UCLA Ed&IS magazine Winter 2024

UCLA Ed&IS

The Benefits of Arts Education

Intrinsic value of the arts in K–12 learning

One of the objectives of TEP is to support novice teachers in acquiring the ‘knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to provide rigorous academic content and high-quality learning experiences to K–12 students.’ The Joint Music Program embodies that mission. Music Education students continue to hone their own knowledge of music while simultaneously learning to teach.

A MODEL OF RIGOROUS TEACHER PREPARATION: THE UCLA JOINT MUSIC EDUCATION PROGRAM

The only music education program in the UC system is a partnership between the UCLA Teacher Education Program and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

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ENGAGING K–12 AUDIENCES IN ARCHIVAL STUDIES AND MEMORY WORK

Thuy Vo Dang, assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Information Studies, discusses how an understanding of memory work and archives will enhance K–12 learning.

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Students don’t really understand the nuance and complexity of what archival studies is and what memory work really means … empowering your community to have a voice in history books and in narratives that we tell in public about ourselves, our families or communities.

Vietnamese men in a sampan on a canal near straw dwellings that house refugees from North Vietnam. 1956.

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Ed& IS

MAGAZINE OF THE UCLA SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND INFORMATION STUDIES

Embodying the principles of individual responsibility and social justice, an ethic of caring, and commitment to the communities we serve.

Message from the Dean

4 The Benefits of Arts Education

UCLA Lab School principal Georgia Lazo and UCLA Center for Community Schooling director Karen Hunter Quartz weigh in on the intrinsic value of arts in K–12 learning and how the arts help children see connections and think more deeply about different content areas in an interdisciplinary way.

10 A Model of Rigorous Teacher Preparation: The UCLA Joint Music Education Program

The only music education program in the UC system is a partnership between the UCLA Teacher Education Program and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

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The Art of Seeing Differently: Q&A with Maryanne Wolf

Maryanne Wolf, director of the UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, shares the ways that the arts reveal and develop the hidden strengths of students with dyslexia and other diverse learners.

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Reimagining Teaching/Learning Relations Alongside Improvisational and Ensemble Performers

Ananda Marin, a UCLA associate professor of education and the daughter of a jazz musician, studies the ways that artists improvise and how collaboration and community can transform education.

24 Can the Art of Improv Benefit English-Learner Students?

Educational Leadership Program dissertation by David Metz suggests improv’s play-based, spontaneous activities can reduce anxiety and increase engagement among newcomer English-language learner students.

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Access to High Quality Arts Education: A look at Prop. 28’s potential to offer sequential high-quality arts education to K–12 students in California

Lindsay Lindberg, K–12 dance instructor, consultant for dance and art teachers’ professional development, and doctoral candidate in the UCLA Department of Education, discusses the beneficial impacts of Prop. 28 on schools, educators, and students.

Engaging K–12 Audiences in Archival Studies and Memory Work

Thuy Vo Dang, assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Information Studies, discusses how an understanding of memory work and archives will enhance K–12 learning.

UCLA Lab School Arts Education

The arts have been a fundamental part of the curriculum of UCLA Lab School dating back decades.

MESSAGE FROM UCLA WASSERMAN DEAN TINA CHRISTIE

Ed&IS

MAGAZINE OF THE UCLA SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND INFORMATION STUDIES

WINTER 2024

Christina Christie, Ph.D.

UCLA Wasserman Dean & Professor of Education, UCLA School of Education and Information Studies

EDITOR

Leigh Kaufman Leveen Senior Director of Marketing and Communications

UCLA School of Education and Information Studies lleveen@support.ucla.edu

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Joanie Harmon Director of Communications UCLA School of Education and Information Studies harmon@gseis.ucla.edu

John McDonald Director, Sudikoff Family Institute jmcdonald@gseis.ucla.edu

DESIGN

Robin Weisz Design

© 2024, by The Regents of the University of California seis.ucla.edu

For children to fully develop, art needs to be infused into everything that we do. We stress the need to have art experiences for early childhood and early childhood development.

