Arts Integration Aids Students' Grasp of Academics

"If you know your kids struggled last year with a concept, it might be a perfect place for arts integration," she said.

Johnson said that using artwork provides a nonjudgmental way to teach students about critical thinking. "You always start with art as a kind of neutral territory for kids," she said.

Students don't worry about making mistakes because there are no incorrect answers, Johnson said. Then they apply the same thinking and analyzing skills to academic subjects.

Kim Leichtling, a math teacher in the school's talented and gifted program, said that analyzing the artwork helps her students become more disciplined thinkers and more comfortable tackling difficult math problems.

"Sometimes they see problems when they're doing math, and they get irrational and panic," Leichtling said. Strengthening their observational skills through artful thinking helps reduce the fear, she said.

On any school day at Drew, teachers employ some aspect of the arts in many classrooms. In the all-purpose room, first- and second-graders spent part of a recent morning learning about the various jobs involved in putting on an opera. The students will spend the school year writing, composing and producing an opera, which they will perform in May.

At a station where students learned about being electricians, building services worker Bennie Smith showed a group how to rotate knobs quickly to turn on a small bank of light bulbs. The experiment allowed students to get a feel for how the lights need to work when the stage curtains are opened and closed, he said.

"One, two, three, you've got to rotate faster. You've got to rotate faster," he teased first-grader Diana Figueroa, 6, as she turned one knob more slowly than the other.

In another room, music teacher Shelly Kline and Helen Weisel, the school's community-based teacher, taught about musical terms using puppets, songs and a computer program that incorporated photos of the students. Johnson noted that, in addition to enhancing learning skills, the program also fosters a better understanding of the arts.

"Kids need to be exposed to the arts," she said. "It gives them an appreciation of the arts."