Last year, Central Elementary School, Duncanville ISD’s Digital Media and Performing Arts elementary school, was chosen by The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to participate in the Changing Education Through the Performing Arts (CETA) Model Schools program.
So, what is “Changing Education Through the Performing Arts (CETA)”? What does it mean for the education of students, and what does it look like in action? Central faculty and staff got to see CETA in action when Kennedy Center educators came on campus to train teachers and educate students using the arts.
“We pair each school with a teaching artist based on their needs,” emphasized Sara Boyce, Manager and Facilitator of the CETA program. “A lot of times, we try to align with district initiatives, whether it is literacy or science, and we pair them with a teaching artist who specializes in that kind of work.” Boyce and her colleague came to Duncanville to work with Principal Ayanna Parker and the Central faculty.
This program is teacher-focused first. The aim is to teach educators a method of educating students in three main ways: Arts as Curriculum, Arts-Enhanced Curriculum, and Arts-Integrated Curriculum.
According to the Kennedy Center, each curriculum can aid teachers and schools in their approaches to educating students with the help and support of the arts. The program supports classroom teachers and arts specialists, ensuring access to resources and training for effective arts integration.
The program is broken up into three sections to teach teachers: Demonstration Teaching, Core Sessions, and Arts Coaching. Demonstration Teaching is when the teaching artist is in the classroom with the students, teaching them using the CETA method while participating teachers observe. Teachers are pulled from their classes to watch the method in action at various grade levels.
After the school day ends, the Core Session takes place, which is a professional development workshop led by a Kennedy Center teaching artist. Teachers participate in a professional learning course after school, where they learn arts integration strategies to use with their students. The curriculum, method, and philosophy are taught to educators, who then work with their colleagues. During Central’s sessions, the teaching artist demonstrated how to teach literacy and writing through songs, rhymes, and lyrics. Melodies and beats help students with syllables, memorization, encouragement, and boldness to read and write.
The final phase is Arts Coaching. Once teachers have seen the demonstration and have been taught the method, they now get to teach alongside their instructor. They create rhymes with students and clap along with syllable songs.
Historically, this program has been done only in Washington D.C. metro-area schools. For the 25th anniversary of the program, a decision was made to expand it to only five select Title I schools across the nation. With the aid of extra grant funding from the Department of Education, the program was able to expand to Duncanville.
How was Central chosen to be among a handful of schools nationwide? Tenacity! Even though the program has been solely for the D.C. Metro area, there is an annual national conference open to everyone. Central’s tenacious principal attended these conferences yearly, knowing that her teachers could expand their knowledge and, in turn, expand the minds of their students.
“We’ve heard over and over again [from Parker], ‘I’m trying to make an arts-integration school. How can I do this? What resources do you have?’” explains Boyce. “So we’ve always had a lot of interest, and we finally have the time and resources [to expand].” Once the decision was made to open the program up nationally, the application was opened to a select group of people, with conference attendees being part of that select group. Principal Parker advocated for her school, even securing district-level support in the selection process.
There is a reason Principal Parker’s students will benefit from incorporating the arts into their curriculum. “Participating in this program will significantly benefit our students. By integrating the arts into their education, we can enhance their engagement, critical thinking, and overall academic performance by making learning more dynamic and accessible, explains Principal Parker.
According to studies done by George Mason University (GMU), the CETA method of teaching has been found to positively influence student engagement and create a more enhanced and connected learning experience for children. In 2005, third-grade CETA students in Virginia showed significant improvements in standardized scores in English and History over four years (Kruger, 2005). Students who are already in choir or taking piano lessons during their school day can only benefit from learning to read and write through rhythm, rhymes, and lyrics.
This visit from the Kennedy Center is just the start of the learning process for teachers. Teachers who attend the summer conference return and present to colleagues. Over time, Central students will be creating dance sequences, dramatizations, songs, poems, and more to communicate their learning and understanding, becoming masterful readers along the way.