Michelle Burrows

The school is buzzing. Classrooms are alive with children moving, singing, working together, learning.

In this room, kindergarteners are creating “movement mountains,” their growing understanding of addition facts becoming clearer with every new, non-locomotor “mountain” they create.

In that room, third graders are using iPads to film each other’s first-person perspectives, discussing things such as voice quality and communication.

Down the hall, fifth graders have created “mini Mondrians”, using the work of Piet Mondrian to discuss area and perimeter.

And over there, fourth graders are creating lyrics—chorus and verses—for their “escape” songs, modeling cultural songs of slavery.

Were those kindergarteners trying out their “mountain” dance moves in dance class? Were the fourth graders learning song writing vocabulary in music class? Were the perspective videos taking place in the drama room? Nope.

All of these art-filled lessons were taking place in the regular classroom. Arts integration at its finest.  As we toured several elementary schools in the North Carolina A+ Schools Network, the value and importance of this key piece of arts education was plainly visible.

A+ Schools will tell you that there are three key parts to a true education in the arts: quality, exposure, and integration.

Quality has to do with providing kids with true, pure arts experiences; helping them to gain an understanding of the principles and elements of each art form; letting them discover the history and creativity of dance, drama, music, and visual arts, and providing them opportunities for exploring art from true artists in each field.

Exposure has to do with exposing children to the arts outside of the school walls; taking them to concerts, performances, galleries, and other venues to experience art in all its glory. And exposure also means bringing those arts from outside the school, into the school, through residencies, performances, exhibitions and sharings.  Exposure means helping our children to see all that the arts community has to offer and how the arts connect with our lives.

But arts integration...arts integration is that which helps children learn through and with the arts. Arts integration weaves non-arts content with the arts, allowing our children to make deep connections, to explore varied ways of learning, to be creative and to think outside of the box.

Arts integration infuses learning with action, meaning, understanding, and joy. In A+ Schools, arts integration turns a classroom into a humming, engaging, creative learning environment.

But A+ teachers don’t achieve this in isolation. It takes collaboration with other teachers, with arts educators, with the community, to create true, two-way integration.

It takes quality professional development to help arts teachers and non-arts teachers to gain the comfort and skills they need in order to teach, support, connect to, and enhance each other’s standards.

It takes time, dedication, willingness, and an open mind to seamlessly weave together an arts-integrated lesson. But once you teach this way, you’ll be hooked.

That’s one reason why schools that have been engaged in the A+ Schools Program since its inception in 1995, are still teaching “the A+ way” seventeen years later.

Arts integration, and arts education overall, is more than a way of teaching. It’s a way of life.

When was the last time you stepped into a classroom to see arts learning in action? When was the last time you offered an “artful” hand to a teacher or student?

As we continue this conversation about the absolute necessity of arts education for our children, we need to take ourselves into the places where this conversation matters most and remind ourselves of the  impact the arts can have on our children.