From it’s inception, ESCAPE has targeted English Language Learners as the primary beneficiaries of our arts and science integration, but we just learned from participating teachers that special education students are greatly benefitting as well. Aren’t unanticipated outcomes exciting?!

Dear Brad and your team,
The idea of using visual and performing arts to teach science is such an exciting one! Your footage of students illustrating science concepts using their bodies and really “living” the concepts is inspiring, and it sounds like teachers really see the benefits for students. What have you heard from teachers about the process of implementing this new program in terms of the impact on their own instruction? Have there been any specific or recurring challenges in your pilot cases so far, and, if so, how are you addressing those? I wish you all the best in your expanded roll-out this year! Thank you for sharing your work.

Dear Brad and team,
Thanks for an engaging and informative video. This is such an important idea. Can you expand on the impact the program has had on students? Have you seen improvement on learning outcomes? Also, have you found that parents generally support the program or do you need to educate the parents about the method? Thanks again for taking on such important and exciting work.

I love this video and the ideas expressed here!! There are many synergies between visual arts and science. Im curious about how children talked about using ESCAPE ideas in their learning. Were they asked to visualize, draw, talk out, move…etc. in a particular way when doing science?

Glad you enjoyed the video. The visual and performing arts science lessons can be thought of in two groups: those that used visual arts (drawing, sculpture, crafts) and those that used dance. In either case, the students were not told exactly what to draw or construct, nor were they told exactly how to move. In the visual arts lessons, the teacher provided the arts materials and taught specific arts techniques, like shading in pastel drawing, for example. The students then used the materials and the techniques they learned to express the science concepts being taught in their own ways, often working in peer groups. The resulting artworks all look very different, but all of them clearly portray the science concept focus of the lesson. In the case of the dance lessons, visiting teaching artists taught these lessons for the first time and the classroom teacher observed as a part of their professional development. The teaching artist would teach specific dance techniques and vocabulary (high-mid-low levels of movement, for example) and then would have the students embody a science concept in their own way, often in groups. Students would form different shapes when embodying the germination of a seed, for example, but all students would demonstrate with their bodies some understanding of this concept. During qualitative observations, students apparently really enjoyed these lessons. They were more active, more engaged, talked more about science content, and interacted with peers more.

#teamBrad — I love the incorporation of arts/dance/physical movement into the implementation of NGSS for teachers. You mentioned that you will be expanding into the online platform for Los Angeles coming up — can you talk a little bit about what that will look like and what has changed (if anything) from this iteration? Thank you for a great video and project!

It has been a fascinating experience taking video footage from the first year of the traditional weeklong ESCAPE Summer Earth Science Institute, follow-up implementation, and other professional development activities. We transformed it into an online course and are trying to mirror those activities, while building in interactivity and assessment. The lesson plans developed for the traditional cohort are being utilized without any major modifications, however we have added various experimental methods using integration through media arts, storytelling, music, dance, and visual arts. These new aspects are very exciting and we area learning great deal from the experimental production stages that we have underway. The online platform requires deep crafting with sustainability in mind and can bring about quality training for the very challenging endeavor of arts and science integration. We are studying ways of integrating MOOC learning through virtual coaching and team building, i.e. students will be asked to participate in various ways, like submitting videos of themselves by way of introduction to the online cohort. We are trying to make it as community-building as possible by creating opportunities for the teachers to add comments, images, and other media. The system will collect information about the teachers along the way via survey questions and they will be able to see how they compare to everyone else with cumulative graphics of participant answers to the questions. We are using a learning management system called Canvas, Zaption, and Storyline Articulate in case you are interested in some of the tools.

What a cool project! I could relate (from our project) when the teacher said, “integrate, integrate, integrate….how?” I really like how you all have given the teachers practical and explicit tools to integrate. Have you seen the teachers try and use the techniques for other subject areas on their own?