Research shows learning through the senses enhances education and memory.
However, most classroom learning is through lecture and textbook. Many students have a challenge learning just mentally. Some teachers use kinesthetic forms of education — something physical.
“When you cut those teachers, you begin to see those students have trouble,” said Nancy Robb Dunst, chairwoman of the Artist in the Classroom program in Sedona. “When you teach children using art tools it’s much easier for them to learn. They don’t have to sit still, they can stand, sing or move around.”
For some students it deepens their learning experience, she said.
Funding for art classes has been cut by 50 percent, with teachers down to half-time.
“That means dance, music, physical education, art, movement — all was cut out,” she said. “Our program is trying to fill that void. The cuts is one of the reasons this program is so important.”
She said another reason is children who have trouble in school will back away because they can’t understand a subject. When this happens they become bored and lose interest in school.
“For those kids, when we bring artists in they perk up. It’s a new way for them to learn — to get it,” Dunst said.
For example, last year’s fourth-grade students at West Sedona School had ceramic artist Amy Gordon in their classrooms. Together they worked on a tile mural project, incorporating all of the symbols representing Arizona. Each student learned not only what the symbols were, but their shape, color and size. The project also used science and math in scaling, how to transfer from one medium to another, edit, and use their judgment and analytical skills as well as how each tile needed to be designed to fit the whole mural.
Many Arizona state education standards were met through the project.
“It’s a blast working with the kids. They learn to work together, how to draw, how to structure and enlarge the images and how the images go together,” Gordon said. “This is my ninth year. It just gets better. I am amazed every time.”
When the students, now fifth-graders, gathered around the mural for a photograph Friday, Aug. 19, each pointed to whichever tile her or she worked on.
Artist in the Classroom is part of the curriculum throughout the Sedona-Oak Creek School District and Sedona Charter School. At Sedona Red Rock High School, Mindy Mendelsohn, a writer, actor and artist, along with humanities teacher Karyl Goldsmith, will work with the students to create a multimedia performance piece on how universal themes connect to issues the students confront every day: bullying, fitting in, peer pressure, body image, love, reputation and betrayal.
The piece the students create will be performed in March.
“Music, theater, dance, voice, poetry, visual arts and sculpture — we use these forms of art as tools to teach the subject: history, science, English,” Dunst said. “This is what we do. This is how we help kids.”
Dunst recently attended a four-day workshop in Phoenix on Arts Integration Solutions, which she said taught her more tools she gives the artists to take into the classroom.
New artists in the program are Sharron Porter, who will coordinate the Art Print and Music project, Mendelsohn, and Anne Snowden Crosman, a writer who will bring writing, reading and math projects. Porter will also bring ceramics, painting, drawing and photography.
“We also will be adding some music artists to the roster and an origami artist,” Dunst said. “We know our program helps them learn. Sedona is a town of people who believe that.”
