Picasso in the Wilderness, Part 5.
ORCHESTRATING SUPPORT

If teachers have difficulty coordinating lesson plans these days, help is just down the hall in the Grant Room. Beyond the supplies purchased with grant money, there is an additional resource this year: Ali Tiegs, who assumed the arts facilitator position when Griffith resigned to pursue an opportunity out of the country.

Tiegs is a firm believer in arts integration. "Teachers become more aware of learning styles- audio, visual, spatial, kinesthetic," she says. "Not everybody learns the same. The challenge as a teacher is to find out how each student learns."

Tiegs also has organized a visiting-artists program at the school. So far, they've hosted dance companies and steel drum bands, stained-glass artisans and watercolor artists, sculptors and printmakers.

This year, Idaho Theatre for Youth will have visited twice with children's productions-first,

Lincoln's Log, a historical play on Abraham Lincoln, and next week, Tomato Girl, a story whose characters are your garden-variety vegetables, with a moral message regarding friendship.

At a weekly planning meeting, Tiegs and her fellow teachers prepare for the upcoming Tomato Girl production. They brainstorm about related materials that might reinforce the message delivered by the play. Layman suggests that her first-graders teach their "Planting Seeds" song to the rest of the student body. Loomis mentions that an art print, James McDonald's "The Tangled Garden," might be a good visual-arts link. Another teacher, Lynn Johnson, mentions a storybook that might be a fit.

All of the teachers agree that the arts-integration project has enriched the learning experience for their students. Students now recognize the works of master painters and request classical music by composer -sometimes even by work. One teacher says a student told her he'd heard Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" on a trip out of town.

This document's URL is:

Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics

© 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory

Date of Last Update: 9/28/01
Email Webmaster
Tel. 503.275.9500