Center for Learning in the Arts, Sciences and Sustainability

In 2005, the University of Hawaii at Manoa ArtsBridge America program and Friends of Ali’iolani Elementary School allowed an MFA candidate in Youth Theatre Studies to implement a sixty hour creative dance and drama curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grades during the 2004-2005 school year. This fine arts curriculum was designed to address the lack of fine arts instruction within the school and provide students opportunities to partake in arts instruction. If it was not for Friends of Ali’iolani, the school would have had no choice but to continue without fine arts instruction due to lack of state funding. This curriculum represents a collaborative study of how dance and drama enhance curriculum subjects such as math, science, reading, history, language arts, physical education, geography, and writing. “Cultural Dances and Stories From Around The World” was designed to provide children creative opportunities to learn about different world cultures through dance and drama. Three teaching methods were used: learning through dance and drama, learning about dance and drama, and learning about oneself through dance and drama. Learning through drama activities provided children with situations in which they solved and evaluated problems in small groups. Learning about dance and drama allowed students opportunities to learn and apply basic dramatic elements pertaining to theatre and dance as performance art forms. Lastly, activities that focused on learning about oneself and others through drama opened doors for children to express themselves and their imaginations in a safe and nurturing environment. These concepts addressed the State of Hawaii’s Educational Standards from the aforementioned eight areas of instruction. These concepts were explored in and out of the classroom through various problem-based and performance based learning activities. Problem-based learning activities included pre and post assessments administered to track how well students were retaining and transferring what they learned kinesthetically to paper; analysis of literature, poetry, and children’s stories from around the world; script writing; and sharing in oral form. The third through fifth grade students participated in an original play performance that they themselves wrote, adapted, and premiered in for their peers, teachers, school faculty, parents, and community.

Curriculum designed for middle school students to foster an appreciation of the Buckhead Wildlife Area through the study of art, science, environmental studies, social sciences, and history, with the incorporation of arts education. Culminating student projects will include interpretive signage for the Buckhead Wildlife Area, production of a collaborative class sculpture, and individual portfolios of drawing, photography, and poetry. Objectives include utilizing the environment to create individual and collective works of art, fostering an understanding of how artists interpret and use the natural environment in their artwork, and actively engaging students in developing a foundation in art processes, interpretation and critique.

A lesson plan using visual arts and reading skills to introduce the concept of delodomatic creativity (thinking “in the box” and “out of the box”) to children. Designed for 1st or 2nd graders it can be adapted to all grade levels.

Dr. Mary Stokrocki, Professor at Arizona State University and faculty mentor, worked with art scholar-teacher Laura Hales who was one of her graduate students, to offer an art class to Yavapi third graders at the Hmañ 'Shawa Elementary School, Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, Fountain Hills, Arizona. The 10-week program was based on the theme “Our Place in the World”(www.artsednet.getty.edu) and included exploratory art criticism, art history, and creating art components. The program began with a prequestionnaire and a pre-drawing of what they like to do, oil pastel and watercolor resist, and ended in a clay relief. Earlier, Hales introduced third-grade students to an art inquiry discussion based on a painting of a girl by Navajo artist Shonto Begay (Clover & Jim, 1997). They learned about the concepts of foreground, middle ground, background and center of interest. Students also learned that “art is making something special!”

Sound, research-based educational reform principles suggest that public schools need arts education as a regular component of a comprehensive curriculum that will lead to student success, and that Universities can and should apply t heir vast stores of expertise and personnel on behalf of K-12 improvements in teacher support and child learning. This objective can be accomplished by university-school partnerships using a multifaceted, user-friendly curriculum design based on research and effective practice. A study examined the iterative processes and outcomes of curricular development and project planning for ArtsBridge America, a unique arts education partnership among research universities (n=14) in five states and public schools (267), many of which are underserved, underfunded, and underperforming, according to state and national criteria. The study documents the changes to the planning process based on the results of a comprehensive needs assessment undertaken by researchers at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine, the founding campus of ArtsBridge. This paper presents in detail the revised and field-tested constructivist project planning design that emerged from the study. Appended are traditional ArtsBridge planning documents and re-designed ArtsBridge planning documents. (Contains 59 references and 1 figure.)

