Hello

Hi

Where are you 

Here 

When 

Now

If these unpunctuated lines end with a period, people may speak in a monotone, matter-of-factly, or even sarcastically. If the same lines end with an exclamation point, the words would be spoken more excitedly. Punctuated with a question mark, the speaker may speak with an upward lilt in their voice. 

Even though the words are the same,  the speaker talks and acts slightly differently, depending on the punctuation. 

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ARTS EDUCATION IN OREGON’S CLASSROOMS: A Special Series

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This is one lesson that Eric Braman, a Springfield-based writer, performer, and teaching artist hopes to impart to any fourth grader who watches the 60-minute video they made teaching a lesson about punctuation and performance. 

Braman’s lesson uses short, unpunctuated scenes about six lines long, with one to three words in each line, like the example above.  

The lesson, designed for 9-10 year olds, asks students to read the entire scene with each line ending with periods, then question marks, and finally with exclamation points. Students decide which punctuation marks they want to use in a short skit they then act out. 

Braman designed the lesson to teach students about the effects punctuation has on language, as well as how to convey that meaning and emotion in theatrical performance. “They have to think, ‘how do I embody a punctuation?’” Braman said. 

(It sneaks in lessons about grammar and usage, too). 

Braman, a teaching artist who frequently holds writing and performance classes in public schools, would normally teach such a class in person. But Braman recorded the lesson in their home. They also designed a lesson plan and slideshow to help elementary school teachers who may teach the  lesson without ever meeting or speaking with Braman. 

The lesson on punctuation and performance is one of 96 such videos that make up a bold and ambitious program that educators, artists, and the Oregon Department of Education hope will provide arts education to Oregon elementary students in schools with no art classes: the Arts, Care & Connection program. 

A new, statewide initiative to teach the arts 

The Arts, Care & Connection program, which launched in February, is the Oregon Department of Education’s new, statewide initiative to increase access to arts education among Oregon’s elementary school students. 

It is a video-based program that provides asynchronous, virtual lessons in visual arts, dance, music, and theater. Designed for students in kindergarten through the fifth grade, there are lessons specific to each grade, all of which are available in English and Spanish.

The prerecorded video lessons were made by teaching artists – professional, independent artists who work with schools and school districts to teach art in Oregon classrooms. 

Each lesson, called a “module,” is 60 minutes long and includes warm up exercises, the actual lesson, and then leads students in reflection. The modules are accompanied by lesson plans and a slide show to help teachers prepare and teach the lesson. 

The lessons – available for download to all Oregon elementary schools on the Oregon Department of Education’s website – run the gamut: from simple drawing lessons and theatrical performances to learning how to be a professional clown. 

“It feels like Mr. Rogers is in your classroom, but instead with a quirky arts teacher,” said Lauren Suveges, a visual arts teacher in Florence who was part of an advisory committee that helped design the program. 

Arts, Care & Connection was created by Arts for Learning Northwest, a Portland-based arts education nonprofit formerly known as Young Audiences, which also operates the Right Brain Initiative. The nonprofit contracted with the 45 professional artists who created the video lessons. 

The program conforms to the Oregon Department of Education’s Core Art Standards, as well as the state’s new Transformative Social and Emotional Learning standards. 

The program arose out of research, undertaken by the Oregon Department of Education in 2021, which “identified significant systemic disparities” in the availability of arts education, especially for elementary students, students in rural parts of Oregon, and students from marginalized backgrounds. 

Reducing those disparities is one of many high hopes for the Arts, Care & Connection program, which was developed in less than two years and on a shoestring budget of $600,000. Its creators also hope the program will prepare students for middle- and high-school art classes, impart lessons related to social and emotional awareness, and be   a catalyst for increased arts education in Oregon’s schools. 

But whether teachers use the program is entirely voluntary. The Oregon Department of Education is not tracking which schools use the program and, while it holds great promise, it is unclear whether Arts, Care & Connection will have a meaningful impact. 

Repairing a broken arts education system  

Four subject areas make up arts education: visual arts — like painting and drawing — music, theater, and dance. 

Many of the sources interviewed for this story said that, ideally, every public school would offer classes in each discipline, taught by teachers specializing in that  art form. Teaching artists, like Braman, would teach in brief artist residencies to augment classroom instruction. 

Oregon is far from such an ideal. Since the 1990s, arts education in public schools has slowly been decimated. 

