Join us for conversations that inspire, recognize, and encourage innovation and best practices in the education profession.
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more.
The Art of Teaching the Arts: A Workshop for High School Teachers
Fostering Genuine Communication
Arts teachers communicate with students, and students communicate with each other, in respectful ways that encourage communication of original ideas through the arts. In this session, participants meet a dance teacher whose students draw choreographic inspiration from poetry and sign language. A visual art teacher gives her commercial art class a fanciful assignment that enables them to communicate a concrete idea through several visual media. A theatre teacher encourages student interaction around the dramatization and staging of fables. Finally, a vocal music teacher asks her students to use "descriptive praise" to critique the performance of a fellow singer.
In This Program
Music
A vocal music teacher models constructive criticism as students critique the performance of a fellow singer.
Theatre
A theatre teacher encourages student interaction around the dramatization and staging of fables.
Dance
A dance teacher helps her students draw choreographic inspiration from poetry and sign language.
Visual Arts
A visual art teacher gives her commercial design class a fanciful assignment that enables them to communicate a concrete idea through several visual media.
Introduction
Creating art is about taking an idea and finding a way to express it to an audience. Throughout the creative process, the role of communication is key. Artists need to develop their ideas, describe their work, and give and get feedback.
To foster genuine communication, teachers:
- Nurture artistic expression
- Talk with and listen to students
- Encourage student interaction and collaboration
Learning Goals
The goals of this workshop session are for you to:
- Identify communication challenges associated with each arts discipline
- Develop activities that nurture students’ communication skills at each stage in the artistic process – creating, performing, and responding
Getting Ready
(15 minutes)
The Language of Collaboration
Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker” is a well-known symbol of inquiry. The lone stoic figure depicts thinking as a solitary creative process. But many artistic and scientific creations emerge from the joint thinking, emotional connections, shared struggles, and passionate conversations common in collaborative relationships.
What special communication challenges arise in each discipline — dance, music, theatre, and visual art?
Read the question below that corresponds to your discipline, and try to formulate an answer for the group. As you do so, share some ways you help students acquire the communication skills they need.
Dance
Dancers and choreographers move and talk while rehearsing. But during a performance, the dancers interact and adjust to each other without speaking.
What are some ways they communicate while onstage?
Music
During an orchestral concert, the musicians individually create sounds that blend into music.
How do they communicate in order to play as an ensemble?
Theatre
The development and performance of a play requires the combined efforts of a director, actors, designers, and technicians.
How do all these people meld into a company that shares a common vision of the playwright’s intent?
Visual Art
Several artists work together designing and painting a mural.
How do they agree on a style and employ their varying skills to create the unified picture?
Watching the Program
(60 minutes)
The information sheets below provide helpful background on the classrooms, programs, and schools featured in each segment:
Segment 1: Dance (PDF)
Segment 2: Visual Art (PDF)
Segment 3: Theatre (PDF)
Segment 4: Music (PDF)
Consider the following questions as you watch the program. You may stop the video after each segment to discuss the questions with your colleagues.
DANCE Mary Harding and Jennifer Rice Brandt Improvising from Poetry and Sign Language
- How and why is the subject of communication incorporated into this project?
- How do you help your students find creative ideas from unexpected sources?
VISUAL ART Jan Wilson Commercial Design Class
- How does Jan provide opportunity for students to practice their communication skills throughout this project?
- How do you enable students to communicate their own ideas through their artwork?
THEATRE John Fredricksen Directing Fables
- What communication challenges do John’s students face in this project, and how does he prepare them to meet those challenges?
- How do you encourage interaction and collaboration among your students?
MUSIC Janice Hunton Descriptive Praise
- Discuss your reaction to the “Descriptive Praise” technique Janice uses with her students. What drawbacks are there, if any, to this method of teaching communication skills?
- How do you encourage positive, constructive communication among your students?