One of the most wonderful things about UCLA is the richness of academic life on campus, which includes 109 academic departments and more than 125 majors. And the School of Education and Information Studies, like all of UCLA’s departments, has partnerships and connections—formal and informal—across campus and, in fact, around the world.

This issue of the Ed&IS Magazine celebrates a body of work that focuses on the connections between education, information studies, and the arts. We highlight the important efforts of individuals within our Ed&IS community to move our understanding and practice around these connections forward.

In November 2022, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 28, The Arts and Music in Schools Initiative, which resulted in an annual allocation of about $1 billion of the state budget to increase equity and access around arts education in K–12 schools. It is an exciting time for researchers and practitioners who are involved in this work, and we are thrilled to share some of what they are doing with you.

We begin by spotlighting the role of arts education through interviews with the head of UCLA Lab School, Georgia Lazo, and teachers at UCLA Community School. Lazo, for example, discusses how, at UCLA Lab School, “for children to fully develop, art needs to be infused into everything that we do. We stress the need to have art experiences for early childhood and early childhood development.”

In two articles in this issue, we take a close look at the value of the arts for particular populations of students. First, Maryanne Wolf, director of the UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, describes the incredible value of arts education for neurodiverse learners and how one of the great strengths of dyslexia is an ability to see differently. We also hear from David Metz, an alumnus of UCLA’s Educational Leadership Program, whose research looks at the power of improvisational theater in helping newcomer English learners feel more comfortable and skilled with the language.

We share an interview with Lindsay Lindberg, a doctoral student in the UCLA Department of Education’s Urban Schooling division and president-elect of the California Dance Education Association. She offers wonderful insights into both the potential and challenges of Prop. 28, reminding us that this funding must be accompanied by training for educators in order to ensure the greatest impact.

And finally, Thuy Vo Dang, assistant professor in the Department of Information Studies, describes her work on a multimedia textbook chapter on Asian American history that incorporates refugee artwork and oral histories. She notes the direct link between training graduate students in archival fields and encouraging high school students to ask critical questions as they complete assignments based on these primary sources.

In her interview, Lindsay Lindberg reminds us that “The arts can be a spark of joy within a dark landscape.” Given the range of challenges we are facing as a society— locally, nationally, and across the globe—we would all do well to take her words to heart. Indeed, we share this collection of articles with the hope that they will serve as a reminder of the diverse ways we can see and understand the world.

In unity—Tina

BY JOHN MCDONALD

The Benefits of Arts Education

When art is woven into the curriculum, it helps children see connections and think more deeply about different content areas in an interdisciplinary way.

UCLA Lab School principal Georgia Lazo and UCLA Community Schooling director Karen Hunter Quartz weigh in on the intrinsic value of arts in K–12 learning.

When Jacqueline Belloso, a teacher and instructional coach at the UCLA Community School, was in elementary school she says, “The arts were big! I grew up singing in chorus, taking part in the performing arts, and playing the violin. Even though I was from a low-income background, at our school, I had an opportunity to experience these things. It was a big part of my growing up.” Belloso believes in the benefits of arts education and wants all students to have access to the arts.

“There are a lot of skills in the arts—oral language, listening, mimicking, that sometimes get put on the back burner. And some kids have processing issues—they need to move their bodies in order to free the learning inside of them. For me, the arts give those kids, those that might be seen as having behavioral issues or being a little divergent, the opportunity to showcase their learning in different ways, the opportunity to really shine. I think they are ridiculously important,” Belloso says.

Arts and education leaders in California agree, and the state is working to give more young people access to the arts in schools. In November 2022, California voters approved Proposition 28: The Arts and Music in Schools (AMS) Funding Guarantee and Accountability Act. The measure establishes a new ongoing program supporting arts instruction in schools, providing funding for personnel and training, and supplies, materials, and arts educational partnership programs for instruction in a wide spectrum of the arts. California appropriated approximately $938 million for the effort for the 2023–24 fiscal year.