In 1990, Oregon voters passed Measure 5, a conservative tax measure that fundamentally changed how Oregon’s public schools are funded. Measure 5 caps the amount of property taxes local governments can collect to $15 per $1,000 of assessed value. Only one-third of that can be used to fund local school districts. 

In 1997, Measure 50 passed, limiting growth of a property’s assessed value to no more than 3% each year, further restricting the amount of property tax revenue. 

Prior to 1990, local property taxes accounted for nearly two-thirds of a local school district’s budget. Now, Oregon’s general fund pays roughly the same amount; according to the Oregon Community Foundation, the state has paid between 66 and 80 percent of public school’s budgets since 1990. 

The state allocates money to school districts using a funding formula based on, among other things, the number of enrolled students. When it comes to deciding how to spend that money, local school districts wield enormous power: the Oregon Department of Education does not mandate that school districts allocate funding for particular curriculum or programs, nor offer guidelines for how funds should be spent. 

Arts education faces at least two challenges under this model. Oregon’s general fund is largely generated from personal income taxes, lottery funds, and other taxes, which makes it volatile during periods of economic downturns and increased unemployment. 

When schools face budget cuts, the arts often are the first to face the chopping block. Compared to cutting English or math classes, the arts is often seen as ancillary, a trend that has increased as public education is increasingly evaluated by academic performance and standardized test scores. 

As art programs  have been cut, nonprofit organizations and individual artists have stepped in. The Oregon Community Foundation, which is the largest funder of arts programs in Oregon, identified at least 120 organizations that teach arts programming to K-12 students in a 2019 report on arts education. 

But in many schools, art classes are non-existent — a fact reinforced by research that led to creating the Arts, Care & Connection program. 

A $9.8 million grant from the federal Department of Education

The funding for the new program comes from a $9.8 million, five-year grant from the federal Department of Education, which was awarded to the Oregon Department of Education in October 2020. The grant is part of a national effort to strengthen well-rounded coursework in public education, especially in “STEAM” courses – science, technology, engineering, arts, and math classes. 

With the grant, the Oregon Department of Education created the Well-Rounded Access Program (WRAP), which focuses on creating and expanding art and STEAM-related curriculum in Oregon schools.  

WRAP staff spent the first two years conducting  research. A 2021 needs assessment set out to identify existing funding sources, arts education that currently exists, and any barriers to creating or expanding arts education. 

Published in January 2022, the needs assessment shows a fragmented and inequitable landscape regarding Oregon’s public school students’ access to art classes. 

Students in rural Oregon have “significantly less access” to art courses: 45% of elementary students attend schools that do not offer any art classes. “The largest gaps that we identified in access to arts learning were at the elementary level,” Shannon Johnson, the Oregon Department of Education’s arts education specialist, said. 

Johnson’s position is paid for by the grant from the federal Department of Education. Prior to their hiring, the Oregon Department of Education did not have a dedicated staff person who oversaw and advocated for arts education in the state, another factor sources say has contributed to the decline of arts education in Oregon.  

That is markedly different from students living in more densely populated communities. For example, 20% of elementary students living in cities attend schools without arts programs; in suburban communities, that number drops to 10%. 

By the time students enter middle and high school, the numbers are significantly different: over 97% of students attend schools that offer art courses. 

“I think a lot of us grew up with access to arts education that we assume that students are still getting today,” said Lauren Jost, the executive director of Arts for Learning NW. “And it just isn’t the case.” 

Barriers identified by the assessment include the cost of course materials, limited staff capacity, conflicts in course scheduling, and “staff bias and gatekeeping,” including requirements to pass prerequisite courses or  discouragement from enrolling in arts classes. 

Public school teachers are no longer required to learn art for their teaching certification. Briana Linden, an arts educator, consultant, former program director of Arts for Learning NW, and the project lead for the Arts, Care & Connection program, said that teachers and school administrators can feel “very anxious” because the arts “are so foreign to them.”  

Linden and others spoke of “art scars” — memories and experiences people have of creating art and being met with harsh judgement. “Your drawing looked terrible. You did something on stage and you were laughed off,” Linden said. “We all have art scars.” 

In 2023, WRAP announced a grant of up to $600,000 to be awarded to an organization to design “a series of arts courses” in dance, music, theater, and the visual arts. 

The courses would be designed specifically for elementary students in schools with little or no arts classes. “While the courses are not attempting to provide a full, comprehensive arts learning program,” the request’s requirements read, “they aim to provide schools with a stepping stone toward building a standards-aligned arts program.”

