Adolescents tend to flourish when their schools give them meaningful opportunities to study and create art that matters to them. 

 

In 2010, the researchers Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine set out to locate public high schools (especially schools that serve low-income communities) that have succeeded not just in boosting test scores but in helping students flourish in a whole range of ways. Young people, they argue, need opportunities to master challenging skills and content; define and strengthen their identity, both as individuals and members of a community; and express their own creativity, rather than just trying to complete requirements or satisfy teachers.  

Over the course of their research — which included hundreds of observations and interviews at 30 schools across the country — Mehta and Fine came to realize that such “deeper learning” is hard to find. Even in schools that were explicitly committed to providing a powerful education along these lines, most of the instruction they saw was uninspiring and unremarkable.  

At every school they visited, however, they did see at least a few examples of the sort of rich, engaging instruction they were looking for. Sometimes they observed it in math, English, history, or science classes. But as they explain in their book In Search of Deeper Learning (2019), they saw it most often in places that people tend to think of as peripheral to the core curriculum, such as the soccer field, the carpentry shop, or a rehearsal of the school play. Apparently, the “extra-curriculum” is the most promising place to find young people who are passionately involved in what they’re doing, define that activity as an important part of their life, and treat it as an opportunity to take creative risks. That’s where many students embrace hard work and find joy in doing it.  

The million-dollar question, as Mehta and Fine ask at the end of their book, is what it will take to provide these kinds of learning opportunities schoolwide, not just in a handful of classes and extracurricular programs? “What would such schools look like,” they wonder, “and how might they be organized?” 

It’s a great question. But it strikes me as odd that in their concluding chapter, where they consider ways to design “deeper schools,” Mehta and Fine say little about the many public high schools that have, in fact, been intentional about integrating activities that are personally, collectively, and psychologically meaningful — such as artistic performances, community service partnerships, and internships and apprenticeships — into the traditional academic curriculum. For example, many of the models that came out of the School-to-Work movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as Career Academies and High Schools that Work, were specifically designed around contemporary insights into adolescent development, including attention to the themes that Mehta and Fine highlight: meeting students’ needs related to mastery, identity, and creativity. 

My own experience, too, includes working in schools that are deeply immersed in creating the sorts of rigorous and joyful learning experiences that Mehta and Fine describe (Nathan, 2009, 2017). That was certainly true of my years at Fenway High School in Boston where my colleagues and I devoted significant time and resources to engaging students in open-ended exploration, creative expression, collaborative work, and projects that involved hands-on “making and doing.” We proved, over time, that our approach resulted in dramatic improvements in a range of academic, personal, and social outcomes for students. 

Further, as the founder and, for many years, headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy, the city’s first and only visual and performing arts high school, and currently as the executive director of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship, a nonprofit that supports arts-immersed education, I have spent many years working with schools and educators who understand that when passion projects — whether in the arts, robotics, or some other field — are brought from the periphery to the center of the curriculum, students become much more likely to take ownership of their learning, finding joy in the hard work of mastering and refining their skills. These kinds of school environments, I argue, can provide compelling answers to Mehta and Fine’s question: What would schoolwide deeper learning look like, and how might such a school be organized?  

Moving the arts from the periphery to the center 

Like most other arts-immersed schools, Boston Arts Academy (BAA) operates on the premise that if students are given meaningful opportunities to study and create art that matters to them, then they will be more likely to develop a strong sense of agency, motivation, and confidence in their ability to do work that can influence the world around them. However, BAA also differs in some ways from many other specialized high schools. There is no academic test for admission, for example, and both arts and academic courses emphasize service learning — in fact, all students write a senior-year grant proposal detailing plans to give back to the community.   

My colleagues and I at BAA came up with our own conceptual framework to help us assess and describe student learning and to help students keep track of their own academic and artistic development. Borrowing from the ideas of John Dewey (1923, 1938) — who wrote of both “the power to learn from experience” and the development of “habits of mind” — we designed our curriculum to promote four “Habits of the Graduate”: Refine, Invent, Connect, and Own. To refine academic or artistic work, students must be persistent, accepting of constructive criticism, and determined to improve. To invent, they must be open to new ideas and willing to collaborate with others in shaping them. To connect, they must consider how their work affects their audience. And to own their education, they must ask themselves, “Am I proud of the work I am doing? What do I need to be successful?”  

What would schoolwide deeper learning look like, and how might such a school be organized?  

It’s worth pointing out that these goals focus on more or less the same developmental needs that Mehta and Fine refer to as mastery, identity, and creativity. And I would argue that it doesn’t really matter which terminology we use or whether we specify four learning goals or three. No matter how we choose to slice up the pie, the point is that it’s not enough for young people to become competent in reading, math, and other core subjects. To flourish in school and life, they need to be fully engaged in subjects and activities that they enjoy, that matter to them, that they can get better at over time, that give them a sense of belonging, and that afford them some freedom to decide what they want to accomplish and how they want to accomplish it.  