Photos by Allison Shelley for EDUimages

ARTS AND EDUCATION LEADERS BELIEVE IT IS A GAME CHANGER.

“Proposition 28 represents a significant step towards ensuring that all students have access to high-quality arts education. By investing in arts education, we are investing in the future of our students and our communities, empowering young people to reach their full potential, and become the creative, innovative leaders of tomorrow,” says Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo, an alumna of UCLA and the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies.

Arts education offers immense value to all students, by equipping them with the skills and qualities they need to succeed in today’s world. Exposure to the arts fosters creativity, innovation, and critical thinking, and provides a unique avenue for students to explore their identities, cultures, and communities. Arts education has been shown to boost academic achievement and improve social and emotional development.

The Academy of Arts and Sciences contends that arts education is essential, playing “a vital role in the personal and professional development of citizens and, more broadly, the economic growth and social sustainability of communities. Its loss or diminution from the system would be incalculable.”

The arts, the Academy argues, “have intrinsic value as a foundational form of human expression, providing ways of learning and experiencing different perspectives on the human condition.” An education without them, “is insufficient” and “fails to provide what federal education law defines as a well-rounded education.”

While evidence of the causal impact of arts education on student learning is in short supply, some recent research suggests the arts can produce meaningful impacts on students’ academic outcomes and social-emotional development.

In a 2022 study, “Investigating the Causal Effects of Arts Education,” published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, researchers Daniel H. Bowen, an associate professor at Texas A&M University, and Brian Kisida, an assistant research professor in the Department of Economics and the Truman School of Public Affairs at the

Arts education offers immense value to all students, by equipping them with the skills and qualities they need to succeed in today’s world. Exposure to the arts fosters creativity, innovation, and critical thinking, and provides a unique avenue for students to explore their identities, cultures, and communities.

THE BENEFITS OF ARTS EDUCATION:

● Builds well-rounded individuals;

● Broadens our understanding and appreciation of other cultures and histories;

● Supports social and emotional development

● Builds empathy, reduces intolerance, and generates acceptance of others;

● Improves school engagement and culture;

● Develops valuable life and career skills;

● Strengthens community and civic engagement.

According to American Academy of Arts & Sciences. “Art for Life’s Sake—The Values of Arts Education.”

University of Missouri, conducted a randomized controlled trial with 42 elementary and middle schools in Houston, Texas. Their research finds that, “randomly assigning arts educational opportunities reduces disciplinary infractions, improves writing achievement, and increases students’ emotional empathy. Students in elementary schools, which were the primary focus of the program, also experience increases in school engagement, college aspirations, and cognitive empathy.”

According to the study, students’ emotional and cognitive empathy increased by 7.2 percent and 3.9 percent of a standard deviation, respectively. At schools with expanded arts education, students are 20.7 percent less likely to have a disciplinary infraction. School engagement increases by 8 percent of a standard deviation. Arts learning improves writing test scores by 13 percent of a standard deviation but does not have significant effects on reading, math, or science test scores. The positive effects are especially pronounced among English language learners, whose writing scores improve by 27 percent of a standard deviation.

These results, Bowen and Kisada contend, “demonstrate that the arts positively affect meaningful educational outcomes and can inform strategies to restore and retain arts education in under-resourced schools.”

In another study, Bowen and Kisada examine arts programming in Boston Public Schools, finding that for students receiving arts programming, “school attendance increased by roughly onethird of a day over the course of the school year compared with students not in art courses.” The study also found that teachers observed greater student and parent engagement at schools with arts programming.

The results, say Bowen and Kisada, “suggest one strategy for generating social capital to provide a robust school climate is through providing arts education as a core ingredient in a well-rounded education.”

Georgia Lazo would agree with them. Lazo is the principal of UCLA Lab School, where arts are a core part of the curriculum, woven through the tapestry of the school’s curriculum and instruction.