Partnering with arts organizations and teaching artists

When Briana Linden looked at the RFP, she was astonished. “This is literally everything that I believe in – marriage of arts with well-rounded coursework and social and emotional learning.”

The deadline to submit a proposal, she remembered, “was in a couple weeks.” She, Jost, and another arts consultant met and spent half a day talking. What if, Linden wondered, “we built on what is happening in Oregon?” 

As Oregon schools have cut arts programs, nonprofits and individual teaching artists have become the de-facto arts educators in many Oregon communities. 

One example is Art Center East, a La Grande nonprofit that  provides arts education to K-8 students through its Artists in Rural Schools program. The program places teaching artists in classrooms to be an “artist in residence,” teaching classes and workshops that last anywhere from one day, to a week, to several weeks, or maybe all school year. 

On average, Art Center East provides a total of 35-40 weeks per year of arts instruction in public schools in 10 eastern Oregon counties. 

Last fall, the Sitka Center for the Arts and Ecology announced a dramatic expansion of its arts education program. Now called the K-8 Create program, the nonprofit provides arts education to more than 5,000 students in 17 schools on the coast from Astoria to Waldport. 

“We do have this really rich landscape of teaching artists and arts education organizations that have stepped in to fill some of the gaps,” said ODE’s Johnson. 

When applying for the WRAP grant, “we wanted to propose something that would be really rooted in the Oregon arts community,” Jost said. 

It had to be easy for teachers to adopt and use. “If you’re a teacher who has very limited time during the day, we want something that’s extremely accessible that they can just  click through and use,” Jost added. 

Arts for Learning NW’s application for the grant proposed creating the Arts, Care & Connection program. The WRAP grant was awarded to Arts for Learning NW in 2023. The organization formed  advisory and  design committees made up of teaching artists, teachers, and school and arts administrators. The two committees advised in content development, helped identify teaching artists who could contribute, and mentored teaching artists as they created a virtual version of their craft.  

They were tasked with a question many of them had never thought about before: how do you teach art virtually and asynchronously? 

“How do I make sure that we’re not asking [teaching artists] to adapt so far that the core of their teaching is changed, but we’re still able to meet the criteria?” Linden asked. 

Some teaching artists who were approached to contribute to the Arts, Care & Connection program eventually declined to participate. In most Native American, as well as African cultures, many art forms, including storytelling and dance, are interactive and rely on body language. “There’s no way to translate that” to a virtual format, some artists told Linden. 

But, all told, the Arts, Care & Connection program represents Oregon’s diversity. Teaching artists from every part of the state – the coast, Central Oregon, Pendleton, Southern Oregon, the Portland metro area – made videos for the program. 

“Students have an opportunity to see people from all different cultures, races, backgrounds, and regional areas,” Linden said. For kids from those backgrounds, the program “gives them an authentic opportunity to connect with people in their communities.” 

The lessons also had to be accessible to disabled students and students who do not speak English as a first language. The teaching artists also would not be in the classroom during the instruction, either to answer student’s questions or provide support to teachers, so their lesson plans had to be thorough and flexible enough that teachers could adapt the lesson to fit the needs of their specific classrooms.  

Braman thought about all this when designing their lesson on punctuation. Teachers can evolve the lesson “into continued exploration,” they said, by asking students to write scenes on a particular topic or theme, or ask students to act out a scene written by other students. 

Nonverbal students can communicate punctuation’s effect on language through physical expression. Punctuation is built into sign language, so hearing-impaired students can participate. Braman pointed out that the scenes use simple language. Students who speak English as a second language can translate the words into their native language, or act out the scene in a combination of their native language and English. “It can be a creative choice,” Braman said. 

Piloting the program

Arts for Learning NW piloted the first modules during the 2023-2024 school year, working with the Hillsboro, Parkrose, and Hood River school districts. Two Hillsboro schools participated in the pilot program and  15 out 53 elementary school teachers in Parkrose used at least one lesson. (The Hood River School District did not respond to a request for comment).

In feedback from teachers, Jost said one of the most common comments was “‘this video was too long. My kids lost interest.’” 

“This is the TikTok generation,” Jost said. The challenge  became balancing the need for brevity while keeping the lessons engaging and educational. 

“I think the challenge is breaking it down to something that’s still meaningful and gives the student the experience of completing something but doesn’t also overtax them and set them up for disappointment,” said Jen Hernandez, a line illustrator, Corvallis-based teaching artist, and an early member of the Arts, Care & Connection team.