Nor is there one right way to organize such a school — the important thing is to give serious thought to creating an organizational structure that makes sense, given what the school is trying to achieve. At BAA, for example, that means giving equal balance to arts and academics. Every student pursues an art major (music, dance, theatre, visual arts, or, since 2017, fashion design), while also taking a full complement of academic courses. Similarly, our mission led us to design a two-step application process for the 9th grade: BAA admits students based partly on an audition (giving preference to those who show potential to improve and master their chosen art) and partly on an assessment of their demonstrated passion for studying the arts in high school.   

Have these efforts actually resulted in a school where students regularly experience the kinds of deeper learning opportunities that are rarely seen in American high schools and which (where they do exist) tend to be found outside the core curriculum?  

To get a better sense of how young people experience everyday life at BAA, I recently conducted intensive interviews with 19 students. I wouldn’t claim this amounts to an impartial evaluation of the school, but I do think these conversations suggest just how different attending BAA is from the experience of going to a typical comprehensive high school. For example, listen to a few of the students’ voices: 

Edwin: An orchestral woodwind player during elementary school, Edwin is now a percussionist in BAA’s music department. He tells me, “Going from playing my woodwind instrument to percussion was me shedding a new layer of skin. I was no longer in a cocoon. I had a whole new way to talk and communicate. I loved the way I could be as a percussionist. I just felt freer.” Currently, he plays in a large jazz ensemble, a setting that suits him. “We may not know each other, but to play music together, we have to get along. I think that’s an important thing to practice. Music and getting along.” He also thinks cooperation and responsibility are part of music training. “And empathy,” he adds, “which in music is a way to listen.” Edwin sees a connection between passion and perseverance. “We come into rehearsal and if we can’t get into the music and really feel it, then we won’t play well. We have to always find that. Mr. R [his teacher] calls it ‘getting in the groove’ with the sound and the rhythm.” Edwin knows that he has to feel what the composer is trying to express. “I used my creativity by practicing a lot and making that piece [that we all learn together] my own. It’s not written by me, but I have to feel it and know it. We all do. Together.” Edwin also has another definition for creativity and making music. “You’re not given instructions. You figure it out on your own. But you have a process. And you have to make that music your own.”  

Destiny: Destiny recounts a time when she and two girlfriends choreographed a dance to a piece of orchestral music. “We had to make it our own and not like what anyone else had done.” She describes their initial disagreements. “We just had to fight it out — lots of arguments about which steps and choreography we would use.” Ultimately, they created a dance they were confident the audience would appreciate. When I ask her about the audience’s reaction, she smiles broadly. “There [was] lots of applause. People were really happy with us.” She says their disagreements actually created a better piece. “We each showed each other our ideas and then finally worked it all out.” She talks about not worrying about what other people thought. “We were just really into it.” Elliot Eisner (2002), a Stanford professor of art and education, argues that the arts provide unique opportunities to consider various solutions to problems and that judgment is a crucial part of creating. Destiny and her peers demonstrated the truth of Eisner’s words.  

Nathaniel: When asked what creativity means to him, Nathaniel, a horn player, says, “It may be too big to define.” Then, after a short pause, he tries a definition anyway: “It’s a lot of things combined to make something beautiful. I remember this one time we played outside of a library in Jamaica Plain [a neighborhood in Boston]. It was late summer, and lots of people were coming home from work or taking walks. Everyone stopped and watched us. I could tell they were excited by what we could do. We played well and we were just kids. We made them happy.” As we talk further, Nathaniel explains how music has shaped his adolescence. “Creativity allows you to figure out who you are as a person, how to be you. As an artist, or just anyone, you may see a lot of things that are creative, but that’s someone else’s work and someone’s definition of themselves. Me being creative, I get to figure out who I am as a person and a human being.” He says that many of his friends are struggling to figure out their identity. “They don’t have a way to express themselves. It’s just school and homework and maybe church or family stuff. There’s nothing that makes them really excited. Video games? I don’t think so,” Nathaniel says emphatically.  

Jenaya: Jenaya, a singer, tells me that, “If there was no art, everybody would be the same and nothing would be interesting; everything would be boring.” She adds, “music and other arts help you become who you will be.” She describes a project involving science and art. “We were studying climate change and we got to meet this artist. She used sculpture and music to talk about the climate and weather. It was so cool and then we got to try to do something like she had done.” (Jenaya is talking about Nathalie Miebach’s climate science work. Miebach does more than create artwork that responds to themes and threats of climate change; she creates sculptural and musical pieces that use codes and systems to model real data sets with visual and auditory patterns. The students were enthralled with her work and wanted to try to interpret data and then create sculptures to express that data.) “We got to be super creative. But we couldn’t make stuff up. Everything had to be on our data sheets and recorded in our graphs and then we worked together to figure out how to build a sculpture that showed what we had learned.” Jenaya talks about how she is continuing to learn new things and embrace her mistakes. “I go out of the box and explore; I get out of my comfort zone to learn new things and experience new and different opportunities. It’s something you have all your life, whether in your job at a hospital, or in music, acting, singing, or even when you are doing an essay in class. You talk about a specific topic, you have to be creative in analyzing. And not always worry about being right or wrong.” As she sees it, her artistic practices have taught her how to persevere. “I’ve had a lot of practice being creative. It’s not always fun. But it’s something you learn. I am always working on my craft.”  

