Teaching Urban Children With Special Learning Needs:
What We’ve Learned in The Art Partners Preservice
Fieldwork Program
2001©
By Lucy Andrus, MSEd, ATR
Professor, Art Education Department
Buffalo State College, Buffalo, NY
The Art Partners program is a
preservice fieldwork project involving collaboration between Buffalo State
College (BSC) faculty and art education students in training, and the children
and teachers of Buffalo city schools.
Art Partners specifically targets inner city classrooms serving children
with special learning needs in intellectual, emotional and social areas of
development. Some have special education classifications and most are
considered ‘at-risk’ due to stressful living circumstances that may seriously
compromise their school and social success.
This paper will discuss the need for
early field experience in urban schools for preservice teachers, the efficacy
of an art education program for addressing the unique needs of urban school
children, and some results of the program’s applied research efforts for
improving the quality of education in urban schools.
Description of the
Art Partners Program
BSC
students enrolled in an art education methods course on teaching children with
special learning needs may elect to fulfill their fieldwork requirement through
the Art Partners program. Each semester
throughout the academic year, teams of students (subsequently referred to as
“student teachers”) plan and present weekly art experiences for children at
different city schools. In addressing the need for a field-based approach to
teacher education (Berliner, as interviewed by Scherer, 2001), the students are
accompanied by their course instructor (author) who, as an active member of the
teaching team, serves as program coordinator, model teacher, co-researcher, and
mentor providing on-the-spot guidance.
With input from the classroom teachers, a curriculum comprised of
thematic units of study with sequential lessons that build upon each other is
designed to promote established goals and objectives as well as teach art.
Integrated activities in art history, art criticism, aesthetics and art making
(otherwise referred to collectively as “art experience”) support learning in
many areas of the children’s’ educational experience including language arts,
social studies, cognitive development, socialization skills, and emotional
intelligence.
Following each session with the
children, the student teachers and faculty coordinator meet together for
purposes of assessing outcomes, identifying and solving problems and planning
curriculum. This time also provides the student teachers with a chance to
express their personal responses to working with the children, an opportunity
not often available back on campus. At the end of the school year, the Art
Partners program culminates in a special event, such as an exhibition of the
children’s’ artwork with an opening reception to which the children, their
family and friends, school personnel, members of Buffalo State College and members
of the community at large are invited.
The Art Partners program operates
under the assumption that all children
can learn, and that all children can
find personal meaning in art experience.
We believe that it is our job as educators to make this process
available and accessible to each child through our own culturally responsive
and intelligently crafted pedagogical practice. An equally important premise
upon which the program was founded is the idea of prevention. Regular
participation in meaningful art experiences fosters the development of positive
self-concepts and socialization skills in children. Consequently, children can approach their teenage years with
greater confidence and purpose, allowing them to withstand negative pressures
and make better personal decisions when confronted with tough choices.
The Art Partners program has served
children in self-contained, inclusive and general education classrooms since
1994, and was initiated in response to identified educational and social needs
in our urban community. These provide
the philosophical underpinnings and goals of the program, which are:
·
To promote greater collaboration among college and community, faculty
and students, and teachers and children in urban settings.
·
To provide more in-depth, hands-on training in inner city schools for
art education majors, encouraging them to seek employment in city schools upon
graduation.
·
To provide culturally competent art experiences for students with
special learning needs who live in economically depressed neighborhoods of
Buffalo, and especially for those who otherwise receive no art education.
·
To promote teaching scholarship and support research opportunities
where faculty, students and teachers can investigate problems and develop new
strategies together for improving education in our urban schools.
·
To support the mission of Buffalo State College through an art
education program that promotes equity and diversity and brings people together
in partnership to meet the needs of our community’s children.
The following discussion centers on
higher education’s role in assuring that teacher-training programs produce the
kinds of professionals needed to work in urban schools with diverse student
populations.
Addressing the Issues
Collaboration
Between Higher Education and Urban Schools
Colleges and universities cannot
adequately answer the demands of schools for more culturally competent
educators who are able to work in urban schools with students from diverse
backgrounds without a deeper understanding of the population they purport to
serve. Such an understanding must come from greater involvement between higher
education and the urban community, both on a macro as well as micro level, and
especially in our teacher training programs.
Training a teaching force prepared
to meet the needs of all learners, particularly those in urban settings,
requires changes in teacher education and teacher support that move beyond the
rhetoric we’re all familiar with (Gordon & Houston, 1995). Sapon-Shavin
also proposes that we eliminate the boundaries between regular education and
special education, “replacing such programs with inclusive teacher education
models that value diversity” (2000/20001, p.38). These goals will not be
achieved without more personal involvement by college faculty and students out
the schools, and long before the culminating student teaching assignment
occurs.
Programs like Art Partners can bring
college students and faculty into the everyday, real world of teachers and
students in urban schools, helping to further the partnership that is necessary
for improving education in meeting the intellectual, social and emotional needs
of our children. This can occur on both personal and professional levels, from
face to face interaction with the children, teachers and parents in the
schools, to the establishment of urban classrooms as living laboratories where
students, faculty and school teachers can collaborate in applied research
efforts to identify, investigate and solve problems.
Training Culturally
Competent Teachers to Work in Urban Schools
Closely aligned with the above goal
of collaboration, is the need to improve the quality of preservice training in
order to produce teachers who are willing and able to work successfully with
diverse students in urban schools. In the forefront of concerns about the
teacher shortage in America is the particularly acute need for qualified
teachers in urban settings.
