Brain Waves: This is Your Brain On Art

Jumping brain grafitti sticker in Barcelona

 If you took an informal poll, most kids would probably tell you that school is a drag. I'm Marcie Sillman. Why does school get a bad rap? And what can be done to change that reputation? That's what educators want to know. Some recent studies show that kids who are involved in the arts do better in school. Researchers have a lot of theories to explain that success.

TRANSCRIPT

Elizabeth Whitford directs Seattle's Arts Corps, an organization that sponsors after school art classes. Whitford says the arts are fun, they engage students. And they can instill certain character traits.
Whitford: "Persistence. Any artist has to show extreme persistence to learn that skill, and discipline related to that. And courage and risk taking."
And some scientists believe that making art can actually alter your brain. The data that link the impact of the arts on learning are preliminary. But they've convinced some experts to venture outside the box when it comes to classroom teaching.
As Carmela Dellino strolls through the halls of Roxhill Elementary School, she seems to know every child she sees.
For the past two years, Dellino has been principal of this southwest Seattle school. She oversees a wildly diverse student body. More than 30 percent of Roxhill's 310 kids are bilingual, from Latin America, Africa or Asia.
Dellino: "Eighty–five percent qualify for free and reduced lunch, live in extreme poverty."
Dellino says most Roxhill families don't have the means to take their kids to the ballet or the symphony. And Roxhill's PTA can't raise enough extra money to hire a special art or music teacher, the way they do at more affluent schools. So when the Seattle School District asked if Roxhill wanted to take part in a pilot program that uses the arts to teach literacy skills, Dellino didn't hesitate to say yes.
Dellino: "Especially in a school like Roxhill, where our kids don't have that access to the arts that other students might have, what a wonderful way to use arts to develop literacy."
Roxhill: "Snakes, stand up, move around like a snake. I see zigzagging, hungry snakes. I hear hissing sounds."
Twenty first graders slink across a brightly patterned rug in Jenny Dew's classroom. They hiss at each other, and thrust their heads forward, like pythons ready to strike. Actor David Quicksall videotapes the action, and occasionally throws out a word of advice.
Quicksall: "Remember, we're going to stay on our feet."
Roxhill is one of four Seattle elementary schools involved in this literacy project. It's a partnership between the Seattle School District and a nonprofit called Arts Impact. A classroom teacher from each grade in the participating schools is paired with an artist mentor. The teachers study dance, theater and visual art during intensive summer training sessions. During the school year, they use specially developed lesson plans that infuse those artforms into the basic curriculum. In Jenny Dew's class, they're using theater to build vocabulary.
Dew: "I want you to think real quick. How can you move like a snake? Are you going to slither, are you going to flick, are you going to zig zag, or swim or rattle or shake?
First grader: I'm gonna flick."
The Arts Impact project is only in its first year at Roxhill, but Principal Carmela Dellino says already, the kids are pretty engaged in what's they're doing.
Dellino: "And when we can have student engagement increase, then we're going to have student learning increase. And we know, research tells us, when body and brain and creative spirit are all engaged then learning is really going to happen."
The federal Department of Education (DOE) wants more hard data about how the arts affect learning. So the DOE awarded Arts Impact $1 million to fund this particular project. Arts Impact Director Sybil Barnum says artmaking has very tangible connections to the core academic subjects kids study in school.
Barnum: "The artistic process involves gathering information, developing ideas, refining work, self reflection and revision. They are also part of many other disciplines, scientific, writing. Having students see the process they're working through is also a process in another subject area is also very helpful."
The arts may do more than foster good work habits. New scientific research shows that making art can actually change your brain. James Catterall studies the relationship between arts and basic education at the University of California at Los Angeles. He's teamed up with a group of UCLA neuroscientists to use new magnetic imaging technologies to look at the brains of kids who play music. The scans show what part of the brain is activated when a person plays a violin concerto, or a guitar lick.
Catterall: "By doing music, you are using neural pathways. The more you use them, the more they develop and the stronger they get. So the idea is, if you develop neural pathways that are good at spatial reasoning, perhaps those skills in other settings will be stronger and more useful."
Catterall says his findings are preliminary, but they indicate that kids who play music perform better in academic subjects that rely on spatial relation skills, like math. He hopes to do more brain imaging studies to find out why this happens. In Catterall's perfect world, teachers and parents would use this information to nurture a generation of creative thinkers and problem solvers.
Catterall: "As I see school classrooms, many don't make any place, any space for children's own versions of the world, their own speculation, not leaving kids room to be wrong. Those are great ways to learn. Being creative is, as I see it, as much a matter of being given time, opportunities and encouragement to think for oneself as anything else."
If Catterall's theories are true, and there's growing evidence that they are, why don't more schools follow his advice?
Barnum: "It's money. It's absolutely money."
While Arts Impact Director Sybil Barnum says most educators accept that the arts are valuable, she thinks they don't believe that art is vital to basic learning.
Barnum: "From my experience talking with administrators there's always this unspoken but, which is, I'm acountable for math and reading scores, and if the scores are not high enough, I won't get the resources I need to serve my children."
Because these days, school funding is tied to performance on standardized tests. And in most places, the arts aren't on those tests.
Quicksall: "Performers, before we stop, I can see everybody use their bodies, but I didn't hear everybody use their voice."
Back at Seattle's Roxhill Elementary school, actor David Quicksall and first grade teacher Jenny Dew are just winding up the day's vocabulary lesson. The kids have progressed from snakes to chickens, and Quicksall wants each child to portray an excited hen.
Quicksall: "I'm looking for a chicken voice, not your neutral voice, but what your voice sounds like as a chicken."
Principal Carmela Dellino says she doesn't need test scores to tell her that these kids are learning.
Dellino: "I was in a classroom one time when they were practicing vocabulary development, and then I watched in their language, their speaking language and in their writing, them integrate some of that vocabulary. So I do see the link, I do see the impact."
Even if it's only one cluck at a time.