Sometimes We Flew!

An "Ordinary" School Creates an Extraordinary Program in the Arts

By Sharon Black

As an entering first grader, Brett excelled in sports. He showed above-average intelligence and a disposition to do well in his schoolwork. His mother was a little uneasy when boundary shifts placed Brett in Rees Elementary, “the artsy school.” He had never been interested in drawing, acting, or playing a musical instrument. But during Brett’s first three years at Rees he won two local sketching contests, acted in two plays, learned to play a recorder and an African drum, and announced to his parents that he wanted piano lessons. Brett still loves sports, but he has discovered talents and interests beyond baseball and soccer.

Michael, another young elementary student, was removed from his classroom for hurling chairs, throwing tantrums, and hurting others. He also had academic disabilities. His parents were unable to deal with his problems or to bring stability to his life. To the faculty’s surprise, the principal placed Michael in a classroom where he would be involved with the school arts program. Almost immediately the boy’s violent behavior disappeared and his schoolwork began to improve. By fourth grade he no longer needed academic support. “I love art,” Michael said. “This is the only time that I can stop thinking about my problems.” Michael’s fourth grade teacher explained, “He’s in a safe harbor for a while.”

Neither Brett’s nor Michael’s experience is unusual at Rees, a Title I school in a relatively low socioeconomic area. Brett is among its more privileged students; Michael is one of those at highest risk. In the school arts program, students on all academic, social, and behavioral levels discover new and exciting ways to learn, uncover and gain confidence in their abilities, and recover equilibrium and self-esteem as they work together in creating, sharing, and performing. Fourth grade teacher Chris Roberts, one of the arts program founders, explained, “A lot of the kids are on the fringes; we give them safe avenues of expression.”

A Team-Based Program

The program operates through grade-level teams. Today training is provided for teachers without arts experience; however, Roberts recalls that he began teaching dance “with a manual in one hand and a drum in the other.” Every day 40 minutes is devoted to the arts. On the teams each teacher develops a specialty in visual arts, music, drama, or dance, then teaches it one day a week to the other team members’ classes. Thus the classes rotate among the teachers and are instructed one day a week in each art form. Occasionally artists in residence come to give the students instruction and experience in specialty areas such as Native American crafts or African drumming. Initially the focus was limited to arts instruction, but teams are now beginning to integrate arts with other curricular areas.

Chris Roberts now has both hands on a drum and one of his students’ favorite storybooks open in front of him. Students are “dancing” the story of Big Pumpkin. “Remember, witches are sharp, pointy people,” he coaches as students begin their “witch movements.” When the ghost enters, movement changes. “A ghost is a flimsy thing, but with strength,” he says as the “flimsy” music begins. When the stubborn pumpkin finally pops off the vine, the group pulling on it fall helter-skelter; being fourth graders, they find this an exciting way to end a performance—and a dance/language arts lesson. They are increasing language awareness and feeling the interrelationship of senses and language—while their imaginations run free with images of Halloween.

A Team Beginning

Why did Chris Roberts take up the drum and the manual? The arts program began on the back stairs at Rees. From the final bell until deep into the evening, four teachers “just sat there and talked in the twilight” and “daydreamed together,” as they later expressed it. These four—Chris Roberts, Brenda Beyal, Jeff Ballard, and Tim Mendenhall—did not consider themselves artists. Only one had training in any of the arts. They expressed their arts experience as “pretty unsophisticated—just like everybody else.”

Recalling their early efforts, Brenda remarked, “Sometimes we flew and sometimes we flopped.” But the children loved the program, and school performance improved—especially in language arts. Arts efforts spread throughout the school. Brenda Beyal noted, “The more we do with the arts, the more it reinforces within us that we are doing the right things.”

New Interests and Talents

In the program children experience the arts as participants. A grateful parent noted, “Children discover through the arts program many hidden talents and new interests.” A mother described her nine-year-old son’s joy in African drumming, “He is continually playing drums on couches, on countertops, and in the car and telling me what he has been learning about drumming.” She said that students “are learning to appreciate the wonderful new talents and skills that they have been given through the arts program.” An observant preschool teacher mused, “What would these kids do if the creativity inside them was never released?”

New Ways of Learning

All participants discover and develop new talents, but some children use artistic expression to cope with personal problems. Tim Mendenhall recalled a boy with very low self-esteem who was significantly behind in reading and math. As the boy became “an excellent visual artist, he stuck with school because of the arts; by fifth grade he was on grade level.” Others remember a different “frowny, angry child”—in the lowest 1 percent on the Iowa tests—transformed by his art into “a smiley, happy kid” who liked to come to school. Such changes happen often. A parent was sensitive to the reason: “I have seen kids who struggle at school to find something that they do with enthusiasm and confidence. The arts have opened their minds to many ways of learning. They have learned that education isn’t just about opening a book and doing problems.”

New Unity

Several years ago an artist in residence taught the children about fish, then helped students make three-dimensional fish of papier-mâché—140 of them. To accommodate all the fish, a blue cellophane “ocean” was created in the school lobby with several overhanging levels. “You had to weave your way through the fish to get in,” teachers recall, but “there was a piece of everyone” in that display. The arts program indeed involves a piece of everyone.

The arts program “really brought the school together,” Chris Roberts reflected. Participants have produced and performed many plays, operas, and dance demonstrations. “There is something special about coming together with a group, working hard to create something, and presenting it to an audience,” a parent remarked. Chris Roberts noted that the teachers have “more enthusiasm, more energy.” When a new school building and a doubling of the school population required changes and adjustments, one of the teachers who had initially opposed the arts program was the first to question anxiously, “Are we still going to do arts?”

Yes, Rees is still doing arts, despite the move, the population increase, changes in administration, and even No Child Left Behind. Chris Roberts quotes Benjamin Franklin: “To cease to think creatively is but little different from ceasing to live.” Thanks to Chris and his colleagues throughout the school, creativity expressed through the arts is as much a part of Rees students’ lives as the games they play at recess. Sometimes they flew and sometimes they flopped, but all of the founding teachers affirm with Chris, “It’s been an amazing journey.”