Analysis of the situation in our own
community quickly revealed the existence of three interrelated situations: 1)
The majority of new teacher graduates opt out of urban schools right from the
start as they begin to search for employment; 2) The prevalence of ‘teacher
flight’ (author’s term) reflecting national studies that tell us up to half of
all new teachers in urban schools leave within their first few years of
teaching. In Buffalo, as in other cities, this can be seen as analogous to
urban flight, as the city continues to lose the economic, political and social
resources of a population fleeing to the suburbs; and 3) Many of the teachers
who do find employment in city schools have not been adequately equipped to
deal with the needs of urban students during their preservice as well as
inservice training.
Compounding the situation is the
fact that nationally, some forty percent of students in elementary and
secondary schools today are students of color while our teaching force remains
predominately white. (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education,
1999). Other forms of diversity in our schools include growing numbers of
students who: are children of immigrants, speak a language other than English
at home, live in poverty, live in single parent households, and who identify
themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual (Sapon-Shevin, 2001). At the same time,
the move towards inclusion has brought thousands of children who are identified
as disabled back into general education classrooms, representing another major
shift in the school population.
These demographics are reflected in
Buffalo where the Art Partners program takes place. Most of the student volunteers in the Art Partners program have
come from middle class, suburban backgrounds with little or no significant personal
experience with others different from themselves, particularly in the areas of
racial and ability difference. With an increasingly diverse school population,
and a teaching force that is predominately white and female nationwide, the
need to recruit a more culturally diverse faculty in our schools is paramount.
In the meantime, teachers entering
and in service now, must learn better ways to educate children in urban
settings where forty-three percent of the nation’s children of color and
thirty-five percent of the nation’s poorest live and learn (Zakariya, 1998). If
we hope to stem the tide of teacher flight and meet the growing demand for
culturally competent teachers, then higher education must enact more rigorous
and purposeful measures to improve preservice training. We can start by providing
more and earlier hands-on teaching experiences, taking steps to ensure that
these experiences include opportunities for teachers-in-training to succeed in urban schools (Simpson,
1995).
Where to Begin with
Preservice Students
In Art Partners, we begin by
uncovering biases and myths that may exist under the top layer of students’
stated acceptance of others. To gain greater insight into students’ attitudes
and ideas about urban school children with special learning needs, and better
equip faculty with the ability to address what may surface, students complete
pre- and post-program questionnaire surveys. Since art is another language for
the students, they also create a piece of artwork that communicates their
expectations and feelings about their fieldwork assignments before they begin
in Art Partners.
These written and visual expressions
provide an important and revealing glimpse into the student’s thinking.
Comments on the pre-program questionnaires reveal that despite their stated
acceptance of others, students often feel overwhelmed and sometimes intimidated
by what they know from the media or may have observed from a distance about
urban schools and urban students’ behaviors and attitudes (see Fig. 1). Many expressed initial apprehensiveness, nervousness
and feelings of inadequacy about
teaching urban children with special learning needs, and feelings of anxiety
about working with students who are culturally different from themselves.
I’m
afraid because of the stereotypes of inner city Schools. Stereotypes like kids
who have
no
respect for teachers or adults, acting out, street educated students who may be
at risk
of dropping out, gang problems, and poverty.
For
me, it was like entering a foreign country. The location and population of an
urban
school
was completely alien to me. I felt I’d stick out-that my appearance, language
and experience offered no hope
of assimilation. I thought the students
would sense my fear
and
apprehension and take offense to it.
Why should a twenty-five year old woman be
afraid
of a seven year old? Logically, it didn’t make sense but I was terrified
nonetheless.
Supporting the firm belief that
nothing challenges biases and stereotypes faster and more effectively than
personal experience, students’ post-program images and surveys reveal
significant changes in their attitudes and behaviors. Virtually all of the
students rated themselves as feeling more comfortable about working with
urban children who have special needs or are culturally different, with many
commenting that they had misconceptions prior to their participation in
Art Partners. Their reflective comments and visual images bear this out (see
Fig. 2).
Fear
of the unknown is worse than the unknown itself. Once the mystery of the urban
school dissipated, so did the
fear. All these children I saw as “foreigners” had names and faces
and
smiles for me. I found myself anxious to return to see them every week.
I
discovered that children do not have an agenda to become “bad” people. All children
want
love
and attention from a sincere, caring, competent adult.
I
think all teachers should have this type of experience. I was able to see the commonalties
we all
have.
I
learned that a lot of them are just like me when I was a young child. We are
all the same
inside
and we should be able to learn the same information. It is the method of
teaching
that
may inspire students to learn in various ways.
When asked about
the overall value of the Art Partners program to their preparation as art
teachers, the students were unanimous in their positive ratings and in their
comments.
This was the greatest prep course I could have
taken. It involved working in a group,
team teaching, lesson planning, an urban setting, children with special needs...everything!
I
feel so much more prepared for student teaching, and now I know I can be
successful
in an
inner city school.
The
biggest impression that was made on me was that children were learning...from
me!
Children
give back as much as you put in. If
expectations of achievement and behavior
are set
high early, and the teacher works equally hard to help the kids get there,
success
and learning are inevitable.