“Humans have an innate attraction and connection to beauty, and, therefore, to art. Children, in particular, have an innate sense of creativity,” says Lazo.

“At the Lab School, we believe that for children to fully develop, art needs to be infused into everything that we do. We stress the need to have art experiences for early childhood and early childhood development. When children can walk into a classroom and feel free to not only move but to use rich materials that help

One strategy for generating social capital to provide a robust school climate is through providing arts education as a core ingredient in a well-rounded education.

them build their creativity, it allows them the freedom to learn in different ways. In doing so, development in literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies becomes joyful, helping to foster learning and academic skills.

“When art is woven into the curriculum, it helps children see connections and think more deeply about different content areas in an interdisciplinary way. Engaging children in art and creating conditions in which art is integrated into the curriculum, helps them see connections and to see the world around them. It helps children build deeper content and critical thinking skills in joyful and fun ways.”

Research also appears to indicate the arts can benefit schools in ways that have an impact beyond the classroom.

In “Multigenerational Art Making at a Community School: A Case Study of Transformative Parent Engagement,” published in 2021 in the Harvard Educational Review, UCLA researchers Kevin Kane, Karen Hunter Quartz and Lindsey Kunisaki examine parent participation in MASA, an afterschool arts program at UCLA Community School.

Their findings underscore the potential of culturally sustaining arts programs to serve as a strategy for parent engagement and learning and highlight the “transformative impact of culturally sustaining arts on individuals, families, and the school as a whole.”

Within the context of the community school, the study found that parents learn when they have an opportunity to co-construct curriculum based on their

Jacqueline Belloso, a teacher and instructional coach at UCLA Community School.

cultural knowledge, focus on creative agency, and take on formal and informal leadership roles. The study also finds that parents who participate in the arts program “reflect and reinforce an asset-based community school culture that disrupts deficit-based conceptions of low-income parents of color.”

The authors also suggest that such transformative parent engagement offers the potential to further the pillars of the community school strategy—integrated social supports, expanded learning time and opportunities, and collaborative leadership—to help inform the development of arts-based extended learning opportunities in community schools.

“Our study is a window on how community-based arts can be transformative for parents, families, and a school,” says Quartz, director of the UCLA Center for Community Schooling. “It demands we see the arts as a powerful lever for valuing community assets and supporting positive creative, cultural, and racial identity formation.” Or maybe, as one parent in the study said. “It is through art that our whole family and school has changed and become stronger.”

When art is woven into the curriculum, it helps children see connections and think more deeply about different content areas in an interdisciplinary way. Engaging children in art and creating conditions in which art is integrated into the curriculum, helps them see connections and to see the world around them. It helps children build deeper content and critical thinking skills in joyful and fun ways.

Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo, an alumna of UCLA and the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies.

Karen Hunter Quartz, director of UCLA Center for Community Schooling.

The only music education program in the UC system is a partnership between the UCLA Teacher Education Program and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

TEACHING TEACHERS Music

BY JOANIE HARMON

With the passing of Prop. 28, the already high need for music teachers in California schools is expected to grow. The UCLA Teacher Education Program (TEP) in

Center X, collaborates with UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music (HASOM) to produce committed, high-quality music educators to fill that demand, with the only music education program at a public university in California where it is possible to earn a teaching credential in a four-year undergraduate degree program.

Lily Chen-Hafteck, UCLA professor of music education, oversees the program from the HASOM side, working with Emma Hipolito, TEP director. Chen-Hafteck, who currently chairs the Music in Schools and Teacher Education Commission of the International Society for Music Education (ISME), says that the unique and rigorous program seeks applicants who are, “… strong musicians, have strong academics, and are passionate about teaching music and working with young people.”

