Two Rio Rancho elementary schools piloting arts integration program

RIO RANCHO — Two Rio Rancho elementary schools are testing a national program that utilizes the arts to help students learn other subjects.

Enchanted Hills and Sandia Vista are partnering to offer “Acting Right,” an arts integration program that blends drama with classroom teaching techniques to help students improve their behavior.

The program, now in its first year at Rio Rancho Public Schools, is spearheaded by Focus 5, an international educational consulting firm. Its director was on hand last week to monitor its effectiveness in the classroom and guide students through lessons.

“(Officials in) the field of education will say, ‘Our classrooms in the 21st century should be student-centered, active, engaging, social, cooperative, and kinesthetic,’” Focus 5 Director Sean Layne said. “We get that mandate from the field of education, but it’s struggling to show teachers how that happens.”

Enchanted Hills and Sandia Vista were given a total of $50,000 by the Rio Rancho Public Schools Board of Education to carry out arts integration over a four-year period, according to Kurt Schmidt, RRPS executive director of fine arts.

Schmidt — who observed Layne’s classroom activity Thursday — noted that arts integration does not involve students playing a musical instrument or singing the alphabet to learn their ABCs. It is about using an artform to learn another content area.

“(They) learn about the cycle by moving their bodies and dancing ... but they’re also learning elements of dance,” Schmidt said. “So, they’re mutually supportive.”

”We’re up moving”Holly Silva, a first-grade teacher at Enchanted Hills, whose son attends the school, said she became aware of arts integration and Acting Right when she read the book of the same name authored by Layne.

“Reading gave me a good picture of why we were doing it. Seeing it this year has really changed my thinking,” Silva said. “Before, you were just up there (in front of the class) talking at them — and there still is a piece of that — but now, we’re up moving. There’s a different element now, and I like that.”

Silva’s students recently learned about the digestive system by making biting motions with their hands and making a kicking motion to demonstrate waste exiting the body.

On Thursday, Silva watched her son’s class participate in a “cooperation challenge,” led by Layne. Students were asked to get into different-sized groups quickly. The objective was for students to learn about collective over individual success.

Layne said the activity is a precursor to arts integration.

“We want students dancing math and painting science and acting history, but we have to take a step back and teach students how to concentrate, cooperate, collaborate so that the artforms are successful,” Layne said. “That’s where we are with these two schools right now. We’re establishing the behavioral literacy for the arts to thrive in the classroom.”

Enchanted Hills second grader Elliot Melloy said following the activity that “it’s good to be cooperative, be calm, and have a good time at school.”

One of his peers, Lylah Sylvester, said being cooperative “helps control your emotions (so) you don’t get into fights.”

”A good start”The approach builds on RRPS’s years-long relationship with The Kennedy Center’s arts integration programming, Schmidt said. But it was only more recently, after school district officials toured Denver-area schools, that Schmidt and his team went before the board of education to request financial support for arts integration.

“We thought Acting Right would be a good start to the arts integration work because it lays the foundation, teaching kids how to behave when ... they’re doing that work up out of their seats,” Schmidt said.

This arts integration programming, he added, will also help RRPS address longstanding student behavior issues.

RRPS officials spent much of last school year introducing stakeholders to the concept of arts integration before even applying it in the classroom, Schmidt said. The next several years will include teachers implementing the Acting Right program and Reading Art, another Focus 5 program in which students will analyze and discuss the artistic components of pieces of art together as they learn different subjects, such as social studies.

Schmidt said it remains to be seen whether arts integration will last beyond the four-year commitment, but “we think this is going to be successful.”

Aside from achieving student outcomes, RRPS aims to have every teacher from Enchanted Hills and Sandia Vista take an arts integration workshop and online modules, Schmidt said.