Year-round program integrates arts with math, reading
This fall Bethune Arts Elementary and the Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) will enter the third year of their partnership in providing students with quality arts programming through the school year.
The multi-year partnership revolves around implementing arts programming across grade levels with in-school residencies, professional development for educators, and family engagement. This summer, Bethune and CTC will enter another chapter in their partnership as they will provide students with a summer enrichment option through the Minneapolis Public School District’s Summer Scholars program.
Ann Joseph-Douglas is the director of education at Children’s Theatre Company and oversees the partnership between the organization and the school. She described the relationship between the two as “an effort to transform how arts organizations engage in schools and [other] education settings.”
Bethune proved to be a unique partner in this venture given its standing as a Turnaround Arts magnet school, which is a national program launched over a decade ago rooted in the principle that integrated arts education would help improve schools facing educational challenges. CTC’s programming with schools aligns with these goals and aims to address the resource gaps in the state.
Jody Lazo, the Arts Integration Magnet coordinator at Bethune, works with Douglas along with the teaching artists from CTC. The relationship between Bethune and CTC first began as an opportunity to have students and their families see a show. It later evolved when Lazo and Douglas expressed interest in a shared vision to use theater strategies and games to help their learning outcomes.
“The philosophy that we have around education is arts and creation, so using the arts in order to teach all of the core content standards that students need to learn, and then approaching it through the arts, there’s more engagement,” Lazo stated.
The partnership also allows for the unique opportunity for CTC to provide a year-round residency to Bethune students. Once a week, for at least an hour in every grade level, teaching artists visit students in the classroom and engage them in activities revolving around theater.
This is different from the typical six-to-eight-week residencies that most long-term residencies last. Another unique aspect about the partnership is that students work with the same teaching artists year after year as a way of developing a continued relationship with their educators.
“The Children’s Theater has been really, really intentional in making sure that the kids also had a teacher that they had the year previously,” Lazo said. “The relationships that they build with the students are really powerful and really incredible because they’re another teacher in their classroom.”
According to Douglas, parents are a key aspect in the programming that they provide students. “It’s really important that we have family engagement and that the parents know what we’re doing in the school,” she said. “So when they come home and talk about it, they have a reference that we can provide extended learning opportunities for families at home.”
Bethune students at all grade levels are exposed to the year-long residency, with each level receiving the adequate level of comprehensive work involving storytelling skills and performance.
Students at the High Five (pre-school) and Kindergarten level engage in Creative Play, which is social-emotional learning through storytelling. It teaches students how to identify different emotions that they witness through the different stories they engage with. With the help of their teaching artists, they then discuss the different ways they can work through those emotions and discover ways to self regulate.
First and second graders are in the Early Bridges program, which consists of storytelling elements and verbal comprehension. Students are given more opportunities to be creative as they plan out what would come next in the story and get to act it out.
Neighborhood Bridges is the program for third and fourth-graders where they hear stories auditorily and then get to create their own stories from there.
Lastly, fifth graders are a part of Arts and Activism where students discuss social justice issues and how they can utilize art to be a tool for change. Last year, CTC published a book of all the students’ poetry created during the program.
Both Douglas and Lazo believe that the partnership between CTC and Bethune should be an example of how to bolster arts education in public schools during a time when districts across the country are making significant cuts to the arts in schools.
“I think our district has a ways to go in terms of incorporating and accepting various forms of assessment and ways to express student learning,” Lazo said. “The district itself has not really put much energy or effort into this to see what we’re doing. I feel like we need to get something concrete happening, and then it’s our job to tell that story.”
Douglas shared that although preparing students for jobs in science and technology is necessary, they shouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to be exposed to different areas of education and learning styles.
“There’s such a big focus now on coding and STEM. We’re forgetting how important creative outlets are for young people and that not all people learn the same way,” she said. “When we limit those opportunities, we’re limiting the potential for a student to find their in-road towards education, their in-road towards curiosity.”
Although students have the opportunity to engage in the creative curriculum through the school year on a weekly basis, there hasn’t been the ability to offer this program in the summer for students across the district until now.
“In addition to getting the reading and the math classes, over the summer they will come to our teaching artists a couple hours a day and they will work in groups and create an original play inspired by children’s literature,” Douglas stated.
Registration for the Summer Scholars program is now open on the MPS district website.
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