Generations of Impact
In an effort to instruct educators on arts integration in the classroom, Partners in the Arts (PIA) has held the Joan Oates Institute annually since 1995, even before the program became a part of the University of Richmond in 2009. Over the years, PIA has helped countless educators invigorate their classrooms, but its work would not have been possible if it were not for a remarkable woman by the name of Joan Oates.
In 1994, the National Endowment for the Arts funded a proposal submitted by the Arts Council of Richmond (now Cultureworks), and Partners in the Arts was established. Joan Oates, then a member of the Arts Council, was instrumental in the development of the program.
Oates is part of a lineage of influential educators; her grandmother, Vassie James, founded the Pembroke School in Kansas City. Oates herself attended Bennington College in Vermont, which was known for its innovative teaching approach and emphasis on the arts. She then attended Harvard School of Education. Once she moved to Richmond, Oates taught at Collegiate school, and then taught a class in Creative Teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Joan Oates has continued to support PIA and its endeavors; in 2011, she endowed the summer institute to ensure that it continue permanently as a means for teachers to find inspiration to create engaging, interdisciplinary curricula and bring arts integration techniques back into their classrooms.
Oates’ influence continues to impact teachers and students in the Richmond area every day, especially as her granddaughter, Frances Denote, attended the first of two institutes in June this year.
“It feels like a lot to live up to,” said Denote, “Even down to her attitude. She always seemed so positive and unshakable.” Denote teaches fifth grade English at Greens Farm Academy in Connecticut. When asked about Joan’s influence on her teaching career, Denote explained, “I think subconsciously, it affected me. Every interaction I had with her was a teaching moment, whether I knew it or not.”
As the June institute came to a close, Denote spoke to her cohort: “From all the varied skills you have learned this week, there is something intangible that you can also take from Joan’s model: her contagious zeal for the ideas she was working on […] If you are passionate, engaged, thrilled to be exploring with your students, they will have no choice but to join you.”
As PIA’s most recent institute comes to a close, it is more apparent than ever that Joan Oates’ enthusiasm and passion for teaching are indeed timeless, as are the creative pathways through which we learn.
Arts Integration in the Richmond Community: A Critical Reflection on Engagement (an excerpt)
Though arts integrated educational practice can have many benefits, it must be implemented with care and expertise in order to be successful. Arts integration (AI) can cover a wide variety of practices, including short-term artist residencies, pre-designed art activities, and superficial connections between content areas and the arts (Aprill). Truly successful AI curriculum depends on clear definitions and objectives shared by all members of the partnership, teachers and artists alike. In reality, arts integration can work in conjunction with general subject instruction for optimal results, even though inequitable and insufficient funding for public education lead to what Aprill calls a “scarcity economy.” Teachers and subjects are pitted against each other in an effort to validate their discipline above others, to ensure that funding continues. A 2006 national survey by Center on Education Policy found that 71% of the nation’s 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on social studies, the arts, science, and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math (Aprill). Teachers’ concerns are justified, but instead of succumbing to the scarcity economy, we should be turning to an economical way of teaching across the subjects, which AI may very well help with.
Teachers also face pressure to ensure that their students perform well on standardized tests, which are largely responsible for accreditation. “Because we have to follow the state’s rules with standards of learning […] it’s a fast pace, and the teachers are under a lot of pressure. They feel like they don’t have the time to bring in the creative parts or materials to support those standards,” says Anne Chamblin of Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts. Standardized testing, along with specific emphasis on mathematics and literacy and less focus on science, social studies, art, and more, can construct a framework that is difficult to maneuver around. This is something I witnessed firsthand, as I observed Chamblin’s classes at Patrick Henry during the SOL testing period.
There is also pushback in regards to the purity of art; some people believe that using the arts in combination with general curriculum diminishes the value of art in and of itself. However, the arts have always been intertwined with other subjects, as it is often a representation of how humans view the changing and growing world around them. Furthermore, with deep and meaningful connections to content, AI can result in sophisticated art, that is both intellectually compelling and aesthetically pleasing (Aprill).
From Mastery to Empathy: The Need for a New Educational Paradigm (an excerpt)
Today, traditionalists believe that schools operate as sites of instruction and little else. In his book Teachers as Intellectuals, Henry Giroux distinguishes between this view of education and the opposing perspective that holds schools as sites of cultural, social, and economic reproduction. By viewing schools as wholly instructional zones, though, one risks disregarding the complex colonial practices at work in these spaces. Christopher Emdin, professor at Columbia University, likens the experience of black children in urban education to the experience of Indigenous people in militaristic schools geared towards assimilation.
The authoritarian nature of these schools forced these students to abandon their culture and traditions on the basis that mainstream white America’s traditions were far superior. Rather than celebrating education, The Carlisle Indian Industrial School and schools like it celebrated strict teachers and unrelenting discipline aimed to “make students better” (Emdin 5). This disciplinarian approach, however, is omnipresent today in urban communities, as teachers celebrate tropes like “tough love” when teaching youth of color. In the education system today, white teachers are recruited to teach in urban communities on the premise that they will make a difference, that they will improve the lives of these children, that they will “fix” them and their troubles. However, this type of recruiting style used by many school systems as well as programs including Teach for America fails to recognize the assets these communities offer, and instead emphasizes the poor resources, the low socioeconomic status, the inferiority of the school and surrounding community. Emdin uses the term “neoindigenous” to refer to urban youth of color in reference to the complex positioning of the oppressed and the spaces they inhabit that are domineered by systems of white supremacy and colonialist power.
Christina Sharpe’s prose echoes some of these ideas in the way she asserts, “Education is the belly of the ship” in her book In the Wake (92). She describes the education system as traumatizing those who have already been dealt insufferable trauma, and thus, to continue metaphors and language that echo those of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, education acts as the storm, as much as it does the ship. Even the term “urban youth” can be manipulated and wielded by those with privilege to identify black children as something other than children—to set them apart by a seemingly insignificant linguistic choice (Sharpe 93). This paper will explore first the problematic nature with which educators in the U.S. are taught to do their job and reflect on the dire consequences of this praxis before imagining potential ways in which we can move towards a more equitable education system.
About this content:
“Generations of Impact” was written for Partners in the Arts, a nonprofit funded by the University of Richmond with the mission to support Richmond City educators develop curriculum and support their diverse student body. “Arts Integration in the Richmond Community” was written as a submission to the Virginia Engage Journal for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. “From Mastery to Empathy” was a written for a research-based project under Dr. Nathan Snaza at the University of Richmond.
Katherine Murbach 