The Value of Arts Integration

Learning through the arts is an exciting way to engage students. But integrating the arts into your curriculum can be more than just an engagement strategy. The arts can cross a multitude of grade levels and disciplines and reach a wide variety of learners. Critical thinking, risk taking, and collaboration are just some of the areas where Bates Middle School educators report big improvements since integrating the arts.

Bates Middle School in Annapolis, Maryland got started with Arts Integration as part of a school-wide turnaround effort. Edutopia highlighted this middle school as part of its “Schools that Work” feature. “The school made changes in schedules, funding, and even the approach to community and parent involvement. Most important, the teachers had to change. Through intensive and continual professional development, teachers now are able to engage students in content they previously found uninteresting. The transformation was successful because every teacher integrated arts into their teaching.”

Creating a learning environment that fosters and encourages creativity requires teachers to be creative too. Edutopia’s feature on Bates Middles School, Integrate the Arts, Deepen the Learning provides some tips for teachers wanting to pursue arts integration:

• Take advantage of professional development: PD serves many purposes. It can help teachers learn the fundamentals of various art forms and develop integrated lessons, and it provides them with the opportunity to experience art for themselves.
• Use AI intentionally: At Bates, every teacher is required to use AI in some shape or form, although not every lesson needs to be, or should be, taught with AI. Teachers should use two main criteria for implementing AI:
• Look for a natural fit with the content.
• Identify where students are struggling. AI can provide a context that will help students build connections and gives them triggers for remembering the content later.
• Collaborate and brainstorm: Brainstorming is one of the best ways to develop arts-integrated lessons.

Pepper Professional Development Courses and Workshops and the Resource Library can help provide support as you think about arts integration in the classroom. Arts Integration provides a great opportunity to engage and excite students and can be an effective way to differentiate instruction. At Pepper we're adding new courses and workshops regularly so we can support educators in reaching students and creating lifelong learners.

Encouraging Girls in Math and Science

Although there is a general perception that men do better than women in math and science, researchers have found that the differences between women’s and men’s math- and science-related abilities and choices are much more subtle and complex than a simple “men are better than women in math and science." The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has found that to encourage girls in math and science we need to:

• understand their beliefs about their abilities in these areas
• find a way to spark and maintain greater interest in these topics
• build skills that are related to other interest areas

Students’ choices to pursue careers in math and science reflect multiple influences that accumulate over time. In general, researchers have found that girls and women have less confidence in their math abilities than males do and that from early adolescence, girls show less interest in math or science careers. Women are less involved in career paths and post-secondary education in some areas of math and science than men. This pattern starts at school.The IES has identified practices that elementary, middle, and high school teachers can implement during instruction that they believe would increase the likelihood that girls and women will not prematurely decide that careers in math and science are not for them.

National Center for Education Research and the Institute of Education Sciences have published a Practice Guide, published on WestEd's website, that explores what can teachers do to encourage girls to choose career paths in math- and science-related fields. The report presents five research-based instructional and feedback strategies for teachers at all grade levels:

• Teach that abilities are expandable
• Provide prescriptive, informational feedback
• Show students female role models
• Spark curiosity
• Teach spatial skills

Pepper has released a new workshop focused on Strategies to Engage Girls in Math and Science as part of it’s new Pepper Online Workshop (POW!) content. By taking this workshop you will explore strategies for keeping girls engaged in courses of study related to Math and Science. Participants will be guided through the process of developing a plan for actively motivating and maintaining girl’s interest in Math and Science. You can check all of our new POW content by visiting the Courses and Workshops section on your dashboard.

Design Thinking: Improving Schools, Empowering Students

What is Design Thinking? Design Thinking for educators is a creative process that helps students and teachers design meaningful solutions in the classroom, at your school, and in your community. According to Thomas Riddle, Assistant Director of Roper Mtn. Science Center, “design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving that begins with developing empathy for those facing a particular challenge.” In a nutshell, design thinking is a problem solving framework that allows students and teachers to take action, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes.

In his article, Improving Schools Through Design Thinking, Riddle describes five main stages of Design Thinking that have been used in the business community, but can also be easily transferred to the education world:

1. Empathize - This is the foundation of design thinking. Empathy allows us to see and understand the needs of others. It forces us to look away from ourselves - seeing other viewpoints and demonstrating understanding towards those often differing views.
2. Define - Listen carefully to the problem at hand. Get input from those directly affected. Riddle explains, “Clearly defining the problem gives you a better chance at creating a clear solution.”
3. Ideate - This means to form an idea; to imagine or conceive. Oftentimes we call this the “brainstorming” phase. Students can be particularly innovative and excel at “thinking outside the box”.
4. Prototype - Putting the idea into a preliminary model - knowing that it may go through several changes and adaptations.
5. Test - Test the prototype and make adjustments. Be flexible and open to change.

Design Thinking can be a powerful tool for both students and schools overall. As educators and administrators, we too can use the design thinking process for learning and making improvements within our schools and communities. Riddle has an excellent follow up article on Edutopia titled Empowering Students with Design Thinking. Here he gives concrete examples of how he’s using design thinking with students.
Susie Wise, Director of the K12 Lab Network at the Stanford d.school, also notes that the last few years have shown an “explosion of interest in design thinking”. The spread of design thinking is showing up in both professional development opportunities for teachers and as challenges for students. Design Thinking in Schools provides a directory of schools and programs that use design thinking in the curriculum for K12 students.
Design thinking is a mindset. Your Pepper Professional Development Courses and Workshops can help you create a more engaged and active classroom that includes Design Thinking strategies and processes. We’re adding new courses and workshops regularly, so be sure to check them out.