In the post-program surveys comments
section, many of the students describe their participation in the Art Partners
program as life-changing, underscoring the need to provide personal
experience in urban schools for our teachers in training as early as possible
in their studies.
Understanding Urban Schools and Students
Throughout their fieldwork in the
Art Partners program, the student teachers, alongside their faculty
coordinator, increase their awareness of the social, economic and political
factors relevant to urban schools while developing their understanding of urban
students from diverse cultural backgrounds. Since our work includes children
who have disability classifications, it helps to explore students’ initial
notions of special education, helping them to reframe this view within the
larger picture of diversity.
In so doing, Mara Sapon-Shevin
(2001) points out that discussions of multiculturalism and diversity have been
mostly separate from those about inclusion of students with disabilities, and
she notes that this division is also reflected in the way teachers are
prepared. She feels that this split hampers the ability to think critically
about the ways in which issues of diversity are connected, and how they can be
addressed in an integrated manner. Sapon-Shevin suggests that if we
“conceptualize disability as a social construct”, then we can link the
disability agenda to a broader diversity mandate” (p.35). She believes that if
we can look at all differences within this more inclusive framework, then we
can better understand and implement more effective approaches to teaching our
diverse student body.
Sapon-Shevin explains that viewing
disability as part of the larger diversity agenda rather than separate from it,
will allow us to value multiple identities and communities, and help us to see
diversity not as a problem in the classroom, but more as a “natural, inevitable
and desirable state” (p.35). In the process, we enrich educational experience
for teachers and students alike.
At the same time, it is essential
for the student teachers to examine the disproportionately high numbers of
students of color in special education, mostly with classifications of learning
disabled and emotionally disturbed. (Futrell, 1999). Critics say that these two
categories are often “catchalls for difficult students”, a phenomenon not
uncommon to urban schools (Zernike, 2001).
Carl Hayden, New York State Regents Chancellor, recently stated that for
a long time, teachers have referred such students to special education not
because they were disabled, but because they were difficult (as cited by
Zernike, 2001).
It is suggested that far too often,
such difficult behaviors are the result of attitudes and practices by teachers
who do not understand their students’ culturally particular behaviors and
learning styles (Alexander, 1989 ). Consequently, many educators are mis-teaching, mis-interpreting and mis-evaluating
their students with cultural backgrounds different from their own. In the process, they may fail to see their
students’ competencies, and fail to recognize and use the culturally particular
knowledge and skill that these students bring with them from home and
community. It is no surprise, then, when young people find little connection
with school and educational experience, and sadly, turn off to learning, often
becoming the so-called “difficult kids” who end up with disability
classifications.
These might be the students Herb
Kohl refers to when he talks about “not-learning” (1991). He says that students’ refusal to learn is
linked to their sense that teachers, schools and society compromise their
dignity and self-worth. He states “not-learning tends to take place when
someone has to deal with unavoidable challenges to his or her personal and
family loyalties, integrity, and identity”.
He goes on to explain that if a student agrees to learn from a stranger
who then doesn’t respect his/her integrity the student will experience a
serious loss of self, making the only reasonable alternative to reject the
stranger’s world and not-learn. In Art
Partners, we discuss that this is what might be occurring when teachers fail to
understand and respect their students’ cultural backgrounds as may too often be
the case in urban schools, especially when the cultural backgrounds of teachers
and students differ.
Preservice fieldwork programs like
Art Partners can provide important opportunities for our future teachers to
know, understand and respect who urban students are, the culture that they
live, what they bring to the classroom, and how these factors can affect their
school experience. These are all issues that can be explored back on campus
with other students, helping them to develop their social consciousness and
become proactive advocates for educational equity. As emerging professionals,
these teachers can then serve as role models for their own students, teaching
them to value diversity and engaging them in the work of creating more
inclusive institutions where all children can learn.
The remainder of this paper will
share the results of applied research work through the Art Partners program,
and discuss what the BSC students and faculty and the classroom teachers
learned about art, education and urban children.
Some Things We Have Learned About Art
and Urban Students
Anthropologist Ellen
Dissanayake has taught us to appreciate art making as a human biological
necessity that helps people to survive better than they would without such
experience in their lives (1988; 1992). We know that across time and cultures,
humans’ use of art for emotional and psychological health and mastery predates
recorded history. Today, the profession of art therapy bases assessment and
treatment on these healing properties. Twentieth century pioneer in art
education, Viktor Lowenfeld, was one of the first art teachers to write about
the therapeutic aspects of art education (1957). In recent times, art educator
Peter Smith has called for a “therapeutic strand” to art education as one
answer to meeting the needs of an emerging student body “characterized by deprivation”
(1993, p. 55).
Given all of the above, it stands to
reason that art experience may be also be viewed as preventative, an idea that
has particular relevance to the urban children served by the Art Partners
program (Andrus, 1996). Most of the children who have participated in the
program have been considered at-risk for various reasons, making them more
vulnerable to school dropout and more prone to risk-taking and engaging in
potentially destructive activities. Since a majority of the students we have
served to date have also been African American boys, it was essential for the
Art Partners teaching team to understand something about the status of African
American men in this country. Black males have been perhaps the most at-risk
population the United States, experiencing higher rates of social and health
problems, with the highest mortality of any population, including African
American women (Stewart, 1995).
