Open Call: Pandemic demanded creativity in arts education programming
A child improves her math skills by beating steadily on a drum made with her own hands.
A seventh grader uses the camera on his cellphone to make an artistic connection with ecology.
A group of children improve their literacy through dramatic tableaus and poetry, while others explore history and culture through visual arts and dance.
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For 39 years, DiAE has provided tens of thousands of children and educators throughout the state with immersive on-site programs that use the arts to engage students, foster a love of learning, promote cultural awareness and respect, and enhance creativity, collaboration and critical thinking across all academic areas.
Our programs have always relied on the energetic, in-person interaction of our teaching artists (TAs) with students and educators. Our TAs — practicing professionals in their fields from across the state — bring arts-oriented, innovative learning to children of all ages from infants to high schoolers.
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Because our approach has always required active participation, the COVID pandemic that closed most Delaware schools posed a significant challenge for us as we attempted to deliver our three main programs:
1. Delaware Wolf Trap (DWT) engages children in music, dance and imaginative play to develop emerging math and literacy skills in our earliest learners from 3 months to 5 years old. The program pairs a Wolf Trap teaching artist with an early childhood educator to ensure that ongoing arts-influenced teaching techniques can continue after the artist leaves. DiAE is one of 23 affiliates of the Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, based in Vienna, Virginia. We are the only provider of this service in the state of Delaware.
2. In-school Residency Program (K-12). DiAE brings professional dance, music, theater and visual arts teaching artists into Delaware public, private and charter schools. Each residency explores an art form that culminates in a final performance or work of art. TAs collaborate with teachers to customize a series of in-class workshops that address Delaware Common Core State Standards and Delaware Standards for Visual and Performing Arts.
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3. Professional Development workshops provide opportunities for teachers to develop skills in arts integration and to implement state standards with innovative hands-on experiences led by our professional teaching artists.
How could we fulfill our mission when in-person contact was difficult or impossible? In response, our teaching artists and staff pooled their collective creativity to develop strategies that allowed us to reach students and teachers with distant — but still interactive — programs.
For example, DiAE designed, created and distributed 3,000 Family Activity Art Kits with support from state agencies, private foundations and arts and cultural institutions.
We crafted new online activity videos that reached students and teachers throughout Delaware.
Through partnerships with the Community Education Building and Brandywine School District we have offered summer programming for students.
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We also have joined with the Department of Education and Delaware Division of the Arts to lead workshops at an upcoming Racial Justice and the Arts conference.
By shifting focus during the worst of the pandemic to online and in-home deliverables, DiAE was able to maintain close contact with students and teachers. Government support along with corporate and foundation funding and individual donations kept DiAE vital and relevant during the days of COVID closures.
The school doors will open once again in a few weeks, and our TAs are eager and ready to resume their work with students and teachers, including additional residencies in six elementary schools that have not had the opportunity to participate in our programs due to financial or geographic constraints. Their participation is made possible by the Delaware Division of the Arts, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
At the Delaware Institute for the Arts in Education our goal is not to compel a child to become an artist. Rather, our mission is to encourage every student to think like an artist, to bring the creativity inherent in the arts to learning and problem-solving and to implement our motto: “Inspiring the Artist in Every Student.”
For more information about the Delaware Institute for the Arts, please visit our website at www.diae.org.
Nanci Hersh is executive director of the Delaware Institute for the Arts in Education.