Activities and Discussion
(45 minutes)
Thinking Made Public
In the arts, an important mode of communication is dialogue that makes thinking public. Throughout the creative process, students deepen their thinking about artistic choices by talking with teachers, interacting with other students, and reflecting on an audience’s response.
Supportive teachers encourage students to:
- Discuss their approach
- Explain their rationale
- Defend their work
- When students have to explain and support their ideas, that is, to make their thinking public, they are challenged to re-examine their own reasoning and clarify their own intent.
When and how do you encourage students to artistically express their own ideas, examine different perspectives, and refine and defend their choices? Print and distribute the worksheet titled Making Thinking Public (PDF). On it:
Identify typical challenges students face at each stage of the artistic process.
Fill in examples of how you might nurture students’ artistic communication and “public thinking” in your own discipline.
Use the descriptions provided as sample ideas to start your thinking.
Homework
Homework (On Your Own)
In your journal, describe a recent instance in which you observed two students having a meaningful conversation about their artistic work.
- What was the context of the conversation?
- Why was it meaningful? How was it initiated? What was the outcome?
- What can you do to make these types of conversations more common?
Additional Resources
On the Web
GENERAL SITES
A Basic Dictionary of American Sign Language Terms
http://www.masterstech-home.com/ASLDict.html
A dictionary with both animated and text definitions
SCHOOL AND TEACHER SITES
Arts High School Dance Department, Perpich Center for Arts Education
http://perpich.mn.gov/arts-high-school/dance/
Select: Program Areas, then Dance
Information on the dance department where Mary Harding teaches
Nottingham High School
http://www.hamilton.k12.nj.us/HamiltonNorth.cfm
Web site for visual art teacher Jan Wilson’s school
Mamaroneck High School Performing Arts Curriculum Experience (PACE)
http://perpich.mn.gov/arts-high-school/dance/
Web site for the department that includes John Fredricksen’s theatre program
Arts High School Dance Department, Perpich Center for Arts Education
http://perpich.mn.gov/arts-high-school/dance/
Select: Program Areas, then Music
Information on the dance department where Janice Hunton teaches
In Print
Cooper, Pamela J., & Simonds, Cheri J. Communication for the Classroom Teacher, 7th edition. Publisher: Allyn & Bacon, 2003. ISBN: 0-205-35955-8
Explores a wide range of classroom communication issues, including listening skills, verbal and nonverbal communication, instructional strategies, ethical considerations, and racism/sexism in the classroom
Faber, Adele, & Mazlish, Elaine. How To Talk So Kids Can Learn. Scribner, 1995. ISBN: 0684813335
Book from which Janice Hunton drew the model for “descriptive praise.” Uses cartoon illustrations to show innovative ways to solve common problems such as coping with children’s negative feelings, setting limits, alternatives to punishment, and resolving conflicts
Ginott, Haim, Ginott, Alice, & Goddard, Wallace. Between Parent and Child: The Bestselling Classic That Revolutionized Parent-Child Communication. Three Rivers Press, revised 2003. ISBN: 0609809881
Offers advice on how to develop empathetic yet disciplined child-rearing skills that place an emphasis on good communication
Pipher, Mary. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. Ballantine Books, 2002. ISBN: 0345418786
A look at societal pressures on adolescent girls
Shandler, Sara. Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self. Perennial, 1999. ISBN: 0060952970
The compilation of essays, poems, and true-grit commentary from which Mary Harding drew the poem she used to inspire student choreographers
Smith, Wilma F., Gottesman, Barbara, & Edmundson, Phyllis J. Constructing a Language of Collaboration. Institute for Educational Inquiry, 1997.
Ideas for constructing a language of collaboration among school colleagues
Thorson, Sue Ann. Listening to Students: Reflections on Secondary Classroom Management. Allyn & Bacon, 2003. ISBN: 0-321-06397-X
Addresses classroom management techniques, including communication with students and communities, issues of diversity, and classroom environmental issues
