Picasso in the Wilderness
ELK CITY, Idaho—
The South Fork of the Clearwater arcs through the Bitterroot Mountains like a live electric wire, its curves sudden and unpredictable.
Over the years, the current has cut deep through the dense forest, creating a serpentine passage lined with steep walls of granite and thick carpets of Douglas fir.
And if you have the stomach to follow the twists and turns of the old Nez Perce trail that winds its way along the river's edge, you will eventually arrive in Elk City-dizzy, no doubt, as a bear that's eaten too many fermenting huckleberries along the path.
Nestled between four federally designated wilderness areas, Elk City is incredibly remote. There is only one road leading in or out. The town's economy has long been based on the area's rich natural resources. Mining came first, followed by logging.
Geographically cut off from the outside world, Elk City residents have always had to be resourceful. In the early days, supplies were packed in by mule, news came on horseback, and tents served as saloons. These days, packages are shipped in by UPS, information comes via the Internet, and the school serves a dual function as a school and a museum.
Yes, a museum.
PRELUDE
The idea came about at a popular gathering spot called the Mother Lode, when some locals got to talking and agreed that "backwoods" didn't have to mean "backward." They realized that their children had the best possible environment to learn about the great outdoors. For botany, geology, or forestry, there was no better teaching ground. Exposure to the arts, however, was another story.
Recognizing that the absence of arts was a weakness in their school curriculum and a disadvantage for Elk City students, the group decided to do something about it. If they couldn't take their children out to an art museum or concert hall, they'd have to bring an art museum and concert hall to their children. They decided to apply for a grant to help incorporate art, music, and literature throughout the curriculum.
Susie Borowicz, Principal of Elk City School, thought this was a grand idea. Sure, the odds were against them. Elk City is a small school in a small town. The school's enrollment fluctuates between 65 and 85 students in kindergarten through 10th grade. The population of Elk City is 450, tops. The school had never received a grant of any kind before.
But, in the spirit of her predecessors, Borowicz didn't let the odds scare her. Like Gertrude Maxwell, Elk City's first schoolteacher-who, upon finding a garter snake in her desk drawer, wrapped it around her neck and continued teaching-Borowicz has spunk. Yes, she is an accomplished teacher and administrator; but she can also do some mean quilting and drop a moose with one shot. Borowicz and her staff applied for not just one grant, but three.
They got them. During the summer of 1996, the school received significant grants from the Albertson Foundation, Goals 2000, and the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Shearer Lumber Products, the local mill and largest employer in town, decided to kick in yet more cash and even a baby grand piano.
No one was more surprised by this wave of good fortune than Borowicz. "Suddenly, we had $58,000 to institute an arts program." Her reaction, she says, was a combination of excitement and fear. "We didn't even have one art or music teacher on staff."
They still don't.
But the entire staff has spent the last two years learning to become arts literate and finding ways to effectively weave arts into their teaching.
Kay Griffith, the teacher who spearheaded the effort to write the grant proposal, had previous experience with arts integration during a teaching stint in California. She was the perfect candidate to coordinate the project. With Borowicz's support, Griffith cut her teaching load in half and became a half-time arts facilitator, a position funded through grant money.
OPENING ACT
Griffith's first task was to assemble some arts resources, to create an arts "library" of sorts. Although the school already had a library, limited funding had left serious gaps in the children's literature section. Griffith set about ordering books that had been Caldecott and Newberry award-winners. She stocked up on classics such as Shakespeare to serve more advanced students and adult community members at the same time. She ordered videos and compact discs, art prints, and teaching guides. To provide students with hands-on learning opportunities, she ordered musical instruments and art supplies.
Then she used her previous experience and new research to train her colleagues in how to use these materials in the classroom. According to staff, the weeklong inservice Griffith planned before the start of the school year was crucial to the success of the program. Griffith modeled lesson plans, showing how art prints, videos, or compact discs might be used to teach everything from math to social studies. She shared tips on how to use each medium most effectively to reinforce teaching. For example, because many children tend to "zone out" when a video is turned on, she advised showing classroom videos in shorter segments.
After the inservice, Griffith visited each teacher in his or her class to model techniques in front of students.
For some staff members, this was the turning point. Take Mike Nelson. A seventh- and eighth-grade teacher, Nelson admits, "I was probably the biggest foot dragger at the school. I knew my way worked and thought 'Why rock the boat? It might sink.'" But once Griffith modeled lessons in Nelson's class, he began to believe that while his way worked, this new way might work even better. Nelson hopped on board. Now he uses prints by M.C. Escher to teach about angles, architecture to teach geometry, and music to teach fractions.
