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Students | module 5

Get Arts Powered  with Students

When young people engage in Arts Powered Learning—particularly when they attend a school where that kind of learning is a constant, they develop key habits that will help them become well-rounded as learners and also become the next generation of arts supporters in their communities.
 
Using the example of PS 144 Col. Jeromus Remsen in Forest Hills, Queens—a New York City public elementary school with a long-running commitment to arts education—it’s easy to identify four of these habits:
 
habit 1 | TRY IT: YOU MIGHT LIKE IT
habit 2 | YOU ARE NEVER REALLY DONE
habit 3 | THEIR LEARNING IS MY LEARNING
habit 4 | IF YOU LOVE IT, SHARE IT
PS144 Neighborhood schoolyard with kids playing PS144 Neighborhood exterior of school
PS144 LeadershipKKitle interior of schoolPS 144: Col. Jeromus Remsen in Forest Hills
Introduction: “A School Made of Art”

At elementary school PS 144 in Forest Hills, Queens, the arts have become a school signature. For more than a decade, an unusual succession of principals have each valued the arts for the ways in which they:

• Allow all sorts of students ways to express their thought processes
• Bring families into the school
• Introduce children and their families to the cultural resources of New York City

Through the work of long-time arts coordinator Lois Olshan and a sustained set of partnerships with local cultural organizations, the school has developed a continuous staircase of arts learning with weekly arts instruction, an all-school partnership with the Queens Museum, and special arts opportunities for each grade. As a result, children are always surrounded by evidence of what they have accomplished in the arts and also what lies in their future. 

  • Student:

“Art has been a big part of what goes in 144. In 3rd grade you know that next year you are going to be doing Alvin Ailey. In 4th grade you know that next year, you are going to be doing ballroom dancing. If you take art out of this school, then there is just no use in going to this school. That’s what this school is made of—art.” 

PS 144 Arts Coordinator Lois Olshan   PS 144 Principal Reva Gluck Schneider
PS 144 Arts Coordinator Lois Olshan   PS 144 Principal Reva Gluck Schneider
 
PS 144’s Continuous Staircase of Arts Learning
 
Students as Partners in Arts Powered Learning
 

But this sequence of arts learning opportunities is only half the story at PS 144, since over time the students there become true arts partners. When asked “What would happen if the arts went away?” upper elementary students, who have had the benefit of coming up through the ranks of an Arts Powered school, answered promptly and with a telling level of ownership.

 

  • Student:

“If you took the arts away, kids would say, ‘Wait, I never even got the opportunity to try it—to find out if I didn’t like it.’ It would definitely be upsetting. Kids know that each year there is always something new. They would just be so mad.”

  • Student:

“If the arts got cut, we would just have to deal with it. But I would try and organize an arts club and ask for help from our teachers and have them offer us projects to do. It could be like an extra curriculum. We could become the ones to hold performances.”


PS 144 kids with artwork
 
The Habits of Arts Powered Learners
Students at PS 144, whether they are in kindergarten or 5th grade, have the habits of Arts Powered Learners—that is, attitudes that complement and motivate the techniques and understandings that are laid out in New York City’s Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts. These habits are also the kinds of transferable skills that matter in life as well as in school—they may be the foundation of a lifetime of curiosity, effort, and collaboration.

 
Habit 1 | Try It, You Might Like It
Every year in 5th grade, students have a ballroom dancing class. (As a result of this program, which was initially funded in part by The Center for Arts Education, PS 144 was one of the schools featured in the acclaimed documentary Mad Hot Ballroom.) Ballroom dancing starts at just the age when boy-girl partnering can be awkward and touchy. But here is what two students had to say about the importance of plunging into new learning. 
 
  • 5th Grade Student #1:

“One of the things that we are doing next is ballroom dancing. We are going to start tomorrow and have 20 sessions in 10 weeks. One thing I'm nervous about is getting my partner; I don’t know if I want to dance with him or not, but I am excited about learning something new.”

  • 5th Grade Student #2:

“I really like to dance and I tell all my friends that it is really fun and they kind of decide that they will be fun to try it out. Some of them are really nervous about picking their partner, but I said that that is not the point about ballroom dancing. The point is to learn a new style and to have fun and also to improve your performance skills.”

PS 144 student Another PS 144 student