By NEIL ZOLOT
WAKEFIELD – Despite the pandemic, the School Department Visual and Performing Arts staff rewrote its own curriculum in the past two years.
“The teachers wrote the curriculum,” Visual and Performing Arts Director Tom Bankert told the School Committee at their meeting Tuesday, Feb. 28. “The pros of this are great. It was a lot of work, but gives our teachers freedom to best serve the students. It also allows us to try things and present the same curriculum in a different way.”
The process started in 2019, after earlier activities like the Music Department giving feedback to authorities on the state Guiding Principles for Effective Arts Education in 2018. In June 2022, the new curriculum was completed. (The state devised its first set of arts standards in 1995, which were revised in 1999 with separate standards for Dance, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts. In 2014 National Core Arts Standards were updated, with the state beginning its own process of developing new standards in 2017.)
Dolbeare and Greenwood Schools Art teacher Amy Drago described the curriculum as a “brainstorming document. We wanted to map different teaching styles and the different concepts and techniques we’re trying to instill.”
The curriculum maps contain sections for desired results, assessment rubrics, learning plans and reflections, the last of which is for teachers to give their opinions on the success of their practices or lack thereof. “We do our own thing in our classrooms,” High School Music teacher and Choral Director Ana Morel pointed out. “We’re doing a lot of the same things, just in different ways.”
“Teachers can look at the section and say what worked and what didn’t,” Bankert explained. “That option to reflect in the moment keeps this a living document.”
He also told the School Committee how the staff taught arts and performing arts remotely and to small groups of students multiple times during hybrid learning during the pandemic, perhaps harder than teaching in other subjects because it involves hands-on work and performing. “Almost everything we do is performance related,” Morel explained.
“Teachers deserve credit for what they had to do,” Bankert said. “There was a complete pivot in everything teachers did.”
Time lost during the pandemic is still being felt. “Are we doing everything on the map?” Morel asked rhetorically. “We’re not, but we’ll get there. We’re not where we used to be. We’re still recovering. Across the board students are beginning again.”
Bankert also said new scheduling and varying class sizes, particularly at Galvin Middle School, have been challenging.
“There are different experiences for students and teachers based on class sizes,” he said, pointing out chorus classes at Galvin can be as low as 30 or as high as 70.
Budget issues are perennial concerns. Bankert said new instruments and sheet music are needed every year. “We serve every student K-8 and 75 percent of High School students and what we do is consumable,” he said. “It’s something to think about when we’re talking about instituting new classes.”
This dovetailed with Superintendent Doug Lyons’ announcement that there will be a Fiscal 2024 budget presentation at the School Committee meeting March 14, a presentation to the Finance Committee March 16 and a public hearing and vote at the School Committee meeting March 28, followed by an additional presentation to the Finance Committee and Town Council.
Bankert pointed to the collaborative process of formulating the curriculum as a success, mostly done in Professional Development sessions. “I’d match the staff against any in the state,” he said.
“The program that’s come out of your department is exemplary,” School Committee member Stephen Ingalls reacted. As we come out of the pandemic and talk about social and emotional learning, arts play a big part in that.”
Member Mike Boudreau praised the Visual and Performing Arts Dept. for “the student talent given the size of the school system” and for having to rework the curriculum every year.
“You knocked it out of the park,” School Committee chair Tom Markham told Bankert. “What you had to do, you did extraordinarily well. That was known, shared and felt and proudly discussed around town. What you did was performance art in and of itself. I’d match our arts staff against any in the state or country.”
He added his own children enjoyed their time participating in arts classes and activities.
Lyons praised Bankert’s department for its “culture of excellence. The people create that. It’s a pretty impressive group. You have a lot to be proud of.”