"It really works," Nelson says. "We know that people learn in different ways, and this way reaches kids we used to miss. We use arts as a hook to catch them, and they look forward to learning because they're finding that learning can be exciting and fun. By teaching this way, everyone has a chance to let his little star shine."
Other teachers show similar enthusiasm.
Gym teacher Delise Paisley Denham, for instance, used art last year to teach quick thinking, coordination, and teamwork. She would point to an art print on the wall and give the students mere moments to reenact the scene.
Debbie Layman, a first-grade teacher, instills a love of visual arts in her students. At ages six and seven, they are already becoming grounded in arts terminology and technique. Poster-sized art prints- by Picasso and Klimt, Pollack and de Kooning-hang on clotheslines across her room.
Recently, she has been instructing first-graders in the use of lines. At her direction, the children stand up straight and tall to imitate vertical lines, lie on the floor to be horizontal, and lean precariously on one leg to demonstrate their understanding of diagonals.
Layman uses a Caldecott Award-winning author to help the students gain further understanding. In Emily Arnold McCully's Starring Mirette and Bellini, the young Mirette uses her high-wire walking skill to achieve a daring rescue. It is a diagonal tightrope, the children point out, that saves the day.
Next the class relates the lesson to famous artworks, noting the use of diagonal lines in a farmer's field and the line of the horizon. The lesson segues into music when Layman introduces a song called "Planting Seeds." She helps students understand which directional lines fit the stages of a plant's life -horizontal for the earth when the seeds are planted, vertical when the seedling reaches for the sun.
FINDING THEIR RHYTHM
"We know that people learn in different ways, and this way reaches kids we used to miss."
Music, many staff members contend, has been more challenging to work into the curriculum. But at Elk City School, no one is jolted by the traditional clanging of a bell at the start or end of a school day. Instead, the day may begin with a rendition of Debussy's "L' Isle Joy- euse" or Copland's "Theme for the Common Man." It may end with Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" or Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmuz- ik." During the Silent Sustained Reading and journal-writing periods that coincide throughout the school, classical music continues to pour through the P.A. system.
In individual classrooms, many teachers use boom boxes to play classical music during group projects, study time, even during tests. Sometimes, teachers use specific styles of music or famous works to support studies in history or social studies-jazz for African American culture, or Copland's "Billy The Kid" for studies of the American frontier.
Third- and fourth-grade teacher Jill Wilson plays classical music in the background all day long. "When I turn it off," she says, "I notice that students get off task."
Indeed, researchers are finding that classical music may enhance learning by improving the temporal-spatial abilities of the brain.
Second-grade teacher Rea Ann Loomis has been bringing her guitar to class periodically over the past 15 years, but beyond that, she has used the arts infrequently in her teaching.
"I have a real interest in art and music," Loomis says, "but I never knew how to get it into the classroom." Elk City's arts program has changed all that.
Loomis's students have been studying the Impressionists. Posters and prints of various sizes are everywhere: the paintings of Degas, Renoir, and Van Gogh hang near artwork by students Bashaw, Coy, and Tinker. Claude Monet is a class favorite. Children's books about the French Impressionist stand along a display table, near student essays on the artist. As a tribute, they have painted their own versions of Monet's famous water lilies in preparation for a mural in the gymnasium. Seven-year-old Teisha explains the technique: "You paint with blobs. When you're up close you can't see anything. But when you back up, there it is."
In an exercise called "Impressionist Art Detectives," Loomis assigns each student a famous art print from the "art gallery" on a classroom wall. Each student is to give three clues so that the other students can try to guess which painting they are observing.
The students' clues demonstrate surprisingly indepth knowledge of art technique.
Robbie's clues for Monet's "Branch of the Seine Near Giverny" include observations such as: "It has a vanishing point," and, "It has cool colors." By "cool" he does not mean nifty, but rather the blues, greens, and other bands in the spectrum that are considered cool.
Dusty notes that "Seascape Storm" by painter Orage Marine is more realistic in style and that "the light source is coming from the left." While he may not remember the term "focal point," another clue explains that "the artist wants you to look at the biggest thing in the picture." Dusty is right; the focal point is the sailboat that dominates the canvas.
Loomis has also used art to support learning in other subject areas.
A recent unit on whales resulted not only in science instruction but also in the creation of whale drawings for a calendar. Each month features student artwork along with a whale fact such as: "Orcas belong to a group called a pod. Each pod has its own sound for communicating." Or, "A blue whale can weigh as much as 25 elephants." The class had the calendars spiral-bound and sold them for $4 each to raise money to "adopt" a whale in the Puget Sound. The adoption program provides money for whale research and care.
