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 Photo Courtesy Of Evy Schiffman
Students create art, left, in an Arts in Action class in the Mountain View Whisman School District. Arts in Action, a program of the Community School of Music and Arts, provides weekly, sequential instruction to students in all the public elementary schools in the district. Although the school year is still young for students in the Mountain View Whisman School District (MVWSD), budding artists and musicians are already beginning to make their marks and hit the right notes in the classroom. Unlike many California districts, Mountain View Whisman made sure that arts education stayed in the curriculum when it came to budget and program cuts.
Through creative collaboration with the Community School of Music and Arts (CSMA), the non-profit provider of arts education to the district’s elementary school students for more than 20 years, the district has scheduled more concentrated study in the arts this year than in the past.
“The challenge that every district has faced and will continue to face is how to fulfill the No Child Left Behind (Act of 2001) requirements to increase language arts and math instruction time without sacrificing time for other subjects that we feel are critical to a student’s education,” said Superintendent Maurice Ghysels. “CSMA and the MVWSD were more than willing to think outside the box, to be both creative and flexible to ensure that our students continue to have music and art education as part of their curriculum.”
Nevertheless, the arts remain under-represented in the curriculum in terms of the total instructional time, according to Ghysels. As a musician himself who benefited from arts education as a student, he is committed to thinking creatively when it comes to ensuring that district students receive music and art classes.
This year, the district scheduled music, art and PE classes on the same day, which opened periods on the other four days for concentrated hours of instruction uninterrupted by special programs, in language arts, math and other subjects.
In past years, students received one period per week of classroom art instruction. This year, fourth- and fifth-graders, for example, receive one and a half hours every other week, which allows students to learn art concepts more effectively, complete projects and make connections between the arts and other subjects.
“The lengthening of the time block maximizes the efficiency of the instructional time because proportionally less time is used for setup and cleanup in art classes and other necessary but time-consuming activities,” said CSMA Visual Arts Director Linda Covello. “The time is much better spent and more time is devoted to teaching and learning.”
Other changes in this year’s curriculum include a new fifth-grade music program that offers a choice of three comprehensive classes: Music Arts, Band or String Orchestra.
“In previous years, music instruction at the fifth-grade level was not uniform in the six schools. That is no longer the case,” said CSMA Music in the Schools Director Kay Kleinerman. “In working with the district and rethinking the music curriculum, we were able to develop a program that would provide students with choices based on their musical interests.”
Both CSMA and the MVWSD consider this year’s program an improvement achieved without any significant monetary increase.
“Because of our long history of partnering with the school district, CSMA was confident that if we came up with a proposal that would allow the district to balance its commitment to arts education with its responsibility to meet what is required by the No Child Left Behind imperative, the MVWSD would work with us to make it happen,” said CSMA Executive Director Jeffry Walker.
However, Walker, like Ghysels, said that although he prefers to see the situation as a “glass half-filled,” the goal is to assign more classroom time to art and music instruction so that these subjects become integrated into the core curriculum. Walker cited research reporting a correlation between instrumental music instruction and academic achievement in math, science and language arts.
Since the 1980s, in the aftermath of the Proposition 13 budget cuts, CSMA has provided arts-in-the-schools programs on a contractual basis to public and private schools throughout Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. CSMA’s professional faculty of arts educators provides sequential arts and music instruction during the school day to more than 6,000 children at more than 25 schools. In the MVWSD, approximately $250,000 is spent on arts education, with funding from a variety of sources, including the Mountain View Educational Foundation, the city of Mountain View, the school district, individual schools, businesses and the Community School of Music and Arts.
For more information, visit www.arts4all.org or call 917-6800.
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