How do you evaluate a student’s artisitc expression? Parker School arts and humanities teachers drafted these common “criteria for excellence,” then used them to create holistic rubrics with which to assess creative work in each of the school’s two-year Divisions. Preparation – You develop your own message. (Note: The message could be the medium.) – You use an art form
Readings “Arts Education for the 21st Century,” American Council for the Arts, 1 E. 53rd St. New York, NY 10022; 212-223-2787 212-223-2787 . Ernest Boyer, “Making the Connections: The Arts and School Reform,” in Why We Need the Arts (New York: ACA Books, 1989). College Board and Getty Center joint project, The Role of the Arts in Unifying the High
Content-enriched instruction: teaching math, science, and social studies in other languages. At Collins Middle School in Salem, Massachusetts, Spanish teacher Margaret Arnold works with science teacher Nancy Pelletier and special needs teacher Victoria Waterbury on a unit about infectious disease and its effects on human history. Along with their English-language instruction, eighth graders relatively new to Spanish learn the Spanish
New York City’s Urban Academy includes two art-related proficiencies in its requirements for graduation. “We try to make sure kids have a breadth of work in different areas,” says director Ann Cook, “a range of experiences through which they develop skills, attitudes, subject exposure, and ways of looking at ideas.” The actual courses emerge from the skills and interests of
Using arts processes to teach academic subjects results not only in improved understanding of content but in greatly improved self-regulatory behavior, a forthcoming three-year study sponsored by the United States Department of Education demonstrates. Barry Oreck of ArtsConnection and Susan Baum from the College of New Rochelle observed integrated arts lessons in all major subject areas in fourteen New York
What do the arts have to teach us about Essential School change? From cognition and critical thinking to instruction and assessment, they can shed valuable light on teaching and learning across the disciplines, and can lead us in new ways toward understanding, equity, and community. It does not look like a research project at first, Teri Schrader’s class presentation on
You teach in a subject area that opens doors to a whole world of ideas and experience, and connects to every area of the curriculum. But no one in your school community treats it that way. Instead, they insist that your students accumulate and regurgitate great quantities of dry facts, without learning their context or how to apply them in