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Hello,
I want to begin by saying that I found these three articles very interesting. When thinking of the core subjects, one often thinks of language arts, math, social studies, and science. In addition, extra pressure is put on math and reading/writing teachers to get their students to meet certain benchmarks. State and district assessments assess typically only assess these four subjects. In addition, there is other areas of education and stigmas that put added values on these core subjects. For example, as a special education teacher, I often work with identifying students with a disabilities and the I write IEP goal that typically align with state standards. I have written many math goals, I have stressed with parents over their concerns for their students low reading scores, and so forth. But after reading these articles, I wonder why we do not put more emphasis on the importance of art?
It is becoming really clear to me that art has many more benefits than the average person understands. Typically when I hear people talk about the importance of keeping art in schools they discuss how the kids who aren’t good at the other subjects need something that they are good at, or how there needs to be a fun class in school. But from reading these articles I have learned that art has many implications and positive impacts on students success in all classes.
Schwatz (2015) discusses the many ways that art education can enhance a students education in all classes. She discusses one study where a school integrated art into all of it’s classes and student proficiency in math greatly increased after the change. She lists a variety of other benefits that were found in this study. In another article Flory discusses how art at an early age can encourage writing later on. She discusses how with art, students are able to express themselves without yet knowing how to write. I think for many early struggling writers, this would help give them a positive feeling with writing, verses the frustrated, helpless, or shameful feeling that comes with not knowing or struggling to learn to write. This article, the others, and the studies mentioned in them makes me wonder why we aren’t putting more of an emphasis on art in schools? I think there is alot of pressure on principles to have their students show a certain level of proficiency in their core subjects, but I wonder if they knew the correlation between art and success in those subjects, if they would put more pressure on teachers to integrate art?
One thing I found really interesting as a special education co-teacher, was that Scwartz (2015) suggested that art teachers should be co-teaching beside general education teachers to assure that art is properly integrated into the classroom. This makes me curious as to what education will look like years to come. I think we are doing a good job at getting away from that historical teacher centered, one subject, my way or the highway teaching model, but I do think we have a long ways to go if we want to continue to reach more students. I would like to learn about more schools that have gone as far as to incorporate an art co-teacher into the classroom.
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