Jon Schwartz
May 12, 2013

Jon Schwartz

Jon Schwartz

When I tell people I use the performing arts to teach my second form students, they often enquire, "Yous're responsible for didactics kids academics. How do you discover the time forthat?"

Estimate what? For the get-go 13 years of teaching, I also viewed the performing arts equally an unaffordable luxury, if not a waste of precious instructional fourth dimension. My job was to teach academics by filling my students with information. If the school wanted my students to sing, they'd give them more than xxx minutes a calendar week with the district'southward music teacher. Nosotros hadexistentpiece of work to do!

Only concluding year, when I started bringing music into my classroom, did I realize that rather than being a diversion, the performing arts tin can be a tool to unify the different strands of academic learning into a cohesive theme that students tin can easily digest and eagerly encompass while enhancing learning. Direct and explicit didactics and standard/basal texts are still cornerstones of our grade, but we've made fourth dimension for content-rich music and other visual and performing arts. By using them as thematic didactics tools, we're not squandering learning opportunities, we're enhancing, enriching and creating them.

Excerpt from California State Standards

Excerpt from  English-Language Arts Content Standards for California Public Schools, page iv.

Information technology'southward ironic that many of us adults have come to view the performing arts equally an inefficient use of class time. The California State Standards actually telephone call for their implementation, and indicate to their importance in providing a balanced curriculum.

When the right material is used – academically and culturally rich songs, music, plays, theater – standards-rich content can be presented to students in a meaningful way that boosts engagement and memory. In my feel, kids will dive into the curriculum, and fifty-fifty double downwards on more than challenging cloth, if information technology'due south participatory and delivered in means they tin process and savor.

For case, in my 2nd grade class, we use songs to learn the full range of linguistic communication arts skills: When I first brought in Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" and "Let it Rock," we used the songs to teach reading skills, slowly pointing and tracking to each word. One time we gained a level of fluency and familiarity with the text, nosotros discussed the significant of Berry'south phrases and imagery. Small passages took on nifty significance and propelled us into impassioned inquiry – so much so that, at times, the students didn't want to become to recess. I started getting goosebumps!

For example, Drupe'southward phrase "straddled th at Greyhound" in "Promised Country" helped u.s.a. learn about the apply of literal versus figurative linguistic communication. With some questioning, I found that the kids had no idea what the song meant. Part of this was cultural (virtually of my students are English learners), and function of it was due to the fact that the period the song refers to – all that richAmericana – is all but lost to many in our younger generations. Many of these kids have grown upward on SpongeBob and video games, and take been handed a history-poor curriculum geared to tests that don't appraise history knowledge in chief grades.

We put our songbooks downwardly, raced dorsum to our seats, flicked off the lights and fired upward the projector and Googled each word in Berry'due south phrase. When they saw the connections between greyhounds equally a species of domestic dog, the company'south strategic use of that term as a brand, how and why the company's logo and blueprint/construction of their buses have changed over the decades, the literal definition of straddling, and studied the artful manner Berry used "straddling" in the song, the lesson took on tremendous significance.

I'd been listening to the song for 30 years, but the power of the words never registered with me until my students and I delved into them together. The kids were on the edge of their seats, and I've never felt more than live every bit a teacher.

Using the song equally historical context, we addressed the concepts of westward expansion and the history of the Transcontinental Railroad. Berry's words in "Let It Rock": "Working on the railroad with a steel driving hammer," naturally led to researching folktales and heroes that led united states to historical photos  of entire hillsides covered with hundreds of mud-caked workers holding by and large mitt tools.

The cultural limerick of the workers depicted in the historic photo angry a swell deal of curiosity, and even disbelief. Many of the students had envisioned that everyone in the "Old Days" would look similar the Lone Ranger or Pecos Bill and were astonished to meet Chinese workers. Using language the kids could understand, nosotros used the grade'southward reactions to the photos equally a launching signal for talking about stereotypes, reality and preconceptions.

This far-reaching bookish discussion, from phonics to folktales, all emanated from portions of classic American songs. Who would accept thought?

Equally you can see in the video, in one case we researched the early and modern trains and buses, students created hand-drawn fine art related to our songs, scanned it into the estimator, edited it in Photoshop, and uploaded it to their personal anonymous blogs. The students were tasked with recreating, through their own drawings, a detailed photograph of a 1950s era Greyhound double-decker. This challenging consignment enabled us to accost the state'southward Grade ii Visual Arts Standard 2.iii (Describe the illusion of depth (infinite) in a piece of work of art, using overlapping shapes, relative size, and placement inside the flick).

Recently, I've started to compose original songs for our course. I tin tailor the songs to the pupil's academic and social needs, and I've found a whole new side of me that I never knew existed.

We constantly practise and refine our song commitment of the song'southward text, and the imposed phrasings, opportunities to larn through peer modeling, movement, and visual and musical content meet the needs of second linguistic communication learners. More than avant-garde students are challenged to assume leadership roles and tap their inventiveness in choreographing dance moves and shaping our performing unit.

Nosotros don't take much fourth dimension to spend teaching students how to play instruments, but I wanted the kids to be able to exercise more sing and dance to my guitar playing, so decided to effort plastic kazoos. What a miracle! They're like junior saxophones without the complex fingerings, and together, they make up our band'south horn department. Kazoos are cheap, washable, and easy to learn.

For teachers who desire to take it to the next level, a performance (for parents, other students or even the public) provides students with a summative, culminating event where they tin use what they've learned, take ownership of the content and work, and build confidence and cocky esteem. Our class band, "Kids Like Blues Ring," has played for thousands of people at street fairs, talent shows, amusement parks and on live Television set, and as a instructor I've seen the student collaboration, teamwork and cooperation that goes into the performance'due south success.

Some other big "aha!" moment occurred for me final year when we offset started using music as a teaching tool. I constitute one of my reluctant readers, Jorge, poring over i of the pieces in our songbook during recess. Of my 30 students, he was the one I'd least wait to exist working when it wasn't required. I was doubly floored when I noticed he'd picked one of the more than difficult songs to read – something well beyond his assessed reading level – and he was plowing through the words with a doggedness and determination I'd not seen before.

This English learner wasn't attracted past the texts nosotros'd used in class, merely by a song rich in historical content – 1 that brought to life subjects such as the Industrial Revolution, the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, the evolution of transportation, westward migration, and immigration. He was learning virtually our country – his state – and he couldn't go plenty of it.

Our piece of work with the songs was making the history of the U.s.a. come up alive for him. More than e'er before, I felt I was realizing one of the goals outlined in the introduction to the CA Land Standards, which call for the states to "enable the human spirit to be enriched, foster responsible citizenship, and preserve the commonage memory of a nation."

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Jon Schwartz has taught grades 1-six in California public schools since 1997 and has credentials in general and special instruction. He has 2 educational websites that testify his piece of work integrating the performing arts (http://kidslikeblues.org) and technology (http://kidslikeblogs.org) into the classroom. His work has been featured by the US Dept. of Teaching and the California Association for the Gifted, and he received a "Tech Hero of 2022 Award" from the California State Senate.

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