Art & music for special education.

Art is the universal language that gives voice to imagination, hopes and dreams. Each time I meet with my class of special education students something magical happens. When given paint, markers, color, paper, and clay, they find new ways to express themselves. Our program also incorporates music, such as broad-brushstroke painting to the beat of marching music, using color-association tempos, or crafting bamboo rhythm sticks.

Learning Through the Arts

Art is one of the most powerful tools we have for touching the lives of mentally challenged children and youth. Reaching across barriers that life has put before them, they create new connections to the outside world. It is important for these students to be exposed to new environments where they are able to make new associations.

Using visual art and music to create a multisensory experience and atmosphere, we are able to captivate and involve students with a wide range of abilities and needs. As an instructional vehicle, the arts allow us to recognize and applaud learning abilities and at the same time identify and strengthen weakness with no negative impact.

Program Design

The program serves four age groups: preschool, elementary, middle, and high school. Research and hands-on work with other special populations, such as at-risk teens, seniors suffering from senility, and adults with mental deficiencies, helped prepare us for the challenges of our program and its rewards.

After meeting with the director of special education to discuss the logistics of the program, I met with each teacher to discuss their goals. These goals included language development, sensory exploration, elementary learning support, opportunities for social interaction, and integration into the community. In addition to these goals, we discussed the types and levels of disabilities, which ranged from mild retardation to Down's Syndrome and extreme autism.

In our community, the program is held during the regular school day. The public school teachers and aides accompany each group and participate in the twice monthly hour-long sessions. I encourage the aides to let students work as independently as possible, offering assistance primarily in the area of physical challenges. Students are able to express their creativity without boundaries, or imposed notions of blue skies or green grass. Allowing students to work independently helps maximize creativity and abilities and minimize the effects of disabilities.

Developing Lesson Plans

Since few Web sites offer lesson plans to use with special needs students, we formed our own progam. I find it helpful to break down the project into manageable steps or to prepare some of the components ahead of time. This allows for more complex activities and achieves better results. I format the plans with as much freedom and latitude as possible so that the students can work to the best of their ability. A collage activity, for example, is set up so that those who can cut with scissors have the chance to use this skill while those who cannot are encouraged to tear the papers.

Goals of the Lesson Plans

Many of the activities address the Standards of Learning for our state, or support the student's individual learning plans (IEPs). An example: Creating a yarn wheel provides an opportunity to work on ordinal positions of first, next, and last, and to build awareness of patterns.

The primary teachers and I review goals to evaluate the program. Feedback from teachers helps us work together to make program adjustments.

Class Interaction

For teaching artists who have never worked with this group, it can be a challenge. It is important to remain flexible and allow students to produce and progress at their own levels with no pressure or stress. For these wonderful pupils, participation signifies success and encouraging words are their reward.

To further this encouragement we make "field trips" within our own gallery, where students see what others in the community have accomplished. These gallery "visits" are useful in reinforcing elementary concepts such as color, shape, and object recognition.

Through their growth and enthusiasm students show us the program is making a difference in their lives.

Community Partnership

We were excited when the school system approached us with the idea for this program. Many teachers are looking for ways to bring more art into the schools and are unable to do so because they are overburdened by state and federal mandates and lack of funding. Our partnership is a wonderful solution. As a working and teaching artist, I am excited about the successes and the future possibilities of our program.

The Bay School Cultural Arts Center is o onprofit, arts educational organization located in rural Mathews County, Virginia. Wendy Wells is the founding director and director of Programs and Projects. [e-mail]

NATIONAL STANDARD

Students use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.

WEB LINK

www.bayschool-arts.com