Rebecca Burrell
When you take a look at the numbers, it’s clear that in coming years our public schools will enroll more English Language Learners than ever before. According to research by the Pew Charitable Trust, by 2050 34% of children under age 17 in the United States will be either immigrants or children of immigrants.
We also know that public school teachers are by and large white—over 80% as of the 2011-12 school year—leaving vast cultural and language gaps between teachers and their students. (Read more about that on page 20 of this report.)
So, what is the arts’ role in helping teachers reach English Language Learners? Making the arts a central part of any classroom can help deliver content in powerful new ways to excite more kids.
I’ll tell you why I’m sure this is true.
The Right Brain Initiative is an arts integration program in the Portland, Oregon metro area. By working with schools to fully combine sculpture with science and movement with math, for example, we help kids find new avenues to understand and interact with—and we give them new reasons to care about—their curriculum.
This September, we accomplished a grand coup when we unearthed data that indicates this kind of programming really works. An analysis of standardized test scores by the firm WolfBrown and Portland State University revealed an above-average increase in scores for students who attend Right Brain partner schools.
This jump in scores is true for both reading and math tests, but it is most pronounced on English language proficiency assessments (ELPA). Before schools joined Right Brain, the average annual increase in ELPA scores was 1.3 points. Immediately upon partnering with our program, the annual increase leaped to 11.4 points. At our most fully engaged partner schools, the increase grew to an incredible 20.6 points.
Among our most fully engaged partner schools is Quatama Elementary, which produced my favorite story about Right Brain’s impact on English proficiency. Quatama is located in Hillsboro, a suburb to the west of Portland. In the Hillsboro School District, more than 25% of students are English Language Learners. At Quatama, founding Principal Janis Hill counted over 25 different languages spoken by students in the building.
Last school year, Quatama staff collaborated with Right Brain partner organization My Voice Music (MVM) to integrate music with a different subject at each grade level. Santigie Fofana-Dura, MVM’s teaching artist, worked with kindergartners to combine the study of sound with literacy. Students were introduced to a series of musical instruments, and they used those instruments—as well as their bodies—to make noise. They then connected these noises with sounds of letters of the alphabet. Finally, each class pulled all this exploration together to compose and perform a hip-hop ABC song.
“The level of engagement was incredible,” said Janis Hill about this experience. “One Somalian student, I had never seen her so animated.”
The impact on student learning was just as exciting. One class was made up of 50% English Language Learners. Before working with Right Brain, one-half of the class recognized three or fewer letters. By the end of just four sessions with Fofana-Dura, 80% of students doubled their letter recognition. One child jumped from identifying two letters to recognizing 20.
Why did this work? At Right Brain, we refer to arts-integrated learning as “hands on and minds on.” We say that because meaningful arts integration does the following:
- Provides new entry points to understand content, and more reference points to own and analyze the subject matter
- Excites, stimulates, and genuinely engages students
- Allows students to take in information through movement, music, and visual means, not simply through written or verbal language
- Provides natural connections to culture, making content relevant for kids
For English Language Learners, all this matters a lot. By providing children with rich interdisciplinary learning, we provide new avenues for students to learn, to demonstrate their knowledge, and to feel successful in the classroom.
What’s more, Quatama staff maximizes the impact of the arts because they’ve partnered with Right Brain to integrate it into their daily teaching practice. Quatama staff knows that the arts are not an afterthought, but rather that creativity can be a key tool to help students attain their academic goals. They know this is true not in spite of the language, cultural or economic barriers their children face, but because of it.
When we aim to ensure real-live learning for all children, let the arts come first.