The feedback reinforced the impact the program could potentially have. “If any video was longer than five minutes, students had reactions that were dysregulated and evidence of trauma from the pandemic,” added Hernandez.  

That made the social and emotional learning lessons embedded into the Arts, Care & Connection program all the more paramount. 

Aligning with Oregon’s new social and emotional learning standards

At the same time Arts for Learning NW was developing the Arts, Care & Connection program, another important educational reform was underway: creating Oregon’s Transformative Social and Emotional Learning Standards. 

The Social and Emotional Learning Standards (SEL) is a new set of standards all Oregon public schools are required to follow in an effort to increase the social and emotional health of Oregon’s K-12 students. 

“Social and emotional learning” is a broad concept referring to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes people need to develop emotional maturity. That includes developing a healthy identity and attitude toward oneself, the ability to identify and manage one’s emotions, feel and show empathy toward other people, collaborate and engage in teamwork, and be part of healthy relationships. 

Creating the SEL standards for K-12 students was mandated by legislation passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2021. The State Board of Education adopted the standards and framework in 2023. Schools were required to integrate SEL standards beginning on July 1, 2024, making this the first academic school year the standards are integrated into school curriculum.

There are five standards: creating self-awareness and identity; possessing self-management and agency; social awareness and belonging; relationship skills and collaborative problem-solving, and responsible decision making and curiosity. 

The hope is that students’ academic performance, mental health and well-being will improve, schools will be safer, graduation rates and enrollment in post-secondary schools will increase, and teachers’ well-being will also improve. 

Concern for student’s emotional health arose from the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as systemic, societal challenges children and teenagers face. 

The enormous increases in rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions among schoolchildren is considered a mental health crisis, according to the National Education Association. That is due to numerous factors, including the increase of gun violence and school shootings, racism, and discrimination toward LGBTQ+ youth. 

Smartphones and access to social media affect student’s attention spans and self-esteem. Phones are also used to make threats, bully, sexually harass, and instigate fights.

Students’ academic performances are affected by those issues and have been compounded by the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and remote learning. According to a 2024 report by the Ann E. Casey Foundation, remote learning led students to become “increasingly isolated, spending more time on devices,” causing increased anxiety, depression, and stress. 

In Oregon, student’s academic performance in reading and math is two to three times worse than the national average, according to the 2024 Education Recovery Scorecard, a study conducted by Harvard and Stanford University researchers to evaluate state efforts to recover academic learning losses. (Oregon did not participate in the most recent study, released last month, because the state did not meet federal guidelines regarding  the percentage of students taking state exams). 

In addition, regular school attendance is nowhere near pre-pandemic levels: during the 2023-2024 school year, 65.7% of students missed less than ten percent of the school year. The attendance level during the 2018-2019 school year was 80.7%.

Numerous people interviewed for this story said that social and emotional learning and arts education are inextricably connected. 

Katie Gillard, an arts teacher at Beaverton High School and the president of the Oregon Art Educators Association, emphatically believes that “if there is anything that is going to  help with social and emotional learning, it’s arts education.” 

“Social and emotional learning is about learning to live within society and understand yourself. That is what the arts are the best at doing,” Gillard continued. “The arts reflect the world, society and human existence. One of the things art does is help you understand different cultures, develop empathy and understanding, and, hopefully, respect for diversity.”

Each arts discipline teaches different aspects of social and emotional learning. Band students  work together as a team and learn collaboration. Theater and dance require self-expression and performance. Drawing, painting, sculpture, and other visual arts teach visual communication. 

All art disciplines  help students develop problem solving skills, learn how to take risks, manage their time, and learn to express themselves “in healthy ways,” Gillard said. 

Drafts of the SEL standards were shared with Arts for Learning NW, so the Arts, Care & Connection program could incorporate those standards in time for the program’s launch. Arts for Learning NW’s Jost said integrating SEL standards into the curriculum was a no-brainer. 

“All of us in the arts have always been like, ‘yeah, we can boost reading scores,’” she said. 

Participation in the arts improves academic performance, and social and emotional skills

Countless studies, conducted over decades, have shown learning art, and engaging in arts practice – drawing, playing a musical instrument, molding clay, dancing, theater – improve academic performance. 

Students’ test scores and grades in all subjects are higher, as are attendance and graduation rates. Adults who took art during their school years are more likely to be civically engaged. Arts education improves and strengthens skills ranging from critical thinking and patience to increased tolerance, empathy, creativity, and the ability to collaborate with others. 