“One of the objectives of TEP is to support novice teachers in acquiring the ‘knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to provide rigorous academic content and high-quality learning experiences to K–12 students,’” says Hipolito. “The Joint Music Program embodies that mission. Music Education students continue to hone their own knowledge of music while simultaneously learning to teach. Under the leadership of Drs. Chen-Hafteck and Joanna Gamboa-Kroesen, UCLA assistant professor of music education, this program can serve as a model of rigorous teacher preparation rooted in a deep knowledge of content and a culturally responsive approach to K–12 music curriculum.”

“There are a lot of requirements for receiving teaching credentials and so to be able to complete a B.A. in music education with a teaching credential in four years is very, very tough,” Professor Chen-Hafteck says. “This year, we have received 96 applications, and we’re going to accept around 15 students. We have auditions to assess how well they play their instruments or sing, plus music education interviews to evaluate their potential in teaching.”

Students have to meet high standards in order to be accepted into the Joint Music Education Program. Chen-Hafteck says that those who have entered the program are often considered among the most rewarding to teach by her School of Music colleagues.

“These are young people who have had a good experience in their music education and talk about how it has helped support them

One of the objectives of TEP is to support novice teachers in acquiring the ‘knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to provide rigorous academic content and high-quality learning experiences to K–12 students.’ The Joint Music Program embodies that mission.  Music Education students continue to hone their own knowledge of music while simultaneously learning to teach.

UCLA Professor of Music Education Lily Chen-Hafteck is a special assistant for curricular reform to Eileen Strempel, inaugural dean of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, and chair of the Music in Schools and Teacher Education Commission of the International Society for Music Education.

Photo by Michelle Trevino

After two years of hard work with the task force, our curriculum now offers music theory and musicianship courses that are more inclusive of diverse musical styles, not just Western classical music.

through difficult times,” she says. “They have had wonderful music teachers, and they want to be like them to help more students. Each year, the music education cohort are very close, because they are all passionate about teaching and helping others. I’ve heard about other majors where the students are very competitive, but in this group of music students, they have built a supportive community together, helping each other and appreciating each other’s unique capacities. My other music colleagues who teach both performance and music education students are often impressed by our music education majors who are so strong in terms of their disposition and attitude towards learning.”

The Joint Music Education Program provides students with a California Subject Matter Waiver in music, and they complete their teaching credential during their fourth year of undergraduate studies. Professor Chen-Hafteck says that undergraduates declare this major upon entry to UCLA.

“There are some performance majors who may change majors or add a second major, when they realize that they want to teach and our music education program is actually very interesting

and rigorous,” she says. “The program is very well designed and packed in all the requirements,” she says. “In the first two years, they have music theory and music history courses, performance ensembles, private lessons on their instruments or voice, in addition to their music education courses in learning approaches, vocal and instrumental music pedagogy. In the third year, they start some field experiences, and in the final year, they do student teaching.”

Chen-Hafteck, who previously taught music education at Kean University before arriving at UCLA 10 years ago, also serves as special assistant for curricular reform to Eileen Strempel, inaugural dean of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Professor Chen-Hafteck has been charged to start a task force to put forth recommendations to align the school’s curriculum with EDI standards. Having taught a Fiat Lux seminar on “Celebrating Cultural Diversity of Immigrants through Music,” she says that, “It is important to allow students living in a multicultural society to study music of diverse cultures. A goal of the task force is to update the music curriculum that is culturally responsive to the student population.

Siqi Zhuang and Julian Dohi (L-R) , UCLA undergraduates in the Joint Music Education Program, learn to play and teach the clarinet to K–12 students.

Photo by Michelle Trevino

“After two years of hard work with the task force, our curriculum now offers music theory and musicianship courses that are more inclusive of diverse musical styles, not just Western classical music,” says Chen-Hafteck. “There are so many ethnomusicology ensembles that are available in the School of Music, as well as a pop music ensemble in the Music Industry Program. I feel that participating in such diversifying musical experiences is important and should be supported.”

