by Roy Gardner

For the seventh year in a row, the Vermont Alliance for Arts Education held its Fall Education Conference on Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf Campus in Ripton, Vermont. During the two-day conference on Sept. 23-24, arts/humanities teachers and professors, mostly from Vermont, took a break from their hectic first full month of school to take part in an atmosphere of fostering and celebrating learning through the arts.

Amidst the idyllic early autumnal setting of central Vermont, teachers had the opportunity to attend a variety of morning and afternoon hands-on art, music, drama, and literary workshops. 

Workshop topics ranged from 21st century classroom weaving to digital video and even to a workshop on braiding as a marriage of multiculturalism and math. This overview, however, merely scratches the surface of the eclectic array of workshops offered in order to promote dialogue and spark the imagination of teachers toward how to expand and integrate new lesson plans and teaching methods into their classrooms.

As usual, the VAAE gave the floor to a keynote speaker during the first day of the conference. This year’s speaker, the Principal of William H. Batcheller Elementary School in Winchester, CT, Heath Hendershot, discussed his work with Higher Order Thinking (HOT) Schools along with the philosophies of the program. 

Before Hendershot took the stage, however, the Yoh Theatre Players’ SpeakChorus—a 10 student cappella group that spouts spoken word poetry—from Woodstock Union High School served as the warm-up act. Their performance, entitled: “The Art of Me,” combines quotes from notable scientists, authors, philosophers and scientists with original lyrics that emphasize the arts as a foundation for advancement and original thinking. The piece serves almost as a plea from students to remind their parent’s generation that an arts education encourages individual growth and helps students avoid the blandness of conformity.

Ringing true to the tenets of nearly the entire audience, the SpeakChorus’ message proved a relevant lead into Hendershot’s speech. A former music instructor, this third year principal believes firmly in the principal components of the HOT Schools program. “We must develop a child-centered school culture that is committed to discipline-based arts programs, arts integration, democratic practice and academic excellence,” he explained. 

Co-founded in 1994 by Dr. Plato Karafelis (with whom Hendershot worked closely), the Higher Order Thinking Schools program is supported by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and currently functions in 25 Connecticut schools. The program works to create a school culture that focuses on the needs of an individual student and gives each student the chance to share their accomplishments with the school community. Hendershot described such an opportunity transpiring in the form of a “town meeting” held every Friday. Along with the chance to exhibit their painting, poetry, stories, etc., students play a large role in the development and execution of these meetings.

All of this plays into the HOT School scheme of promoting skills not often developed in a traditional classroom setting. “How many students are connecting what they’re doing to the real world?” asked Hendershot. He insisted that the town meetings push the school to operate like a “micro-society” where students “learn to recognize real-world pressures. This is an opportunity to integrate skills in a meaningful and purposeful way.” Hendershot insisted that such meetings are more than celebrations, that they give meaning to classroom learning as well as “training for skills important later in life.” 

The second part of Hendershot’s address touched upon the concepts and perspectives on assessment in the arts—particularly in the context of new standardized academic assessment outlined in the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind legislation. He emphasized the need to maintain creativity in learning, stressing that it would require teachers to step up and be leaders in order to endure the many pressures that public schools now face. 

Academic pressures, educational standards and potential grave consequences associated with the current political climate were not far from the mind of any teacher attending the conference. A number of workshops (including one lead by Hendershot) focused on ways to approach objective assessment of student learning in the arts. Workshops, such as Wendy Cohen’s “Assessment is not a Dirty Word!” provided arts educators with an opportunity to become familiar with the ongoing work in Grade Cluster Expectations and Arts Assessments being developed to fulfill the requirements of recent national and Vermont legislation. 

Ken Leslie, a professor of fine arts at Johnson State College, disagrees with No Child Left Behind’s insistence that art must “argue its place in curriculum” but said that “the arts do have to come up with some type of assessment. Clearly, it focuses us to think: what are the curriculum goals?”

A professor for 20 years, this is the sixth year that Leslie has come to the VAAE conference. And despite such looming fears in the education world, Leslie remarked on the notably positive attitude that surfaced during the entire two days. “This one (conference) is unusually high spirited. Many people know each other and the new people provide enthusiasm,” he commented. 

Above all, the conference provides an opportunity for teachers to meet, make connections, discuss, and consult with their peers and colleagues about issues that center on teaching art in the United States and other parts of the world.

Such a communal gathering is more than appreciated in a state like Vermont where small schools are often the norm. Whitney Lamy, an art teacher in grades K to 6, noted that a conference such as this “prevents the isolation that comes from being one teacher in a school system.”

Poultney High School art teacher, Hannah Colley finds coming here is more than worth the trouble of making lesson plans for a substitute teacher. “You actually get a chance to do artwork yourself!