Arts integrated learning is always only an attitude away! It’s true. You don’t need to go back to school. You don’t need to upgrade your education degree.
Integrating art in education is just an attitude away. What do I mean? The shift in attitude is to be able to put yourself in the shoes of your students in relation to the subject you are researching. It is in being a research partner with the students in your care, rather than being the all knowing, infallible teacher authority. The attitude is in the question – How do I help to bring this subject home to every student in this classroom?
Here’s a simple example. Most classrooms are furnished with whiteboards these days. Well, as you go to the whiteboard to diagram something, think –How can I demonstrate this in three dimensions in the center of my classroom? What? You don’t have an open space in the center of your classroom? Well then, maybe you’d like to try it!
Arrange the chairs, desks and/or tables in your classroom so that they all face an open space in the center (about 10 to 12 feet in diameter). Now your classroom has a ‘stage’, an ‘open theater’, a 3D Whiteboard! Because you need this space to demonstrate, to diagram, to experiment. Your class will begin to value what can happen in the center, and new art can begin to appear in the form of oratory, skits, songs, rhythm and coordination games, scientific diagrams, engineering puzzles and all manner of spontaneous theater!
By creating a 3D Whiteboard in your classroom, you are inviting a broader range of learning modalities. The more learning styles you incorporate, the greater opportunity for learning you have created. The more opportunity created, the more your students will actually experience the subject. The more they experience, the greater the relevance and retention!
So… that is one example, just an attitude away. Making a 3D Whiteboard in your classroom!
~paz
