By Melissa Leavitt

Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier

Art and music docents enrich student life in Los Altos schools

With test scores and performance rankings dominating talk of today’s schools, local teachers and administrators have been receiving praise and recognition from all corners of the community. But two core groups of parent volunteers have been taking their children’s education into their own hands for the past three decades.

The Los Altos Art Docents are celebrating their 30th year of bringing fine arts into Los Altos School District classrooms. Music for Minors has been singing along with local students for the past 25 years. Together, these two programs utilize nearly 200 volunteers to provide the bulk of the enrichment courses offered to Los Altos students.

Although the district funds the art docent coordinator position, donations and contributions provide both organizations with the remainder of their financial support.

The time, energy and efforts of parent volunteers provide every other support for arts in the classrooms.

“This organization is the volunteers,” said Nancy Barnoski, the art docent coordinator.

Music for Minors operates the same way, according to Cathy Humphers Smith, the project director.

“One of the things about Music for Minors is that it is very dependent on the volunteers that a school can get together.”

These organizations require volunteers to devote a set number of hours to the program; music docents spend one half-hour every week in the classroom, while art docents give a minimum of three hourly presentations each month.

How volunteers find time for the programs

With many parents working full-time outside the home, and others with obligations to a number of community organizations, volunteers are juggling their schedules to make time for the students.

Dana James, a founding member of the art docents, remembers the program facing such obstacles during its inception in 1970.

“Half of the docents were working,” she said. “People weren’t staying home with their kids, and that was something we were dealing with.”

Today, volunteers find that employers are beginning to accommodate such commitments.

“Employers increasingly will give employees time off to do community service,” Humphers Smith said.

“Businesses allow people to give back to the school,” said Judie Johnson, an Art Docent board member.

Both organizations benefit from the help of retirees, who are devoting an increasing amount of time with the program.

How docents train/what they get out of the training

Even before they get in the classroom, docents must spend time in training and studying the subjects they will teach.

Art docents must attend a number of training workshops in addition to observing classroom lessons. Music docents take a college-level course in the subject, earning units from Foothill College or the College of San Mateo.

Because many volunteers approach the programs with little experience, such classes and workshops often provide them their first in-depth education in the field. The programs then become learning experiences for the instructors as well as the children.

The art docents reserve every Friday for their own education, attending lectures and museums. Music docents also attend workshops and lectures designed to increase their own familiarity with the topics.

“It has enhanced all of us at several levels,” said Shauna Mika, an art docent board member.

When the art docent program first began, some volunteers turned to the program for that very purpose.

“You have to put this in an historical perspective,” said Jane Reed, a founding art docent. “This was an opportunity for women to get involved and to learn and grow.”

Humphers Smith sees volunteering as a way not only to learn about the subject, but also how to work with students in general.

“I found it to be intellectually stimulating for me to get in the classroom and develop lessons plans, and to work through classroom management techniques,” she said. “Just to learn that was fascinating.”

How docents work with classroom teachers

Both organizations design their programs to enhance a teacher’s classroom practices and courses, rather than disrupt them.

“From a teachers’ perspective, they have to be a jack-of-all-trades. They have to know everything,” said founding art docent Kris Has. “It’s wonderful for them to have someone come into the classroom, with all of the supplies, to give a good, quality lesson.”

The art docents, who teach both “hands-on” activity lessons as well as appreciation courses, align the latter with the curriculum for each grade level.

For example, when fourth-graders study California history, the art docents treat them to a slide show of early California artists. When they study early Egyptian civilizations in the sixth grade, docents bring in replicas of Egyptian sculptures and lead a discussion about the art form.

“A teacher has the option of tying in an art docent lesson with whatever the class is learning,” said Vanessa Wright, an art docent board member.

Because the art docents teach a district-wide curriculum, the courses are progressive, building upon themselves at each grade level.

Unlike the Music for Minors program, where docents work with the same classroom on a weekly basis for the entire year, art docents visit a variety of classes and grade levels.

Music docents emphasize a different dynamic between docents and students.

“Part of what we’re doing is establishing a relationships with a group of kids, so they can then grow in their individual musical experiences.”

Music docents have a great deal of freedom in deciding which subject to bring to their classrooms.

“In the training program they get so much material and information, a real wealth of things to draw on,” Humphers Smith said. “Every docent comes to the training with their own background and interests.”

Although Music for Minors provides general guidelines for docents, “how the docents implement the framework for teaching is up to them,” she said. “There’s a wonderful wealth and richness in the diversity that we’ve got.”

What the docents see as the value of arts education

Despite the differences in organization, volunteers from both groups agree on the value of arts education.

The art docents serve classes from kindergarten through the eighth grade, while Music for Minors generally reaches students through the third grade. The district offers art electives in the intermediate grades and the Los Altos Educational Foundation funds music instruction for the fourth through sixth grades.

Volunteers supplement these by ensuring that students receive arts instruction at the earliest possible age.

“I was a teacher for seven years, and I noticed that the kids who weren’t getting things, if I did it through art I could reach them,” Haas said.

“For kids not good at math or reading, it can be a self-esteem booster,” said Jane Saltman, an art docent board member.

Humphers Smith notes how the arts education can influence a child’s performance in other subjects.

“There’s so much information out now showing that children need to be creative, and that they need that creativity to grow,” she said. “Children who take music lessons grow in brain development.”

Both Music for Minors and the art docents provide an outlet for individuals interested in the arts, in the capacity of a student or teacher.

“I’ve learned and developed my own artistic abilities,” said art docent chairwoman Francine Ruvolo. “We’re a voice for the creativity of the individual that is fostered by art.”