Artful learning: large gains in student performance can be achieved with the arts as an entry point for reform.

Moffett Elementary is a large, inner-city school located in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area. In 1999, the California Attorney General's office cited the school's neighborhood surroundings as the most gang-infested in the state. In fact, the California State Healthy Start Office stated that one of four students attending the school was a prime candidate for post-traumatic stress syndrome due to the magnitude of violence in the neighborhood resulting from gang warfare.

Demographic data show 96 percent of Moffett's student population receives free and reduced price lunch, while 43 percent of parents did not graduate from high school. In fact, 53 percent of Moffett's parents have resided in the United States fewer than five years, and 85 percent are solely Spanish speakers.

Over the years, Moffett's student achievement data was consistently below the 25th quartile on standardized assessment measures. With achievement scores in a downward spiral, Moffett was identified an underperforming school by the state of California in 1999. However, recently the trend in achievement has made a critical turn for the better.

In 2001, the school's Academic Performance Index score jumped 30 points, 11 more than targeted. The following year, the API increased another 40 points, 23 more than expected. In 2003, the API spiked another 77 points--64 points above the state target for student improvement. Moffett's API base in 2000 was 417. Today it stands at 616.

This testimony of the startling change in student academic performance at Moffett grabs the attention of even the most skeptical curators of education. However, what makes these gains even more note worthy is that they were achieved with the arts as the entry point for whole school reform.

The Leonard Bernstein Center

Moffett employs the Leonard Bernstein Center Artful Learning school reform model. Scientifically proven, the LBC model employs a comprehensive school program design aligned with classroom instruction and curricular components. Furthermore, the model uses the the following curriculum design and instruction frames of experience, inquire, create and reflect developed by the Grammy Foundation.

Experience: Students experience and respond to a masterwork through sight, sound and movement. Images, emotions, skills and understandings are awakened and provoke questions. Students leave the masterwork phase curious and wanting to know more.

Inquire: Students begin an investigation triggered by questions raised in the masterwork experience. A significant question guides the inquiry and students employ a variety of research skills. As students inquire, new questions arise and connections are made.

Create: Students demonstrate their new knowledge and skills by constructing an original creation. Thinking moves from divergent to convergent as students brainstorm ideas and then focus on what is best and most workable. They choose a medium, construct a first draft/prototype, and begin to create the final product, cycling through a continual process of evaluating and refining until the original creation is ready for presentation.

Reflect: Students reflect upon their learning and ask deepening questions about what has been learned. They reflect on the artistic process, document and describe it through narrative, maps and metaphors. Students look ahead and consider how they can use what they have learned and what their next step will be.

All curriculum and instruction at Moffett is designed and delivered through the LBC Artful Learning frames. Students engage in the study of mathematics, science, social science and English language arts through the experience of a selected artistic masterwork. They then participate in an extensive investigation of a chosen concept based on the California State Content Standards through inquiry centers designed by teachers. Upon cultivating their learning through inquiry investigation, students develop an original creation. This is followed with participation in reflective processes and activities such as journaling, oration or presentation.

The LBC Artful Learning frames operate as recurring identical processes for teachers, parents and administrators. For example, the Leadership Cadre, the governing body of the school consisting of teachers, parents, the principal, assistant principal, counselor and grant coordinator, frequently conduct meetings beginning with a master work such as a dance or music, followed by inquiry and significant questions, original creations and ultimately time to reflect. All staff development activities are also designed and conducted around LBC Artful Learning frames.

It is expected that the arts will be the entry to learning for adults whether the topic is math, science or English language arts. This fractal process sanctions the arts by the school leadership and reinforces it as the primary instructional catalyst to educate all children at Moffett.

Why the arts for school reform?

It has been well documented that participation in the arts positively influences brain performance. For example, Eric Jensen passionately argues for the use of the arts to educate children. In his book, "Teaching with the Brain in Mind" (1998), Jensen outlines significant research indicating the vital role the arts play in brain neural development.

Music, painting, dance and drama are cited as essentials to academic and emotional development. They help to reduce stress, improve learning, enhance intrinsic motivation, regulate brain chemistry, augment body memory, and literally rewire neural pathways. The arts, often considered "enrichment" in our education programs, may in fact be central to the way humans neurologically process and learn.

Jensen cites the work of Diamond to further his position: "While the case for enrichment is strong, what happens if we don't enrich? In 'teenage' rats, a boring environment had a more powerful thinning effect on the cortex than did a positive, enriched environment or thickening of the cortex (Diamond, 1998). Boredom is more than annoying for teens--it may be thinning their brains! Fortunately, studies show the shrinkage can be reversed in as little as four days."

Artful engagement

Boredom can thin the brains and the lives of adults as well as children. Educators are not mindless workers on an educational assembly line inserting knowledge factoids into the brains of their students. Nor are they simply implementers of ideas created by others far from their classrooms and the children they serve. Rather, educators engage in an exciting dynamic of teaching and learning that is often reciprocal. In other words, as students benefit from the enriching learning environment provided through the arts, so do teachers, administrators and parents.