Reading the work of Nathan McCall
(1993; 1995) has been insightful and provided an additional impetus for
developing the preventative aspect of the Art Partners program. McCall, now a
successful author who was able to work his way out of a street life that
included drugs, arrest for armed robbery, and finally prison, has attempted to
explain the “carnage” among young African American males, and why so many of
them still in their teens opt for life on the streets, where, as he describes,
“the playing field is level and the rules don't change”. (1993, p. 48).
In looking back at his own youthful
experience and those of his friends, he describes how, despite whatever
advantages may have been available, these and the hard work of his parents were
not enough to shield him from the full brunt of racism encountered on a daily
basis. In a chilling statement as he tried to explain the effects of this
constant assault on one’s psyche and sense of self-worth, McCall provides a
critical glimpse into the minds of many young African American men whose hearts
have hardened and whose optimism is lost: “When your life in your own mind has
no value, it becomes frighteningly easy to take another’s.” (1993, p. 49).
It is impossible to hear this
perception without reflecting on the ways in which people acquire a fundamental
sense of self during childhood, and how such a self-concept influences the
kinds of life choices one makes, and one’s view of what the future holds. This
hits home even harder with the knowledge that at-risk students, of which a
higher percentage live in urban settings, have low self-concepts and low
self-esteem (Jenlick, 1995; Sartain, 1990). It is also impossible not to see
the connection between what teachers and schools provide and how much one’s
educational experience contributes to the formulation of children’s
self-images, for better or worse.
The Art Partners program presents an
art education curriculum that emphasizes the development of competence, mastery
and a positive self-concept based on the assumption that these characteristics
play a vital role in the prevention of a variety of potential problems to which
urban children may be especially vulnerable.
Streeter talks about art offering an opportunity, free from constraints
and impositions, for being yourself ,
and exploring and revealing identity as a person (1992). McGraw (1995)
describes creating art as “art re-creating the person with his/her strengths,
issues and solutions, with control left in the hands of the person”
(p.168). Such an experience may be
essential for children who rarely experience feelings of being in control,
whether dealing with the challenges of a learning difference, or attempting to
negotiate and manage in a world that is often disorganized and chaotic.
Grounded in the idea of art as
preventative medicine, the Art Partners program attempts to offer this kind of
empowering, self-enhancing experience through art to children while they are
still young. If we can engender a sense
of competence and pride through achievement in our children, they may value
themselves enough to grow up making better choices and better decisions when
confronted with difficult situations. If children’s internalized self-images
are strong and healthy, they may be less vulnerable to feeling helpless and
hopeless, and may therefore be less at risk for engaging in self-destructive
behaviors -unlike Nathan McCall and his friends, many of whom ended up
incarcerated or dead before hitting their mid-twenties.
Developing
Self-Identities as ‘Makers and Consumers of Art’
We know that developmentally, all
children are searching for identities that will help them feel competent and
empowered, and we are reminded that if kids don’t see positive ways to achieve
these developmental necessities, they will find other ways. As McCall warned,
this might include life on the streets, which offers an immediate and very
accessible alternative, particularly to those children who are already
disenfranchised from the mainstream. In a study of youth violence, Davis (1995,
p. 202) discovered that some youth may
commit violent acts “to compensate for something they feel is missing in their
personal identity.” Kohl (as cited in
an interview by Scherer, 1998) advises
that what we must do is “offer to kids who are potential perpetrators of
violence, a more attractive way of using their intelligence, energy, efforts,
frustration and rage” (p. 11)
Compounding the issue for many boys,
and in particular those from low-income urban neighborhoods, is the notion that
learning is uncool but being a ‘tough guy’ is. In a recent article in the Christian
Science Monitor, Coeyman (2001) interviewed students, teachers, principals and
other human service professionals whose observations and real experiences all
underscore the fact that for many boys, particularly those in disadvantaged
neighborhoods, think that scholastic achievement is not compatible with
masculinity. Even at very young ages, we have seen many children in Art
Partners, including girls, attempt to
feel powerful and respected by trying on the role of tough guy, often emulating
an older sibling or acquaintance.
We want to offer them an alternative role as they learn to
exercise their innate creativity and develop skills and insights that will
serve them in all areas of life. In
pondering all of this, we have learned that we can offer children another, more
positive identity from which they can experience a sense of power and
capability: that of maker and consumer of art. We have learned
that art is an empowering, equalizing force that can offer kids a healthy way
to feel competent and in control as they learn to respond to artworks, make
judgments about them and manipulate media and materials to give expression to
their inner visions and ideas. This is aesthetic experience that cannot be
judged as right or wrong, and one that helps children see themselves as worthy,
valuable and competent based on artistic achievement. Children need experiences
that can help them to see themselves for who they are, apart from the
expectations and stereotypes that can easily influence their self-perceptions.
(Aronson, 1995).
In applying the theory of prevention
described earlier, we have found it useful to make a deliberate and conscious
attempt to help shape children’s optimism and positive sense of self. We start
by projecting our own attitudes that every child is a person of worth, is
capable of and expected to do something worthwhile and even difficult in the
world, and that every child will be supported in doing so in Art Partners.
(Some children who already view themselves as failures, are actually vexed at
first to learn that we refuse to accept this definition of who they are!) We
begin our school year by informing the children that they are going to be
makers and consumers of art, and that they will think like artists and behave
like artists, telling them that, together:
·
We will be thoughtful about what we do
·
We will share our ideas and be open to the ideas of others
·
We will take risks and experiment
·
We will embrace mistakes as a path to new learning
·
We will not quit when the going gets tough.
