Arts in the classrooms: After years of focus on core subjects, performing and visual arts are making comebacks

STEM, Betsy Robb hopes, is turning to STEAM.

The first acronym stands for science, technology, engineering and math. Those subjects have played starring roles in classrooms, especially during the past decade when greater rigor in core subjects has been enforced through education policy.

But Robb, curator of education at the Honolulu Museum, sees evidence of a movement to incorporate the A — for arts — back in the equation. And the public schools in Hawaii are tapping into community resources to help recapture what’s been a diminished element in the regular curriculum.

The state is now part of a national Turnaround Arts Program (see story on page E-4), and the Department of Education has partnered with the museum on a project distributing art posters to classrooms along with study materials that use the artwork as a departure point for critical thinking.

There have been school tours at the museum for many years, but these days the focus of the excursions has become more linked to other subjects the kids study in the classroom.

“Through No Child Left Behind, I went to a conference called ‘No Museum Left Behind’,” Robb said, citing the federal law that enforced strict testing on core subjects. “The whole concept was to bring that core curriculum from the schools and bring them into art.

“We took an even deeper plunge where we changed the names of our tours: ‘Science through Art,’ ‘Social Studies through Art,’” she said. For example, the kids might learn about how artists mix the natural materials and compounds they use to create their works.

“In order for them to come on a tour, they have to have a connection to those subjects these days. … In some ways,” she said with a laugh, “we’ve been sneaking art in, through math and science.”

One way or another, after being sidelined by federal education policies that put a premium on achievement in core subjects, the arts are finding their way back to schools.

At Waianae High School, the drive to meet NCLB standards pushed music classes off the viewscreen, and about eight years ago, the school band program was shut down.

That was a terrible loss, said Disa Hauge, the school’s principal, and the students are happy to have that option back.

“They’re really enjoying it,” Hauge said. “Band teaches life skills — they learn from the extra volunteering and the extra practice that’s required.

“It’s also an avenue for kids who didn’t have a way to connect with school, and now they feel connected.”

Shantell-Tiare Tom is Waianae High’s music and band director and an alumna of the band herself, joining the faculty in 2014.

During the shutdown, other band graduates would pitch in to play at games, she said, but that was no substitute for the band program being available to the kids today.

There’s the basic enrichment of learning music theory, she said, but the discipline has enabled some students to tune up other aspects of their lives.

“From 2014 to now there has been a great improvement in behavior,” she said. “Before, they would not talk to anybody and now they’re like family .… and they would do terrible things, like drugs, and now they’re sober.”

The school leaned on the Music for Life Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has worked on behalf of music education since its founding in 2010. The “Bring Back Da Band” project rounded up donated musical instruments for the program, which is still in need of more, Tom said.

Like school systems across the country, the state Department of Education felt the impact of a more core-focused program on arts instruction, said Assistant Superintendent Suzanne Mulcahy.

“People thought that instead of having the comprehensive program we had before, we should double up on reading, writing and math,” Mulcahy said. “That flies in the face of volumes of research that says when students are engaged in the arts, they perform better and achieve more.

“I didn’t know the extent to which people had bought into the fact that they needed to double up until the teacher transfer period,” she said. “I had 20 people apply to teach band, I had 23 people apply to teach art. I could not believe there were that many people.

“I found out that it was because they were in schools in a certain status level, where they needed to improve proficiency, so they got rid of electives.”

Some schools within the DOE system have an arts focus to varying degrees.

On Maui, Pomaikai Elementary School integrates its regular curriculum with the arts across its entire program.

There is also an applicant for a public charter school authorization that seeks to do something similar. If Kuuipo Laumatia gets her wish, she will help to develop a school in Wahiawa, dubbed Kamalani Academy, for 250 arts-focused students. She had been pondering the idea for some time when she learned about Pomaikai, she said.

“That was like my vision come true,” said Laumatia, who chairs the school board. “They had integrated Hawaiian culture with the arts in a way that was so beautiful.”

A previous application was rejected by the state Public Charter School Commission last year because more detail was needed on how it would develop a curriculum that aligns with state requirements, said Catherine Payne, who chairs the commission.

Many schools are finding a way to work in the arts. The Honolulu Museum of Art School has all but become an arts extension of the neighboring Queen Kaahumanu Elementary School.

Its director, Vince Hazen, runs a variety of programs at every grade level at the school, including outreach tailored to the cultural diversity of its student body. There are training sessions for the teachers as well, on how to fold art into other subjects.

And the consultant group Education Northwest has been hired to complete an assessment over the next few months on whether this kind of teaching has an impact on student learning outcomes.

For all the years that art has been taught as an isolated subject, most of the experts agree this model has to be overhauled into something that works within strained educational budgets.

It’s an imperative especially for lower-income students, who generally don’t get the opportunity to explore or study art through private lessons or other means accessible to wealthier families, Payne said.

“Public schools have a duty to provide the kinds of educational services to all children that meet their needs,” she said. “The arts reach them in ways that other experiences do not.”