me arts ed

Blogs talking about why arts integration isn’t enough

For years I’ve heard two sides to the story… from arts teachers who absolutely love to teach in a connected fashion: “if teachers are collaborating to teach the arts and other content areas, students will have a better understanding of the connections in the world and will be more integrated in their thinking and approach to solving problems”. And from others: “we have to be careful how we integrate since administrators will eliminate our jobs because they think that classroom teachers can be trained to teach all subjects”.

Arts integration is not a new concept. In fact, in 1978 I was reserching arts integration. At the foundation of my teaching practice in 1976-1980 I was connecting content with visual arts to teach in a K-8 system. I was doing this because that was the intentional design of the program. And I absolutely loved it and found little research at the time of exisiting documented programs.

When I received a link from a colleague to the blog Education Closet I was excited to read the post called What Do You Mean I Can’t Cut My Arts Teachers? August 19, by Susan Riley. The post was Susan’s response to a blog post called Why Arts Integration Isn’t Enough by Katherine Damkohler on ARTSblog.

Both blog posts reach out to me and reaffirm my beliefs and provide an opportunity to reflect on the value of arts integration. I paused remembering discussion in my middle level education graduate courses with Ed Brazee at UMaine on multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, integration, integrative. The conversation was taken to my school and all staff came to the importance and value to arts education. It was simply about the connections. It was the valuable conversations my colleagues had about teaching and learning and how we “drilled down” so students can be in the center of their learning. They were engaged when they could find meaning in the world that exisited when the curricula was connected. They weren’t handed the puzzle pieces separately and expected to put it together but understood the connections and made meaning of it in a creative manner.

The beauty of connected curriculum is that teachers learn from each other while planning and implementing and students have the expertise of their teachers from different content areas. It takes a certified instructor and a highly qualified individual to guide students in their learning journey. Students, teachers, administrators, and parents were learning.

I hope you will read each of the blog posts and let me know what you think!