by Steven A. Melnick — Frank was a student who wasn’t terribly interested in school but seemed to enjoy the social aspects of it and getting into a little mischief now and then. He exuded a kind of macho persona and had a certain energy about him. He was a likable kid who attended school daily, was generally respectful of the teachers, but academic work just didn’t excite him and he never quite seemed interested in learning. His teachers seemed to like him and they could see the potential buried deep inside. They just couldn’t quite figure a way to reach him as he was usually non-involved and often had a quick comment in class to get a laugh. At times he was antagonistic, but mostly he simply meandered through the school year.
That year, there was a pilot course being offered by his school that integrated the arts into social studies. The course used the arts as a lens through which to view concepts in social studies. It was an elective, and much to everyone’s surprise, Frank readily jumped in. The teachers wondered what possessed him to take the course as it was so unusual of him but they welcomed him with open arms. In the end, it was an eye-opening experience for both Frank and the teachers involved.
The one talent Frank had going for him was his interest in art. Among the students enrolled in this elective course, Frank was the only student who also had elected to take a class in the visual arts. This art course helped Frank to develop some technical understanding, refinement of skill, and factual information which the other students in the humanities class did not possess. No one thought much about the fact that Frank was taking both courses, as most of the teachers’ interactions with him dealt with trying to interest him in the humanities project and not in amusing the other students.
But one day, teachers and classmates alike, suddenly saw a new Frank who was engaged and knowledgeable. As the students struggled with making certain connections between visual art and literary art, Frank began to use vocabulary concepts such as “analysis” and “interpretation” about works of art, and helped the class to understand. From that time forward, other students began to seek him out, asking for his help. Frank became even more engaged as the realization set in that he was “good at something.” What he was previously able to do only in his art class now had application to other aspects of his life. To everyone’s astonishment and delight, for the first time Frank began to take his academic work seriously.
At the end of the school year, I had the pleasure to interview Frank and talk about his experiences during the year, specifically about the elective arts-integrated course. He was an engaging young man who seemed to have metamorphosed over the course of a year. He proudly displayed some of the work he had done throughout the year and readily talked about how that work connected both social studies content and the arts.
At one point, I said, “Frank, you seem to be more involved in this course that you’ve been in previous courses. What’s the difference?”
He smiled for a brief moment and said, “You know, in most other classes I’ve ever taken the routine was the same. We’d sit bored in class for a week or two, study for a test, spit back the answers everyone knew were being asked for, and then I’d forget it all as we moved on to the next topic. ”
I nodded knowingly as I saw that picture in my own experience.
Frank quickly explained, “But this…this I remember everything we did from the beginning of the year.”
It was an amazing transformation. By the end of the year, this macho kid who mostly couldn’t have been bothered with school, got up on stage in front of his entire school–in tights no less–and performed along with a local ballet troupe because it connected to what they were learning.
The success he enjoyed and the intellectual connections he was able to make through the arts caused him to become a better student in all of his classes and to be more engaged in his own learning. From much previous research, we know that when children are involved in the arts they tend to do better in school.
Encourage your child’s interest in the arts. Expose them to as many different experiences as you can (visual, music, drama, etc.). You never know when another Frank will emerge.
It’s been a while since I have written about dinnertime conversations with your children (CLICK HERE). Recently, particularly in light of the frequency of school shootings and cases of sexual abuse, as parents, we simply need to know more than just our child’s academic progress and a casual question, “How was school?”.
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