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.
OVATIONS
Students' newly gained arts expertise has been a boon to their self-esteem. Like other small, rural communities, Borowicz points out, Elk City doesn't have enough students to field sports teams. "Now," she says, "they can go out and meet kids from other schools and have something unique to share."
"For children in a remote area, who otherwise would not have had exposure to a world outside their own, there has been a whole broadening of perspective," says Judy Leuck, Director of Supervision and Personnel for the Grangeville School District. In addition to simple exposure to the arts, Leuck has also seen much more curriculum integration in general. And she's seen the results on standardized testing, more proof that the approach is working where it matters most-in student performance.
Test scores have risen significantly since the arts-integration project was instituted. On the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS), the school average for grades two through 10 rose from 30.4 in the 1995-96 school year to 52.3 in the 1996-97 school year. There have also been high increases in writing assessment scores. In fact, last year, Elk City eighth-graders' scores surpassed all other eighth-graders in the district in direct writing and math assessments.
Surprising? Not really. As more and more programs like Elk City's reach students, indications are that the left brain knows what the right is doing. And vice versa.
"All the evidence points to a relationship between the arts and other academic disciplines that is clear and compelling, indicating to both fields that one cannot really flourish without the influence of the other," says Jerold Ross, Director of the National Arts Education Research Center at New York University.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Education recognized the improvement in performance in Elk City by awarding the school Title I Accelerated School status.
Elk City has managed to keep the attention of the Albertson Foundation, receiving a second-year grant from the foundation, and the Idaho Commission on the Arts which has designated Elk City as a partner site.
"And the kids aren't the only ones growing around here," Boro-wicz adds. "We teachers are learning, too."
In fact, although the arts grant funds are waning and will not afford the school an arts facilitator for a third year, Elk City teachers are confident that arts integration is here to stay.
Loomis has indicated an interest in overseeing the Grant Room resources. And mentor teachers can help new staff learn the strategies for arts integration.
"If I ever leave here," says Nelson, "I'll take it with me. The only problem is that the new school might not have such incredible resources."
Renny Parker is the school librarian at Elk City. Thom Parker, her husband, is bus driver, custodian, and the morning-address speaker at the school. They are also parents of one of last year's students who, by many accounts, "blossomed" under the arts program. This year, their daughter Bryn is attending high school in Grangeville, a two-hour drive down that twisting, turning road. Growing up in Elk City has taught generations of young people to be resourceful and to appreciate the beauty of the natural world. But the Parkers credit Elk City's new arts program with helping Bryn develop the skills and confidence to go for a part in the high school play. She landed the lead.
"The arts program was a great intro to what's out there-the possibilities," Renny Parker says. "For the kids that go for the challenge, they profit. I mean, for a lifetime."
RAISING A COMMUNITY
What does it take to get loggers and forest preservationists to work together?
In Elk City, Idaho, the answer is as simple as a group of children who need a place to perform.
During the past two years, the community has rallied around an arts integration program at the local school. Many residents are parents who have seen the excitement that's now connected with learning. Others have attended recent performances by visiting musicians and theatrical groups, as well as presentations that showcase the new skills and talents being developed by the students.
If they have ever warmed the bleachers at Elk City School, however, they know that the gymnasium has the acoustics of a potato bin.
"When we have graduation," says Principal Susie Borowicz, "we can't even hear who's graduating."
As a result, the community has rallied together to build a new performing arts center. Shearer Lumber Products-the local mill and largest employer in town-is donating the labor. The Forest Service, the second-largest employer in town, is donating the raw timber for the project. And the Western Framers Guild, an offshoot of the organization that helped to rebuild Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, will be working with community members to raise the frame this fall.
"The plan is to for everybody to get together and put it up in just a few days," says Borowicz, "kind of like a barn raising."
The performing arts center project is being used as a learning tool for students, as well. Students have been involved in determining the optimal position for the building near a mountain ridge called Buffalo Hump, considering the angle of the sun throughout the year to keep the building coolest in summer and warmest in winter. Students have also helped to calculate the quantity of dirt that must be removed for the foundation, and some will assist in building the actual structure.
The new center will provide much more than a place to hold school plays. According to Borowicz, when one of the town's pioneers passed away a couple of years back, there wasn't a place big enough to hold all the folks who wanted to pay their respects. Soon, that will be a problem of the past.
The new center will provide a much-needed space that the entire community can enjoy.
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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