The paper presents the argument for four years of arts education, grades two through five, and offers ArtsBridge founding director Keith Fowler's "step rationale" for the sequencing of instruction from Studio Art through Drama. It explains some of the diffuclties encountered and Fowler's solutions for setting up a four-year arts outreach program.

In 2002, the University of California San Diego ArtsBridge America program initiated a project, funded by the National Geographic Society Education Foundation, that was designed to address the lack of standards-based geography content and culture-based arts instruction within San Diego elementary schools. Representatives from host ArtsBridge institutions identified the following factors contributing to this deficiency: • a perceived lack of arts and geography competence amongst elementary educators; • limited knowledge of arts and geography lesson planning resources and educational standards; • increased pressure to prepare pupils for standardized testing that does not include geography or art topics; • and district mandates that limit time spent on topics other than literacy and math. This curriculum represents a Geography through Music curriculum developed by ArtsBridge with funding from the National Geographic Society Education Foundation. Mapping the Beat was built around three main concepts—environment, identity, and movement—that reflected the standards outlined in Geography for Life, the full national geography standards publication for teachers, curriculum developers, and other educators. These particular themes were selected for their parallel significance in the study of music. In the classroom, these three concepts were explored through the analysis of graphic reproductions of space and demographics, discussions in oral and written form and participation in musical and performance-based activities.

In 2002, the University of California San Diego ArtsBridge America program initiated a project, funded by the National Geographic Society Education Foundation, that was designed to address the lack of standards-based geography content and culture-based arts instruction within San Diego elementary schools. Representatives from host ArtsBridge institutions identified the following factors contributing to this deficiency: • a perceived lack of arts and geography competence amongst elementary educators; • limited knowledge of arts and geography lesson planning resources and educational standards; • increased pressure to prepare pupils for standardized testing that does not include geography or art topics; • and district mandates that limit time spent on topics other than literacy and math. This curriculum represents a Geography through Music curriculum developed by ArtsBridge with funding from the National Geographic Society Education Foundation. Mapping the Beat was built around three main concepts—environment, identity, and movement—that reflected the standards outlined in Geography for Life, the full national geography standards publication for teachers, curriculum developers, and other educators. These particular themes were selected for their parallel significance in the study of music. In the classroom, these three concepts were explored through the analysis of graphic reproductions of space and demographics, discussions in oral and written form and participation in musical and performance-based activities.

Reform efforts in public elementary and secondary schools are taking either of two directions: increased state control and accountability through high-stakes tests or market-style competition through tuition vouchers and school choice. Yet many of the most influential reform efforts in the past decade have been those that recognized the larger universe to which public schools belong. For example, the University of California ArtsBridge program brings university arts students into K-12 classrooms where the arts have been eliminated as a result of budget cuts. ArtsBridge both supports university students in the arts through scholarships and provides hands-on arts instruction for K-12 students. Arts instruction is targeted to local needs and often ties to other content areas. If universities were to count outreach activities more heavily in promotion and tenure reviews, university faculty might play a strong role in re-energizing K-12 education.

The Dancing History Collection provides new source materials for inquiry in dance history and culture, using reconstruction as a methodology for research. The emphasis of the Collection is to enable the performance of representative movement from different places and times, to deepen dance research practice that has relied heavily on viewing dances. The Dancing History Collection: Cultural Dances, Part 1 contains nine dances from six countries: Israel; Vietnam; India; Nigeria; Argentina and Finland. Each chapter includes factual information, descriptions, and an intra-cultural perspective derived from oral interviews of cultural, historical, or stylistic experts.

New understanding can be gained by reconstructing dances, entering them, and identifying what the experience of the dances entails. The Collection provides original Labanotation scores that document cultural dances that have not previously been available in dance score format for reconstruction. Reconstructions of the dances reveal how they work with variables such as: the design of space; level of movement difficulty; involvement of different parts of the body; music/dance relationships; and the use of individual dancers versus pairs of dancers, or groups made of many pairs or individuals.