These messages are repeated
consistently throughout the year and in every relevant instance, helping the
children to begin internalizing these characteristics.
Taking a differentiated approach to
curriculum and instruction makes learning more accessible to all students as we
have witnessed in the Art Partners program (Tomlinson, 1999). Differentiation
can take many forms in the classroom as content, process and product are
designed to offer multiple levels of learning for students. Some of the things the student teachers in
Art Partners have been learning about meeting special learning needs through
differentiation are discussed in the following.
Knowing
the children you teach: Students learn best when their school experiences
reflect their personal interests and lived cultures (Simpson, 1995; Tomlinson
2000). As the student teachers complete formal needs assessments on their assigned
students, they also learn to gather as much information as possible on the
children’s out-of-school lives which they build upon throughout the semester as
they continue to enrich their understanding of who they are teaching. This
knowledge is not only essential to teachers‘ cultural competence but also to
differentiating instruction.
Integrate
children’s funds of knowledge into
curriculum: We have learned that teachers need to go beyond understanding
who their students are by applying this knowledge in crafting the content,
processes and products that will carry out curriculum. Children from different
home, community and economic backgrounds learn different “funds of knowledge”
(Velez-Ibanez & Greenberg, 1992) which Rosebery, McIntyre, and Gonzalez (2001)
describe as the “various social and linguistic practices and the historically
accumulated bodies of knowledge that are essential to student’s homes and
communities”
(p. 2).
In reviewing the research on the
educational disparity between middle-class, suburban children and poor,
working-class children, these authors revealed a pattern that shows schools who
were failing these children were not treating children’s funds of knowledge in
an equal manner. In Art Partners, we have learned to respect and use these
funds of knowledge as a means to shape curriculum and connect students’
cultures to instruction, thereby maximizing opportunities for success by all.
Incorporate
a learning-through-he arts approach: We
have learned that in addition to the intrinsic value of art experience for
urban students with special learning needs, art offers another language for
perceiving and responding to the environment.
Working in conjunction with the regular classroom teachers, the
student’s teachers learn how to develop interdisciplinary curricula that
integrates general educational goals and objectives without sacrificing the
aims of art education (Andrus, 1994).
We have discovered that goals can be reached concurrently, and this
approach does not compromise the integrity of the art education, but in fact,
enriches the children’s overall learning experience.
Be
open to diverse ways of knowing: In an article on applying ideas of
Afrocentrism to solving problems confronting African-Americans today, Stewart
(1995) provides us with one example that supports the value of investigating
diverse cultural ways of knowing.
Stewart explains the Afrocentric belief, shared by other cultures as
well, that emotions and feelings are seen as valid affective ways of knowing
since they are the most direct experience of reality. Since art is inherently
an affective experience, from an Afrocentric point of view then, art is an
“important source of knowledge” and serves “to structure truth”. Stewart points
out the benefits of including this “native point of view rather than the
imposition of euro-interpretations ” in understanding African Americans
(p.245).
We know that art as a means of
self-expression and communication often supplies a voice for those who may
otherwise be silenced. Awareness and
respect for non-empirical sources of knowledge, like the arts, as legitimate
ways of acquiring and therefore teaching knowledge, enable us to more
effectively meet the needs of a culturally diverse student population.
Raise
expectations for your students: We have learned, particularly with our
students who have special education classifications, to avoid underestimating
abilities. We have witnessed how low teacher expectation can be a
self-fulfilling prophecy. This, unfortunately, has often been the case with
students of color (Haycock, 2001) as well as well as students who are
differently abled in cognitive functioning. Too often, these students receive a
curriculum that is watered-down rather than adapted to meet individual learning
needs. In discussing the efficacy of differentiation in mixed-ability classes,
Wehrman (2000) asserts that we ought to “raise the bar for everyone” (p.21),
supporting the idea that students will often rise, or sadly, sink, to the level
of teacher expectation.
Our work with teens who are labeled
“developmentally disabled”, for example, has shown us time and again that a
combination of high expectations and adapted, differentiated instruction makes
all the difference. In one case, our students were able to successfully engage
in a unit requiring higher order thinking skills and, according to their
teachers, even demonstrate carry over of their new knowledge about symbolism in
commercial art to other situations in their living skills-based program.
Typically, such a unit would have automatically been excluded for these
students since it required a considerable degree of abstract thinking. Using a
differentiated approach, however, and finding ways to relate every concept to
the students’ concrete, real life experience made learning, and even retention
of learning, possible. A parent of one of our students told us how she had seen
at home an amazing and unexpected carry over of knowledge and new behavior in
her son that she believed were a direct result of his involvement in Art
Partners. We learned that it’s how you present concepts that gives
access to skills and knowledge for all students, which leads to the next
discussion.
Incorporate
more kinesthetic and multisensory experience: One of the crucial aspects for
ensuring success for our differently abled students was to find multiple,
concrete ways for them to experience conceptual content as much as possible. We
found that students could more easily understand concepts when we combined
verbal/linguistic modes with more hands-on experiences utilizing one or more
sensory functions. For example, an abstract concept might be presented
verbally, visually, tactilely and even dramatically, while students could use
any or all of these modes for responding and demonstrating their understanding
of the concept. This method of teaching and learning, which builds on students’
strengths and employs multiple intelligences, helps to motivate even the most
resistant student.
