COAHPERD

from The Columbian, Clark County, Washington, April 1, 2004

It's hard for some to imagine how a math lesson could translate to an art class.

But not for Vancouver School District art teachers, and it doesn't just stop with math. Students practice literacy in dance class, math in music class and science in visual art class.

"The kid who couldn't understand fractions on paper could go into a music class and totally get it," said Meg Martynowicz, a Vancouver dance teacher.

In Vancouver School District elementary schools, teachers in dance, visual art and music come together to combine lessons that reflect classroom curriculum. And through times of budget reductions and tougher mandates, educators say reliance on community support and local levy dollars are the key to keep such programs alive.

The goal is to teach students that an artistic process or skill can be translated to any subject from reading to history. Along the way, teachers hope that students also develop an appreciation for a creative process.

"It's really much more about the well-rounded-citizen thing than we're trying to put out little Picassos or ballerinas," said Rie Gilsdorf, the district's arts curriculum specialist.

All Vancouver students in first through fifth grades attend 40 minutes of music, visual art, dance and physical education a week. The programs, funded equally, are supported by maintenance and operation levy money.

Money is one key to offering the programs. Time is another. As federal and state testing mandates place more academic demands on students and teachers, arts teachers look for more ways to integrate their classes with the more traditional school lessons.

This year the Vancouver district has placed an emphasis on literacy -- the combination of reading, writing and understanding the written word.

With that in mind, art teachers at Franklin Elementary devised a lesson based on Japanese poetry.

The lesson started with students writing haiku and ended with them performing dances and songs and creating artwork based on their poetry.

Through the help of guest artist Wendy Thompson, Martynowicz, visual art teacher Sheila Hutchison and music teacher Margaret Green combined their lessons. Thompson explained how she helped the students and teachers transition the students' ideas to words, the words to poems and eventually the poems to songs, dances and paintings.

"It's all symbols," she said. "Writing is symbols, and art is symbols, it's the personal interpretation of those symbols."

Dance teacher Anne Averre uses books and literature as a regular teaching tool in her classes at Minnehaha and Martin Luther King elementary schools.

"Dance and reading share a couple of things," she said. "There are segments that go in an order and create meaning. That's exactly what happens in a word or a sentence or a paragraph or a story."

Averre shows young students how to make the shapes of letters with their bodies. As the students mimic letters, they create words and talk about the sounds letters make. With older students, she often reads a story and then asks students to identify the action words, or verbs. Then, the students put movements with those words.

In a recent assignment, fifth-graders learned about African-American poet Langston Hughes. Averre asked the students to act out or create dance motions to his poetry.

The exercise was good for some of Averre's students who struggled to read his work. "I had several Russian students who didn't understand the excerpt just after reading it, but after acting it out they understood it better," she said. "It gives them another way to demonstrate their understanding."

AN ARTS TRADITION

The Vancouver district was recognized nationally in 1999 for its arts program. A national study of arts education in public schools cited the district as one of two in the country with exemplary programs.

The district still is a leader. Vancouver is the only Clark County district, and one of few in the nation, that offers a dance program at all elementary schools, something its done for 13 years. It is also one of few districts in the state, and the only one in Clark County, to have a magnet school dedicated to arts. The Vancouver School of Arts and Academics was founded in 1997.

"We're a lighthouse for the arts movement in the nation," said Hutchison. Local arts educators hope the district keeps arts as a priority.

Ron Porterfield, the district's chief for elementary education, said during the last legislative session, lawmakers reduced the amount of money district will get to help out with such programs.

"Even though it's going to get a little squeakier, we're going to be able to keep the programs going," he said. "We are so cognizant of the fact that education is not just about being able to read, write and do mathematic skills."

ANOTHER KIND OF LEARNING

Arts advocates say there's another good reason to keep arts alive in public schools: Students with disabilities, those whose native language is one other than English and those who are hands-on learners flourish in arts classes.

"There's something about dance, that we can take the kids who are pretty seriously handicapped and they can be pretty successful," Gilsdorf said.

Success in arts classes can give students a boost in self esteem. Gilsdorf said an example of that is found in dance classes, where kids often don't have any preconceived ideas about what dance is.

"A kid by the third grade, can tell if they are good at drawing or not," Gilsdorf said. "Because nobody really knows what dance looks like on a second-grader, there is a wide range of kids being successful."

SUMMARY:

-Students in Vancouver, Washington elementary schools receive 40 minutes of music, visual art, dance, and physical education each week. These programs are funded by local tax dollars.

- Arts teachers try to integrate the content of their lessons with other school subjects to help students succeed on standardized tests.

- Students who struggle with certain academic subjects due to language differences or learning disabilities often reach fuller understanding of all subject matter through the arts.