Few of us would argue that engaging students in the arts — visual, music, dance — is an important part of school. It’s well documented that arts engagement supports academic and social development, but with competing demands on time and budgets, enrichment in visual arts, music, and dance, historically has taken a secondary seat.

As part of a forthcoming research project with the education nonprofit I head, I’ve been talking to leaders across 20 public school districts to learn more about the ways instructional practice has positively changed over the course of the year. Given my own experiences as a parent, I shouldn’t have been surprised that a common theme in these conversations is the way in which COVID-19 has forced communities to rethink structures for arts enrichment. Here are three bright spots I heard emerge:

  1. Deeper, sustained work. Given the need to create contained pods and limit outside contacts, many schools, like mine, had to rethink how and when arts teachers would work with students. A number of the schools we spoke to moved away from the “once a week” model of enrichment to having arts specialists work over a sustained duration with a set of students for weeks at a time (often three to six, on a daily or every-other-day basis). Doubling the time with kids, week over week, has allowed these teachers to develop a depth of relationship with students they’d never had before.
  2. Tapping into partner resources. The pandemic disrupted how many arts and other cultural nonprofits delivered, shifting to online for services and collection access. Moving online opened up more opportunities to bring these specialists into lessons as part of the online classroom, interacting directly with students.
  3. New places and with new audiences. In many places, arts shifted outside — outside spaces created opportunities to build larger projects and incorporate natural materials. Teachers began to wonder “if we're going to be outside, what are the elements of the natural setting that we can use to enhance learning?”

Read the full article about arts learning during the pandemic by Beth Rabbitt at The Learning Accelerator.