SmART Schools: building arts-centered communities of learning
  A woman softly beats a drum.
A man strums a guitar.
And the group sings…
Got no lesson plans.
Don’t know what I can do.
180 days; I don’t have a clue...
[post Institute]
Got my toolbox full
‘Cause I’ve been to SmART School.
This “blues song,” combined with instrumental music, a lot of movement, and a collaborative spirit, is a group of teachers’ reflection on their week at the SmART Schools Summer Institute 2011.
The reflective exercise puts into practice the techniques they learned for creating an arts-centered curriculum for teaching core academic subjects including English and language arts, history, math, science, and technology – the very heart of the SmART Schools mission.
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| Picture the Blues: a multi-disciplinary approach to literacy inspired by various recourrces, visual media, and text whereby participanths engage in the improvisation of blues music to analyze and respond to the featured text. | SmART Schools was started in Rhode Island 12 years ago by Eileen Mackin, Ed.M., with funding support from The Rhode Island Foundation. Piloted for elementary schools, the concept gained momentum when a researcher at Brown University found students taught by the SmART Schools approach benefitted significantly in reading, writing, and math on standardized tests. With funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the program expanded in Rhode Island and to New Hampshire and Vermont, and later to California.
“Funding from The Rhode Island Foundation was the beginning of a nice journey to get federal funding,” explains Mackin, noting, “But ultimately, we wanted to come home.”
The return to Rhode Island is resulting in another program expansion – this time into middle and high schools, with renewed funding support from The Rhode Island Foundation. “SmART Schools is focusing its attention on secondary schools – on the need to dramatically improve graduation rates, to prepare all students for careers and college, and most specifically to ensure that all students meet a much more demanding set of academic standards as reflected in the CCSS (Common Core State Standards) and NECAP (New England Common Assessment Program),” Mackin explains.
The 70-some middle and high school teachers from largely urban schools throughout Rhode Island who participated in the 2011 Summer Institute are taking their “toolboxes” of teaching techniques back to their classrooms this fall. You can forget about traditional lectures and teaching from the book for these teachers. They’ll be engaging their students in hands-on, participatory learning.
“It’s brain-based learning at its best,” Mackin says, explaining that if a student can associate a new idea with, for example, a song, he has a “mental model” and is more likely to retain the knowledge. “Once you’re doing something, the retention rate goes up to 75%, and if you teach it to someone else, the retention rate goes up to 90%,” Mackin states.
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| Fetching Design: Innovating Minds and Hands: Participants use design methodologies and design thinking, important 21st century skills for innovation, to explore and compare two different tools, an atlatl (an archaic tool used to throw atlatl darts) and a dog toy (a modern day tennis ball launcher). | The teachers – students themselves during the weeklong Summer Institute – were taught by SmART Schools’ master teaching artists, including Amy Leidtke, adjunct faculty member in the Department of Industrial Design at Rhode Island School of Design. Her project challenged teams of teachers to design – and build – an atlatl (an archaic tool used to throw darts) using largely recyclable materials found in a school.
The finished products, crafted from paper cups, modeling clay, wooden dowels, assorted fasteners and more, were “tested” when teachers flung small pieces of candy, rather than darts, across the room. The project required the teachers to work collaboratively, think creatively, problem-solve, and implement a participatory design process.
And it aligned with state and national standards, as well as graduation requirements, in the areas of visual arts, mathematics, and physical science. “The research that links art-infusion with academic growth is clear. The SmART Schools approach provides support for teachers that assists them in meeting new standards and expectations,” Mackin explains.
And the SmART Schools program aligns well with the Foundation’s goals in the signature initiative, public education reform, “to reduce statewide drop-out rates for at-risk students.”
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| Lost Postcards and Found Dreams: Participants examine what it means to communicate words through performance and writing, reading selected text repeatedly and in a variety of ways. Participants then composed their own narrative, real and imagined, by writing postcards to the past and to the future. | “The SmART Schools approach makes students active, engaged participants in their learning. And we know that the more we can engage students, the more apt they are to succeed in school and ultimately graduate,” says Denise M. Jenkins, grant programs officer at the Foundation.
As teachers reflected on their weeklong training, many shared words that summarized their “take-away” thoughts – discovery, experimentation, expression, engagement – exciting learning techniques to share with their middle and high school students.
Learn more about SmART Schools.
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