At Moffett, teachers are expected to develop inquiry centers based upon California Content Standards about masterworks such as "Rain Shower on Ohasi Bridge" by Ando Hiroshige to teach the concept of change to second graders. From these are developed inquiry centers that entice students to delve into research investigations that explore change experienced by the native people of the Americas with the advent of the Spanish explorers.

Such is the excitement that it is not uncommon for parents, teachers or school administrators to participate in student creations. On any given day, a visitor may witness multiple oration performances in the hallway, a student recitation of a great historic speech in the principal's office, parents engaged in a class read-along, a stringed instrument class taught by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, or students singing mathematic functions or equations fluently in English and Spanish.

The LBC approach has propelled teachers to new heights in understanding what is possible. One teacher said, "Until Bernstein, teachers did not think they had time to teach science and social studies. I rarely cracked open the books. I am happy to report that the teachers at my school are teaching more math and science than they have ever taught due to the requirements of Bernstein units and the fact that it facilitates our teaching of standards."

Parent engagement

Teachers and administrators are not the only ones motivated to get involved at Moffett. Parents can take courses in computer technology, arts and crafts, Spanish literacy, nutrition, sewing, guitar, folkloric dance, aerobics and English literacy. The arts act as a magnet drawing parents into school activities in numerous ways. Some are very visible, such as special events like Read Across America, where more than 200 parents participate in a reader's theatre and book-signing by local writers and illustrators.

However, a more significant exemplar of parent engagement is given in the testimony of a parent in describing the impact of artful learning beyond Moffett school confines. He offers the following: "When my kids first came home from school, they did their homework at the kitchen table. All of a sudden they started singing and dancing in the middle of the floor. When my with and I first heard this, we got after them and told them to do their homework and stop singing and dancing. But they said to us, 'We're tired. Singing and dancing for a little while helps rest our brain cells so we can study more and learn better.' So now, we sing and dance with them."

Artful leadership

How did the Moffett school community arrive at the point of committing itself to the arts as the point of entry for school reform? How do we characterize the leadership that brought this commitment, particularly in light of the increasing pressures that often translate as strictly rational-functional rather that artistic?

Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal (1997) in their discussion of artistry, choice and leadership, conclude that leaders face the paradox of struggling to maintain integrity of the schools mission without making it inflexible and stubborn:

"Both managers and leaders require high levels of personal artistry to respond to challenge, ambiguity and paradox. They need a sense of choice and personal freedom that lets them find new patterns and possibilities in everyday thoughts and deeds. They need the kind of versatility in thinking that fosters flexibility in action. They need the capacity to act inconsistently when consistency fails, diplomatically when emotions are raw, nonrationally when reason makes no sense, politically when confronted by parochial self-interests, and playfully when fixation on task and purpose seems counterproductive."

District leaders show mastery

Bolman and Deal's description encapsulates the leadership at Moffett and indeed that of the Lennox School District. From the early identification of Moffett for the II/USP in 1999, school and district leaders set foot on a path of change that walked a tightrope of rigidity--given the influx of mandates from the federal and state levels--and flexibility to allow for an environment that fostered creativity and change.

The journey not only required mastery in leadership, but also that of followership (Sergiovanni, 1990). By this we mean the ability of all members of the school community to participate, learn, and fully apply knew knowledge toward a common purpose. "When followership and leadership are joined," states Sergiovanni, "the traditional hierarchy of school is upset. It changes from a fixed form, with superintendents and principals at the top and teachers and students at the bottom, to one that is in flux."

The district office gave the school flexibility to generate new ways of meeting student needs. By securing a Comprehensive School Reform grant, Moffett engaged in massive amounts of staff development training in LBC Artful Learning and Visual Thinking Strategies. Teachers, with administrators alongside, learned dance, song, drama, and painting to undergird their knowledge and application of the arts. They quickly transferred their knowledge to the classroom and school operations. The results have been masterful!

References

Bolman, L. & Deal, T. (1997). Refraining Organizations:Artistry, Choice, and Leadership (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Curtis, Cathy. (Jan. 29, 1999). "Through the Mind's Eye: Researchers Discuss Their Scientific Explorations of the Brain and Its Role in Creating Arts." Los Angeles Times, retrieved December 2003 from http://infoweb.newsbank.com

Jenson, E. (1998). Teaching with the Brain in Mind. Alexandra, VA: ASCD.

Sergiovanni, T.J. (1992). Moral leadership: Getting to the heart of school improvement. New York: Jossey Bass.

Sergiovanni, T.J. (2001). The principalship: A reflective practice, Fourth edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Double Day.

Franklin CampbellJones is associate professor in the doctorate program for education leadership at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. He has served as coach and evaluator for the comprehensive school grant at Moffett Elementary. Maria D. Fernandez, April Mosby and Fernando Vigil are teachers and members of the school leadership cadre at Moffett.