“A lot of this work in social and emotional learning is something we’ve always done,” said Michelle Fujii, a taiko drum artist and co-founder of Unit Souzou, a Portland-based taiko ensemble. Fujii created some of the first modules for the Arts, Care & Connection program and mentored other teaching artists. 

In one, designed for kindergartners, students compose a taiko rhythm. The lesson, she hopes, will help students “learn their own artistic voice” and illustrate “how students could get their bodies into” a piece of music, whether that is dancing or tapping the rhythm. 

As Fujii designed the lesson, she had Oregon’s SEL standard on self-management and agency at the forefront of her mind. “Self-management is about that idea of being able to name your feelings,” Fujii said, which children begin learning to do in kindergarten. 

As students compose and perform music – especially something as physical as drumming – Fujii said awareness of, and managing, one’s emotions and body are essential. 

“It’s not this banging chaos,” she said. “We don’t get wild on the drums.”

Not all kindergarten classrooms have a drum, let alone enough drums for an entire classroom to participate in Fujii’s lesson. 

But maybe a classroom has buckets, tissue boxes, or Tupperware containers, Jost said. “Particularly in music and visual arts, we found that we cannot assume that these (lessons) will be presented in classrooms that have special equipment,” Jost said. 

Hernandez’s lessons teach line drawing and can be done with printer paper and ballpoint pens. She tried “to create the most universal design” for her lessons. 

Engaging schools and teachers

With the lessons of the Arts, Care & Connection program newly available via download on the Oregon Department of Education’s website, Arts for Learning NW is engaging in an extensive recruitment and communications effort. 

Staff are reaching out to school counselors, as well as individual teachers and administrators. Newsletters from the Oregon Department of Education have advertised the Arts, Care & Connection program for months, as well as the numerous resources available to teachers that Jost and others hope will make adoption of the Arts, Care & Connection program enticing. 

 “These lessons are built to be accessible for any educator, no matter their background or experience with the arts,” Johnson, ODE’s arts education specialist, said.

“Teachers feel so pressed for time,” Lauren Suveges, the visual arts teacher in Florence and member of the Arts, Care & Connection’s advisory committee said. “They may want to offer arts education opportunities, but don’t have time to develop them.” 

A completely developed lesson and lesson plan, already vetted, that meets state standards and is likely to be “inspirational for kids,” takes pressure off teachers, Suveges said. 

Suveges hopes the Arts, Care & Connection program is used in every elementary school that does not have an arts teacher. “I am in full support of it,” Suveges said. “My dream would be that every school would have a visual arts educator at all levels.” 

Could the Arts, Care & Connection program, or another, even more robust virtual program, replace art classes offered year round in school? Jost, Linden, and others were emphatic that the program does not, and should not, replace sequential arts education ––ongoing instruction in arts education offered over a continuous period of time. 

“It does not, in any way, replace sequential arts education with a certified teacher,” Jost said. “It does not even replace a teaching artist residency in person.”

“This is not meant to be the solution to arts education in public schools,” Linden said. 

“This will hopefully build relationships between classroom teachers and teaching artists and starts building and scaffolding teachers’ confidence in offering arts,” Johnson said. “They really are meant to be a building block.”

The Arts, Care & Connection program is a “first taste,” Jost said. “Maybe this video can be that moment where you see a student try something and light up.”

In that way, the program may prove to be a gateway drug of sorts. “My hope is that it could help teachers and schools see how easy it is to have the arts,” Linden said, and “once a teacher starts seeing what’s possible,” work with school administrators to expand arts curriculum. 

But how successful will it be? Whether Oregon teachers know about the program will be entirely the result of recruitment efforts, newsletters, word of mouth, and social media campaigns. 

The funding for Johnson’s position at the Oregon Department of Education will end at the end of this year, when the federal grant runs out. It is not clear if their position will be funded in another way, meaning that the Oregon Department of Education could, once again, be without a staff person to oversee arts education. 

Schools are not required to use the program. “If the (Oregon) Department of Education actually required it for elementary schools, it would have some teeth,” Gillard, the president of the association of Oregon’s art-certified teachers, said. “It would ensure that every school and every school district had to implement it.” 

Gillard hopes the Department of Education will use any data or information it gathers to “figure out a more sustainable way to provide access for all kids.” 

“It is so crucial for our kids to have these outlets at school,” Suveges agrees. “And if we don’t, I worry for them, and for their place to feel heard, seen, and express themselves. It’s hugely important to our kiddos. I want that access all over the state.”