What We're Up Against

Okay, it's my very first blog, on the first and only blog on artsjournal.com devoted to arts education.

Dewey21C. I had intended to post a first blog directly associated with John Dewey. That will have to wait a bit as I have something else I want to share with you. However, before leaving John Dewey for future entries, I want to say that his writing about arts and education remains to me the bedrock, the real foundation as to what arts education is all about. While many who take issue with "progressive education" lay the blame at the feet of John Dewey, I would point out that much has been done in the name of progressive education based on a distorted view of Dewey and his philosophy. His work and inspiration remains timeless. I promise more about that in future blogs.

For my first post, which carries a title of "What We're Up Against," I want to share excerpted sections of an email from a colleague who has recently begun training work with a program that develops public school teachers through an alternative to standard teacher certification. There are over 15 of these programs around the country and you can read a bit about them on the New Teacher Project website.  It's not all that different from the gargantuan Teach for America, though a big difference is certainly that "fellows" from these programs seek to become permanent teachers, whereas TFA is a sort of Peace Corps for people who want to spend two years teaching in the high poverty urban and rural schools.

This email, which shall remain purely anonymous, has had sections deleted to ensure that this fellow could not be indentified. While I do think the point being made is fairly obvious, well, you never know. There's a lot that I would like to comment on here. I will save much of those comments for a later date, allowing the email to stand on its own and to then report back a bit on the thoughts of readers.

 A few small bits of context: First, the issue of pre-service training of classroom and subject area teachers (non-arts specialists) has always been a big issue for the arts ed field. Report after report, plan after plan, hand-wringing after hand-wringing have discussed the critical importance of developing appropriate skills for classroom and subject area teachers to teach the arts. This is particularly important where the arts are integrated with other subject areas. Second, this "fFellow" does indeed have an arts education background, and is clearly peering through a lens colored by this background and interest.

So, here's a short but potent email from a brand new "fellow," who describes her first week in training. She gave permission to share this email with you. Suffice it to say, it was not written in a formal style--it's just an email to some colleagues and friends. Let me know what you think...

My First Week

Hi

Just thought I'd say hello and send you a few reflections on my first week :-)

I spent the week in class at a local college.  I take a class from 9-12 and 1-4 (same class).   Then I have seminar for the fellows program from 4:15-6:15.  The grad class is basically an intro to elementary ed teaching through social studies.  The professor is great, worked as a teacher and principal at two different high schools.  His only downside is that he really only sees art education as using a painting to teach about revolution or music to teach about attitudes about Vietnam (he understands there is more to it, but that principals don't have the money or time when trying to meet state standards).  When I asked him about the district art curricula or whether or not the arts were part of curriculum he said the curriculum principals follow is passing the test.  This brief discussion was followed by our seminar with a 3rd grade teacher (a former fellow) who taught us about different forms of assessment and then showed us the standardized tests 3rd graders had to take.  She said her job is teaching the test from Sept until they are over in March.  She showed us a Math state test for 3rd graders.  It consisted of 5 large reading sections, followed by 25 multiple choice questions, all of which had to be completed in 45 minutes...and this is MATH.  One of her students who was great in math, but not good in reading, got so nervous about all the reading in the math test, that she simply filled out C for every answer and passed the test (I'm sure you've heard this before).

It's friday and I'm not being that articulate, sorry about that.  To sum up, though, having a great time, depressed about the state of arts education...