Friday, March 18, 2011

KENNEDY CENTER PARTNERS IN EDUCATION: FOCUS ON EDGELEA ELEMENTARY


Indiana 2007 is the team formed by Lafayette School Corporation and Purdue Convocations to participate in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Partners in Education (KCPIE) program. Now in its fourth year, the team is focusing on the staff of Edgelea Elementary School where teachers are working together to implement arts integration strategies and create common bonds among classrooms.

The Kennedy Center defines arts integration as an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both.

Fifteen members of the Edgelea teaching staff are participating with a teacher-created steering committee to help build an arts integration plan with the goal of increasing student learning and motivation to learn. This begins with finding a common activities that can be used at all grade levels. The teachers found so much value in what they were learning from Kennedy Center workshops that they have volunteered to move forward another step with the program and begin looking at the idea of an all school focus on the arts integration approach to learning.

“The main goal for our staff this year is to get a common language”, says steering committee chair and second grade teacher Cindy Preston. “By doing this we can ensure our students will hear the same language/rules regardless of the teacher or classroom he/she is in. We have posted signs that remind students to make strong choices by controlling their body, voice, mind, imagination and cooperation.”

The school is working with teaching concepts developed by Kennedy Center teaching artist Sean Layne. Layne has more than twenty years experience as a teaching artist and has developed a method of teaching classroom discipline and curriculum for the Kennedy Center that incorporates theatrical techniques. His work focuses on creating a cooperative and supportive classroom atmosphere where group work and team work are essential elements. Students are taught how to make strong behavioral choices and how to make their activities inclusive of every class member. The program develops a strong sense of community first at the classroom level and later within the whole school.

Under the auspices of his company, Focus 5, Inc., Edgelea Elementary has worked with school coach Beth Radford, from Spartansburg, South Carolina, who was a classroom teacher for eight years prior to taking her new post as an arts integration specialist at Pine Creek Elementary. Beth has visited Edgelea three times over the past two years to conduct professional development workshops for teachers and to provide in-class demonstrations and coaching.

The teachers have seen the benefit of creating an atmosphere of uniformity among their classrooms and a common language of expectation that can benefit the school as a whole. From learning the basics of classroom cooperation teachers are now beginning to see demonstrations that show how lessons can be brought to life with an active approach to classroom participation and how students can be engaged in both a core discipline and an arts discipline simultaneously.

Laura Clavio
Assistant Director of Purdue Convocations