Everyday Arts in Classrooms
This fall, our organization launched “Everyday Arts in Classrooms,” a multi-disciplinary arts initiative aimed to support students with disabilities through a series of in-school residencies, provided under a contract with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For the first year, we served special education classrooms in the Torrance Unified School District, with professional development workshops taking place at Arnold Elementary School, and class visits occurring at schools throughout the district. This was the first fully in-person Everyday Arts program since before the pandemic, and we loved being back in the classrooms and getting to make art with these amazing kids!
During the workshops, teachers had a blast making music together, creating group tableaus, and collaborating on an abstract mural using colored masking tape on poster board. When it was time to implement the strategies in the classrooms, we worked together to weave arts activities into their existing unit plans, with great success! One classroom had been studying apples, so their students made a mural using only the colors red, yellow and green. They then turned the art into a “game board,” where they would take turns being given a red, yellow, or green apple card and then match it to the same color on the mural. It was incredibly engaging, and a brand new extension of this art project! In another class, we were able to use our tableau activity “Picture Posing” to support a literacy unit. After practicing the activity (students making frozen shapes) with a variety of images, we had one student choose a book from a selection on the shelf. We then read the book together, and paused on each page for the class to embody the illustration on that page. The classroom teacher later relayed to us that after our visit, all of the students wanted to pick their own books, and were more interested in books than ever before! Another class chose to focus on social-emotional learning, and used our “Foil” activity to facilitate students making foil crowns as gifts for each other - their expressions were priceless!
After the conclusion of the residency, we learned that the artmaking had not ended when we left - classes were continuing to use our visual and performing arts activities to help their students with self-regulation and collaboration throughout the year. We also received news that a district administrator was compiling artwork from across the classrooms to create a mini “art show” in the district office to display all of the amazing accomplishments of our students. The students are proud of their work and we’re thrilled that their art is able to reach a larger audience! We look forward to continuing a long-term partnership with Torrance Unified School District, and can’t wait to see what next year entails!