating understanding of the subjects they are studying, and conveying real and imagined experiences and events. They learn to appreciate that a key purpose of writing is to communicate clearly to an external, sometimes unfamiliar audience, and they begin to adapt the form and content of their writing to accomplish a particular task and purpose” (Calkins, 110).

 “The arts provide a nexus for a range of disciplinary understandings. A musical composition, like a play, demonstrates psychological considerations in its expressive potential, historical considerations such as relevant styles and events, mathematical considerations in the relationship between notes and stanzas and narrative elements in the unfolding of the story it tells” (Davis, 93). In fact, narrative writing, along with persuasive/opinion/argument and informational/functional/procedural writing make up the three types of writing in the Common Core Standards.

Narrative writing can often become creative writing because it contains a part of you, the writer, in it no matter how small. We are talking about personal narratives, fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, narrative memoir, biography or narrative non-fiction (Calkins, 104). Often this kind of writing becomes plays or one-man/woman shows. The personal messages that are written out sometimes turn into pieces that need to be performed.

Narrative writing also lends its hands to the other two forms of writing; “narratives are important not only because they are, as Barbara Hardy says, the primary mode of knowing but also because they are an essential component in almost every other kind of writing. Listen to TED talks which are models of persuasive and informative speaking and you will find that mostly, those speeches are mosaics of stories. Read a terrific informational text and you’ll find that you are reading stories” (Calkins, 113).

When reading stories, emotions are brought to the surface as you journey along with the hero. The same experience can be had with music. When listening, students can “begin to write their reactions in a different way, using a vehicle of the contrast frame. This device provides a literary scaffold or temporary structure for the children to use so that they may begin to record their observations in an expository mode. While such a device is useful in helping all students to organize their ideas, it is especially helpful for those for whom English is a second language” (Cecil, 133).

The performing arts matter in the classroom because it helps to unify all of the other subjects. It matters because it shows students how to connect and understand the world they live in. It matters because it teaches students compassion and empathy for one another. It matters because it instils self-expression and confidence. It matters because it can be used as a way to reach students who can show us what they know by being creative instead of by choosing a, b, c or d with a number two pencil. It matters because it moves, literally, our body, heart and mind.

Through the arts, students can learn to see with fresh eyes the world around them and how to forge their way through it. Through creations, students are able to harness the power of their imagination and agency. Imagination teaches them how to answer the “what if” questions of life. Agency shows them to see that they matter as they put that imagination into motion. Through emotion expression teaches students to recognize and talk about how they feel and in turn empathy in order to understand how others feel. Through interpretation students can show what they think matters. They can show respect for what others think matters as well.

In the act of creating, a process must take place. This process includes inquiry as the students question the right and wrong of the informational text they are given as well as the motivation for why the character does what they do. Inquiry leads to personal reflection on how the student’s approach to the material is working and what else they need to do. Once they have all this down they can then perform for an audience showing that they care through engagement and responsibility by showing up and doing the best they can do.

 

The performing arts matters because it allows the student to learn, think, explore, feel and express others and their own stories out into the community. This allows for voices to breathe life into the air and rise up, encouraging others to stand up for individuality. As one student has said “arts are most the important thing if not because they are so wonderful and rich but because they impact everything” (Davis, 93). Imagine what kind of world we could live in with the ability to impact for the better?

 "Why the Arts?" Art Education Advertisement: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M5hs6ahcKU

Works Cited:

Calkins, Lucy, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman. Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2012. Print.

Cecil, Nancy Lee., and Phyllis Lauritzen. Literacy and the Arts for the Integrated Classroom: Alternative Ways of Knowing. New York: Longman, 1994. Print.

Davis, Jessica Hoffmann. Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. New York: Teachers College, 2012. Print.

Kohl, Herbert R., and Tom Oppenheim. The Muses Go to School: Inspiring Stories about the Importance of Arts in Education. New York: New, 2012. Print.

 

Picture Links:

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http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/oii/files/2013/03/Arts-Gallery.jpg

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