ABSTRACT
Because she teaches all the sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade social studies in this small arts magnet school, Jeanette sees her students develop over time. She worries, too, about what will happen to them when they leave this school. “Some teachers are afraid to integrate the arts,” Jeanette says. “They feel that they’ll have more behavior problems. I think that the reverse is true, but I have trouble convincing people of that. They think they can’t let children create a piece of music or a piece of art-that they’ll miss some content because the arts are taking up their time. In reality, they are probably not going to be so frustrated in their learning. They see the whole picture. In other words, they may learn separate parts, but I want them to see how it fits in the whole. We may relate a concept from early in the year-early African and Indian slavery-and then that fits in with the picture of what happened in the Civil War, and then we might talk about what happens with a racial situation here.”