We learned how to use kinesthetic
sense more deliberately to engage our younger children, many of whom struggled
with attention problems. Our frustration with the children’s constant physical
restlessness during lessons compelled us to look to our own teaching methods.
Analysis and discussion of the problem during our staff meetings coupled with
research into current literature (Ball 2000; Breslin, 2000; Jensen, 2000) led
us to realize that rather than fighting the students’ ‘hyper’ behaviors, we
ought to devise ways to channel and utilize this energy for learning. We began to design ways to incorporate more
kinesthetic experience through physical activity for our students, mostly boys
in this case. Questions we explored included: How might boys and girls learn
differently? What were ways that the children could use their own bodies and
kinesthetic sense as conduits to cognition?
These questions challenged our
thinking and enhanced our own creativity as we devised answers. For example, in
a lesson about spatial relationships and how artists create 3-dimensional space
on a two-dimensional surface in still life compositions, in addition to viewing
and discussing examples, we asked the children to come up as each was called by
a still life object’s name, and arrange themselves according to the teacher’s
spatial direction: “teapot, find the middle ground, bananas and apples find the
foreground, candlesticks, change from middle ground to background”, etc. Almost
immediately, we had every child’s attention, and our children who would
normally rapping, tapping and otherwise fidgeting, were totally engaged when
they were given a constructive way to use this energy to solve a learning
problem.
In addition, using
their own bodies to experience spatial relationships helped our students with
perceptual problems acquire conceptual understanding more efficiently and with
less frustration.
Kinesthetic, multisensory ways of
experiencing instruction make learning stimulating and more enjoyable for all
children, but may be particularly useful for addressing the special learning
needs of urban children.
Student teachers in the Art Partners
program have often felt overwhelmed by the anger, acting out behaviors and
emotional neediness they have observed in many of the children they work with.
They have likewise experienced strong emotional reactions to the various kinds
of deprivation they have witnessed, and often report feeling “sad” and
“concerned” about the children. Being able to address these subjective
responses with their faculty coordinator immediately after a session has been
critical in shaping the ways in which these fledgling teachers manage their
feelings, attitudes and interventions. This is especially important in cases
where teachers’ backgrounds differ significantly from students’, and is akin to
the mentoring process that researchers say accounts for lower attrition rate in
new teachers (Holloway, 2001;
National
Association of State Boards of Education, 1998).
If preservice teachers’ subjective
experience in teaching ignored, especially experience that includes the unique
challenges of working in economically depressed urban schools, then we run the
risk of perpetuating myths and stereotypes and may, in fact, be inadvertently
contributing to ‘teacher flight’. In the Art Partners program, attention to
student teachers’ subjective responses is an integral part of their fieldwork
experience. It is also addressed in class back on campus through discussion,
writing, and visual reflection, where whole groups of teachers in training can
share their experiences and support each other. In so doing, preservice
teachers have an advantage in that they already possess a sense of what to
expect and a beginning set of skills to cope productively with the challenges
of teaching once they get out there.
Although course work in areas such
as counseling an group dynamics would certainly strengthen the skills of
today’s teachers, the kind of therapeutic outlook and approach called for here
is not a clinical one, but one more in line with the dictionary definition of
the term, which describes therapeutic as “having a beneficial effect on one’s
mental state” (Woolf, 1976).
Therapeutic teachers are ones who
recognize and understand something about their students’ out-of-school
lives. The Art Partners student
teachers realize that it is not enough for them to be competent in the content
and pedagogy of their discipline. They soon learn that children bring their
life experience into the classroom in all kinds of ways that affect learning,
from children who live with violence on a daily basis to children who don’t get
enough food or sleep, to children who feel alienated and disengaged from
school. While many of these issues cross socio-economic boundaries in today’s
social upheaval, there are some that are unique to urban settings, and we need
teachers who can respond appropriately to students in sensitive and culturally
competent ways.
One observation in particular
underscored for us the importance of cultivating a ‘therapeutic eye’. We began to witness an increasing incidence
of loss in children’s lives for various reasons including loss through divorce,
loss of friends, loss of home, or loss of a loved one through death, oftentimes
violent. In many cases, we noticed that
the grief and mourning surrounding these losses was incomplete for the children,
lingering within them to a greater degree than realized by of the adults in
their lives. We came to understand that many of the children’s parents had all
they could do to cope with life and had not always resolved losses for
themselves. In our program, it was the
art that allowed some of these unresolved feelings to surface for the children,
and that provided a window of insight for us.
At first, it surprised us to see
several of the kids in Art Partners regularly refer to the deaths of people
they knew in their general artwork. It
was this immediate observation, coupled with an understanding of what life asks
children to cope with today, from school shootings to domestic violence
(situations that also feel overwhelming to teachers), that led us to explore
the idea that there may be a therapeutic imperative for art education today,
and that we may need more therapeutic kinds of teachers. In one particular lesson alone, three of
the children in the class represented departed relatives in the ornaments they
made to hang on our tree honoring family.
One boy remembered his favorite uncle who had died of cancer over a year
ago and whom he still mourned. Another represented his baby sister who died in
infancy, complete with a picture and a written message to his “beautiful baby”,
and still another remembered his grandpa who died unexpectedly.
