The Creative Bridge: How the Arts Connect Parents and Schools

I first began evaluating arts programs in the schools 15 years ago in Arizona. Over the years, I have studied similar programs in California, Idaho, Ohio, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia, and have noticed that they seemed to have the power to attract parents, to communicate to them in ways they understand, and to develop sustainable roles for parents in classrooms. Over time, I researched these connections and found compelling evidence that what I noticed was real and consistent in a wide variety of schools and settings, and that arts programs held the potential for greatly improving the roles of schools within their communities, and the opportunities for parents to help schools perform their vital work.

Good news for principals
The “arts effect” should be welcome news for school administrators, who bear responsibility for meeting the parent-involvement and student-achievement requirements of the federal legislation known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Principals may be particularly interested to learn that the arts engage parents and family members in a variety of ways, in a continuum that stretches from the school entrance into the classroom. The following are some of the elements of this continuum:

• Outside the school. Artworks created by students, such as murals and installations, stimulate the curiosity of the community  while signaling that the school is an inviting and visually rich place.
• In the school office. The prominent display of student artwork in the central office directly communicates that the values, aspirations, and visions of students are at the heart of the school’s mission. Moreover, since the artwork of students often reflects the traditions or influence of parents and families, the display of such works signals that parents are valued and welcome, too.
  In the halls. Displays of student artwork provide ongoing evidence of student learning via units or lessons that connect the arts with other subject areas, often in ways that parents can understand and appreciate.
• In the classrooms. Student artwork displayed on walls, alongside lists of applicable content standards and examples of tools used to assess the work, can give parents a clearer understanding of student mastery of the standards.
  Performances. Having a performance space and using it can provide parents and community members direct engagement with student work, even works in progress in the form of dress rehearsals and recitals. A gym, cafeteria, or multipurpose room can work just as well as an auditorium or theatre.
• Volunteer efforts. Arts projects provide parents with a variety of roles as ushers, chaperones for a visit to a museum or arts center, teachers’ aides, and so on. In these roles, parents can learn alongside their children and gain confidence in working in the arts. Parents can provide essential skills, from building dedicated performance and exhibition spaces to offering marketing advice.
• Cooperative learning. Parents can work with their children on a variety of projects that not only invite, but also depend upon the extra hands and thoughts that a parent can bring to the task. Moreover, much of the real work of a unit or lesson goes home with the students in the form of homework assignments. Through the arts, parents can become involved, engaged mentors and co-learners.
• Folk arts, folklife, and family history. Each family and community is strongly connected to its own history and culture. These connections can be explored through different kinds of projects, including family folklife research (which students conduct), visiting demonstrations by parents, and community festivals. This channel for parent involvement is critically important in a time of great cultural pluralism and ethnic transformation in our schools and communities.
  

The arts and student achievement
Many of the contributions that the arts make to learning have been common knowledge for decades.  From the foregoing discussion, it is apparent that the arts also provide pathways to link schools and communities, engage parents, and bring about rich explorations of diversity. Now, a considerable and growing body of research indicates that the arts significantly impact learning by enhancing student engagement and thinking. For example, Richard Deasy and Lauren Stevenson’s book Third Space: When Learning Matters reports their findings that connecting learning to students’ background experiences is central to achievement in language arts. These connections are important because they provide an additional level of incentive for parent engagement.

The arts offer tools to help children learn across all content areas. They can make content more accessible to students with widely diverging learning styles. Moreover, integrated approaches to teaching correspond more closely with how most children learn.

For parents, a new avenue into school
For all of the parents who are connected to their schools, I have also found many who felt excluded. While some parental resistance may stem from school buildings that are simply foreboding, much of it may also stem from the daily routines of school—those aspects of school culture that may seem strange to outsiders. Ironically, most of the official programs that seek to involve parents approach the problem from the standpoint that parents understand schooling and want to be there, but for obstacles in their own lives, such as work hours. But I have found that schools can be inherently welcoming or unwelcoming, depending upon how they approach the following conditions.

• Information on standards-based education presented by schools in bureaucratic language taken from regulatory instructions and other official sources, can be mystifying to most parents.
• Parents find the front offices of schools acts as a barrier to their entrance and can make schools seem unfriendly and unwelcoming to them.
• Some parents, especially in traditional minority cultures, perceive schools as off-limits, where teachers are experts who are beyond approach or questioning.
• Minority cultures see themselves as marginalized and less central to the school’s work.

Here are some ways that the arts can help these conditions:

• Standards-based education can come alive when expressed in accessible language and illuminated via student work, including writing, visual-art projects, and performances.
• Schools can create atmospheres that are friendly, enjoyable spaces where student work is continuously celebrated.
  Parents can be invited to see schools as places where they have a role in initiating ideas and planning.
• All cultures can be valued as important in the school.
• In short, parent involvement and the arts and culture are mutually linked. Where the arts are present, they can invite parents to become involved and even extend their explorations to other subject areas. Therefore,  it is essential that schools learn to develop partnerships with parents through the power of the arts to achieve their educational goals.

How to begin
Perhaps your school lacks an arts specialist, curricula, or dedicated performance spaces. Nonetheless, it is still possible to build an arts program. Often, a residency by a visiting artist can provide the nucleus for an ongoing program. Professional development in the arts for educators is available in many states through the state or local arts agency. Lesson plans and curricula outlining projects that can be implemented at minimal cost can be found in books or on the Internet.

Information resources are readily available. For example, your state has an arts council, listed at http://nasaa-arts.org/. Click on “Arts Over America” in the bar on the left and then on your state on the map. State arts councils usually have many resources, including information on grants or artist residencies.

Those who want to go deeper have a lot of information to choose from. Cultural Arts Resources for Teachers and Students (C.A.R.T.S.), http://www.carts.org/, is a useful website of folk arts resources. The National Network of Partnership Schools, www.csos.jhu.edu/P2000, is a clearinghouse on parent involvement. Books on the academic benefits of the arts, including Richard Deasy’s Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development and Third Space: When Learning Matters, are available through the Arts Education Partnership at http://www.aep-arts.org/.

Conclusion
The arts can be a great untapped resource for of schools. Their rich content, ability to engage powerful thinking skills and habits of mind, and natural intersection with content areas across a school’s curriculum make them indispensable tools in the teacher’s toolbox. Many educators and policymakers have forgotten these facts, but new research provides compelling reminders.

The arts give principals tools for engaging parents in the life of their schools, while providing parents with exciting and meaningful connections to the important work that schools do. Parents may find that the arts are the purest expression of their children’s unique gifts, a testament that all young people are creative.

Together, principals, teachers, and parents can reinvent the future, helping transform all schools into community centers of learning and civic engagements. While the arts are not the only tool for helping bring this about, they are one of the best and perhaps the most indispensable and enduring.

Michael E. Sikes, PhD, is a consultant specializing in educational evaluation. He is the author of Building Parent Involvement Through the Arts (2007, Corwin Press), which is geared to schools that may have no existing arts program and few resources. For questions and comments regarding this article, Michael can be reached via e-mail at michael@msikesphd.com.