My conversations with Edwin, Destiny, Nathaniel, and Jenaya are much like all the other conversations I’ve had with BAA students. There’s a certain kind of wisdom and self-awareness that seems quite common among these young people and which has much to do with the months and years they’ve immersed themselves in studying, practicing, and performing an art form that brings them joy. These students are still figuring out how to make their way in the world, and most have no idea whether they’ll ever be able to make a living from their art. But if you wander the halls of BAA and talk with students at random, you’ll be struck by how they carry themselves. Students who spend at least half the school day pursuing their passion for percussion or dance or singing or painting or fashion cannot help but have a strong sense of who they are, how far they’ve come, and what goals they’re pursuing. If they spend four years at a school like BAA, they can’t help but become more disciplined, more accomplished, and more comfortable taking risks. Like students at more typical high schools, they will be expected to complete a college-prep curriculum and master essential skills in the core subject areas. But they will also learn deeply in the sense that Mehta and Fine discuss, having meaningful opportunities to develop mastery, identity, and creativity. 

Moving the arts to the core 

As Elliot Eisner (2002) and others have argued, the point of teaching the arts is not to help students improve their performance in other subject areas — there’s little to no clear evidence that the study of music, dance, or other arts will lead to better test scores in math, English, or chemistry (Hetland & Winner, 2004; Schibuk, 2017). Rather, we teach the arts because they are a powerful means by which to interact with the world. And the more we practice and develop our artistic talents, the better we are able to craft, express, imagine, observe, persist, reflect, explore, and understand and enjoy the work of other artists — these are the eight “studio habits of mind” that Lois Hetland and other researchers have found to be commonly taught and learned in schools and programs with strong visual arts curricula (Heller, 2017; Hetland et al., 2013; Kisida & Bowen, 2019; Winner, Goldstein, & Vincent-Lancrin, 2013). 

After so many years of test-based accountability, I am more persuaded than ever that we need to move these artistic ways of knowing from the fringes of the campus to the center of the school day.

We can no longer afford to dichotomize between the “soft” and “hard” skills, nor to value one above the other. As Andreas Schleicher, coordinator of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), recently noted, “We talk about ‘soft skills’ often as social and emotional skills, and hard skills [being] about science, but it might be the opposite.” It’s not hard to envision a future, where most of the hard skills are automated. For young people, the “arts may become more important than maths” (Tyre, 2019). 

After so many years of test-based accountability, I am more persuaded than ever that we need to move these artistic ways of knowing from the fringes of the campus to the center of the school day — not to displace math, reading, history, or science, but as part of an expanded version of the “core curriculum.” After listening to the many young people I‘ve interviewed and worked with at BAA, I am hopeful that we’ll be able to create what Mehta and Fina call “deeper schools,” as long as we are willing to acknowledge the importance and value of giving students regular opportunities to immerse themselves in the rigorous and joyful work of making and doing something that matters to them.             

References  

Dewey, J. (1923). Democracy and education. New York, NY: Macmillan. 

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY: Macmillan. 

Eisner, E. (2002). Visions and versions of arts education. In The arts and the creation of mind (pp. 25-45). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 

Heller, R. (2017). On the goals and outcomes of arts education: An interview with Lois Hetland. Phi Delta Kappan, 98 (7), 15-20. 

Hetland, L., Winner, E., Veenema, S, & Sheridan, K.M. (2013). Studio thinking 2: The real benefits of visual arts education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. 

Hetland, L. & Winner, E. (2004). Cognitive transfer from arts education to non-arts outcomes: Research evidence and policy implications. In E.W. Eisner & M.D. Day (Eds.), Handbook of research and policy in art education (pp. 135-162). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 

Kisida, B. & Bowen, D.H. (2019). New evidence of the benefits of arts education. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.  

Mehta, J. & Fine S. (2019). In search of deeper learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Nathan, L. (2009). The hardest questions aren’t on the test: Lessons from an innovative urban school. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 

Nathan, L. (2017). When grit Isn’t enough. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 

Schibuk, E. (2017). Art integration as a lever for engagement in science class [Blog post]. Dorchester, MA: Center for Artistry and Scholarship.  

Tyre, P. (2019, June 13). How to survive in an AI world. The Boston Globe 

Winner, E., Goldstein, T., & Vincent-Lancrin, S. (2013). Art for art’s sake? The impact of arts education, educational research and innovation. Paris, France: OECD Publishing. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Linda F. Nathan

LINDA F. NATHAN is the co-director of Perrone Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership at Hale Education, Westwood, MA. Her most recent book is When Grit Isn’t Enough .