In a different Art Partners setting,
a lesson on Native North American culture proved to be a healing experience for
all the children, but especially for one seven year old boy. Following several
activities designed to increase understanding of Haudenosaunee culture (aka,
Iroquois), the children created spirit sticks with images representing
something they give thanks for in their lives.
This boy, an unusually quiet child with a tough exterior, surprised all
of us with an image of a woman and child on his stick as he softly explained
that this was a picture of himself and his mother holding hands, and that he
was remembering her. This child had
been witness to his mother’s murder in a drive by shooting at the age of three.
This was the first time he ever spoke of her in school.
It may be that the culture of
violence in America is affecting kids in ways we have not considered, and there
may be a very real and particular need for children to experience healing and a
sense of control over their lives as a result. It may be that teachers need to
provide educational opportunities for expression of this aspect of children’s
lives in helping kids deal with the many stressors that are unique to life
today. As the Art Partners teaching team explored these issues, we began to
devise learning experiences that offered such an opportunity in positive,
creative ways. (Author’s note: This
article was written prior to September 11, 2001.)
One especially effective lesson
occurred when we taught the children about the Mexican holiday of Dia De Los
Muertos, (Day of the Dead), and helped them work together to create an ofrenda,
or place of honoring ancestors by leaving an offering. Very different from
American cultural attitudes and practices surrounding death, Dia De Los Muertos
is more of a celebratory recollection of the lives of departed loved ones. We
began by reading a story with illustrations depicting two sisters of Mexican
American heritage explaining how their family celebrates Dia De Los
Muertos. We knew the children would
respond positively to this experience, but what we hadn’t expected was seeing
most of the adults in the room also raising their hands when asked who would
like to remember a loved one by making something to place on the ofrenda.
This was a memorable healing as well
as educational experience for all. One of the teacher aides shared that this
was the first time in the year since her beloved aunt died that she could think
of her without crying and with joyful remembrance instead. Once again, the
children seemed eager and appreciative to remember departed loved ones,
including one boy who made several pictures of deceased relatives, including an
uncle who died violently. The ofrenda
was installed in the school’s lyceum, with an invitation to anyone in the
school community to place there a token of remembrance of a departed loved one.
More items appeared and two more children added images of relatives they had
created on their own.
We have also learned that part of
being a therapeutic teacher means an awareness of and a willingness to respond
to our children’s needs for feeling loved, included and understood. When the student teachers are told that teaching
is an act of love at the beginning of the semester, they do not fully
appreciate the reality of this fact until they get out and work with their own
students.
Many of the children in Art Partners
who are considered at risk exhibit characteristics of low self-esteem, running
the gamut from “I can’t” and “I’m stupid” attitudes and behaviors, to a kind of
disengagement that is almost frightening. We have also observed the children’s
negative behaviors with each other, supporting studies that found such children
behave toward others in ways that reflect their own negative self-images
(Jenlink, 1995; Purkey, 1970). While
often seeking hugs from the teachers, they would react most negatively to being
touched, usually accidentally, by a peer. The children’s low self esteem and
undeveloped social skills were interfering with instruction and inhibiting the
development of positive relationships with each other. We realized that in
addition to an overall therapeutic and culturally competent approach to
teaching, we also needed to design specific art units with lessons that would
target components of emotional intelligence that people need to find
satisfaction in life and be successful in the world (Goleman, 1995).
Our children needed to develop the
steppingstones to self-esteem
(self-awareness and self-expression) as well as impulse control,
socialization skills, and empathy for people and other livings thing. The
challenges of teaching children to care about others when they may feel less-than-cared
for, themselves, may seem daunting, but doing so through art experience holds
great promise. As art therapist Shaun McNiffe describes, when people make art
together, “barriers and boundaries between them begin to break down” (1995,
p.166), creating a greater sense of empathy and compassion: ingredients
necessary to developing respect and appreciation for others. In discussing how the arts can move children
from self-absorption to concern for the world in which they live, Stout (1999)
declares that along with developing “critical intelligence”, the other basic
and intertwined purpose of education is to “nurture the human capacity to care”
(p.23).
Exploring all of these issues led us
to think about ways we could take more preventative steps toward decreasing
violence and aggression in our schools, and in our own students in their
interactions with others. We learned that creating a classroom climate of
community, with each student as a contributing, cared for, and responsible
member of that community, is the place to start. We also began to incorporate
more group art activities where success depended on everyone’s participation
and input.
What We Learned
About Teacher Faith and Perseverance
In their preservice work through the
Art Partners program, our student teachers have learned many practical as well
as theoretical aspects of teaching in urban schools. But perhaps one of the
most important things they have learned about themselves has to do with
something we came to call “teacher faith and perseverance”, which stemmed from
students’ efforts to cope productively with the inevitable frustrations and
emotional tugs encountered in teaching children whose life experience has been
difficult.
Related to being a therapeutic kind
of teacher, the students needed to develop ways to manage their personal
feelings about the children in order to assure appropriate and effective
responses in the classroom (analogous to the management of countertransference
required by professional therapists). In order to do so productively, honest
introspection and open discussion with their faculty coordinator/course
instructor was necessary, and a time and safe space was provided after each Art
Partners session.
Two particularly troublesome issues
that continued to arise from these discussions were the student teachers’
perceptions that the children weren’t connecting with them, and that the
children weren’t receiving much benefit from their efforts. When asked what real evidence they had to
support these perceptions, the student teachers stated things like: He doesn’t like me; He seems to withdrawn;
She hardly ever responds to me one-on-one when I try to help her; He never
smiles; I’m not sure they’re getting much out of what we’re providing. Although some of the student teachers did
have one or two children in their smaller groups who could visibly and readily
demonstrate their positive regard on a regular basis, almost all shared the
latter sentiment.
In tackling these issues, the
student teachers first needed to become aware of how their own personal needs
might be coloring the way they viewed and handled certain situations for better
or worse. They were helped to see the difference between when they’re actions
are unconsciously driven by the desire to have their own needs met, and when
they are truly focused on meeting the needs of their students. All teachers
want their students to like them, and novices especially look to this kind of
feedback from their students as a gauge of their own worthiness as teachers.
Like most beginners, these teachers needed to learn that they don’t need to act
like their students’ friends in order to achieve their respect, and not to take
what they perceive as the children’s’ negativity or apathy toward them so
personally. They were able to
understand that they are focusing on their own needs in looking for external
signs of affection from their students, and that this is not our purpose.
Perhaps even more critical for
teachers who work with at-risk urban children, many of whom have had to deal
with more than their share of hurt and trauma at a young age, the student
teachers needed to increase their understanding of the children’s inner
psychology in trying to figure out why, despite their giving and loving
interactions, the children did not show more external signs of their positive
response to this nurturing. As the
student teachers attained a deeper understanding of their children’s lives,
they were able to see that in order for the children to cope with serious daily
stresses, they needed to build and maintain a set of unconscious defense
mechanisms that would make psychological survival possible in a world where
trusting others turned out to be risky emotional business. The student teachers’ expectations were out
of sync with the children’s. Learning to put their students’ needs first
allowed the students teachers to gain a better understanding of this
psychological aspect. They suddenly
realized that it is not a reasonable expectation for some kids to drop all
their defenses so quickly and warm up to a stranger, and one who will only be
with them temporarily at that. Did these important new insights remove the
student teachers’ very human responses to highly defended children who did not
readily exhibit overt signs of positive regard? Of course not, but that’s when we learned that adopting and
maintaining a posture of faith and perseverance would help along with
establishing and maintaining a support system in teacher’s lives.
We learned that part of what it
means to be teacher, and especially a teacher of children with special learning
needs, is having the kind of faith and level of perseverance that helps one: to
align expectations with reality, to carry on despite the lack of ready answers
to troubling situations, to keep things in perspective by seeing and
appreciating the smaller steps that indicate progress, and to know that your
very hard work is having an impact.
Sometimes, my student teachers only
learn this completely at the end of the year when it is time to say good-bye to
the children. For example, this past year, they were shocked to see how many of
the children came to them with hugs, and how some cried, and how the toughest
boy in the whole group broke down crying on the last day, sad to see his Art Partners
teachers leave. The student’s teachers have learned that sometimes, many times
perhaps, it is enough to do their jobs with love and care, treating each child
as if her/she were their own. The have learned that the act of love inherent in
teaching is unconditional.
Through discussion of the Art
Partners program, this paper has attempted to shed light on the importance of
providing preservice teachers with early fieldwork in schools serving urban
students with special learning needs. In the effort to contribute to the
improvement of urban education, some significant results of the program’s
applied research work have also been shared.
We have seen how involvement in
programs like Art Partners helps teachers in training to question preconceived
ideas and fears about working in city schools, develop greater competence in
teaching urban students, and increase understanding and appreciation for
cultural difference. Consciousness is raised as future teachers begin to
embrace the idea of seeking employment in urban schools and accept the
responsibility for doing their part to ensure educational equity for all
children. In fact, all the new insights they have acquired through preservice
fieldwork, and before they go out to teach professionally, have provided
the student teachers with their own dose of ‘preventative medicine’!
In their personal reflections,
students who have gone through the Art Partners program have cited the
importance of having “been given the chance to experience the need for faith in
the process and how to hang in there when things seem especially
difficult”. They value the chance to
have learned “how to do the work of establishing relationships with children
who have been hurt, and who are reluctant to trust”, and to realize “they are
just chidlern!”.
The Art Partners program has also
given preservice teachers an opportunity to engage in applied research
alongside their college professor and in collaboration with veteran classroom
teachers. “We have had the chance to experiment, and take risks in a supportive
and safe environment”. This kind of early experience can lay the groundwork for
emerging professionals to take a scholarly approach to their own teaching where
relevant issues are identified and solutions proposed, enacted and assessed in
order to improve the educational experience for their own students.
Finally, veteran teachers and those
of us in teacher education must project hope to our student teachers, and they
to their students, and believe, ourselves, that change is possible in our quest
to improve the quality of education for all children. As Kohl says, “if you
don't believe the world can be different from what it is now, you might as well
quit” (Scherer interview, 2001). For those who say that idealistic visions of
change in education are not applicable in everyday situations with everyday
teachers, Kohl replies that “it’s no excuse to say it’s real hard to be a
teacher in a real school. Then change the real schools”! He warns that to think
that typical teachers “can’t do creative things is to denigrate the brilliance
in almost everybody” (p. 13).
We must be sure to impart such a
message to our future teachers as they begin to take their place in the awesome
responsibility of providing a quality education for all our children.
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