Professor Chen-Hafteck played the piano at a young age and began her teaching career as a high school music educator in her native Hong Kong. A Fulbright Scholar, she achieved her Ph.D. in music education from the University of Reading, U.K., and received postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and University of Surrey Roehampton, U.K. She says that her international experiences showed her that everyone is born with the musical abilities to learn any music, just like the linguistic abilities to learn any language. It is very important to provide a nurturing environment at a young age, so that children can develop their musical potential. Therefore, she was especially interested in teaching and researching early childhood music education.

“It’s so important to provide preschoolers with quality music education,” Professor Chen-Hafteck says. “A lot of times people tell me that, ‘Oh, I can’t sing. I can’t dance.’ And why? When we were born, we could all sing and dance and move to music, but throughout the years, we were somewhat discouraged. A teacher may tell you that you sing out of tune, and you never want to sing again.

“This is actually bad music education. There are some school teachers who only want the best ensemble. They weed out students, and those students are deprived of the joy of music making. And so, if from early childhood you were given the opportunity to receive a

good music education, that would give you the seeds to enjoy music making. I’m not talking about singing or playing like professional musicians … but music for everyone … for all people, because music should be something that we can all enjoy.

“When I work with my students, I tell them they are capable of giving their students the best music education. Whether they can help students learn depends on how they teach and design activities that are appropriate to the age level of their students. Little children are capable of enjoying complex music and complex rhythms, as long as the activities are appropriate to them.

For instance, they love moving to music and so movement activities will be best for young students to learn music.”

Professor Chen-Hafteck hopes that the infusion of funding from Prop. 28 will serve to fill the gap of well-trained music educators in California.

“There are just not enough music teachers,” she says. “Our students have been getting jobs before they graduate, there is such a high demand. And our students are so good, we prepare them very well. I wish our program can be bigger, and we can have more of my students going out to make a difference in the world.”

Natalia Rael and Johannes Eberhart (L-R) are UCLA undergraduates who aspire to become music educators in UCLA’s Joint Music Education Program, a partnership between the UCLA Department of Education and the Herb Alpert School of Music. Photo by Michelle Trevino

Q&A WITH MARYANNE WOLF

BY JOANIE HARMON

Maryanne Wolf, director of the UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, shares the ways that the arts reveal and develop the hidden strengths of students with dyslexia and other diverse learners.

In a 2013 Smithsonian documentary, “The Real Story: The Da Vinci Code,” Maryanne Wolf posits that Leonardo da Vinci was more than likely dyslexic, based on multiple characteristics including the extent and probable rapidity of his mirror writing in one codex after another. This is a skill that is attributed to some individuals with dyslexia whose brain’s right hemisphere is used more extensively in reading compared with the greater use of the left hemisphere in typical readers.

Today, Wolf serves as the director of the UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice and a professorin-residence in the UCLA Department of Education, continuing to contribute globally to the knowledge around reading and the brain. The author of more than 160 scientific articles, Wolf designed the RAVE-O reading intervention for children with dyslexia, which she is currently redesigning to include an arts component. She also co-authored the RAN/RAS naming speed tests, a major predictor of dyslexia across all languages, in collaboration with Martha Denckla, a pioneer in the field of developmental cognitive neurology.

Drawing from her personal experience of parenting a son with dyslexia, Wolf discusses the benefits of arts education in the wake of Prop. 28 and how it can open doors for diverse learners who might otherwise fall through the cracks academically, socially, and emotionally.

Ed&IS Magazine: What have you found to be the links between dyslexia, diverse learning styles, and the arts?

MARYANNE WOLF: One of the great known strengths of dyslexia is an ability to see differently. They think differently, but they also see differently. My life lesson from my own son is the absolute importance of looking at how the arts and pattern-perception are manifested in many of our individuals with dyslexia. I have been both blessed and given an incredible example of what happens to children with dyslexia, particularly the emotional detritus that often comes when they can’t learn to read like other children. They all too often feel as if the world does not understand them and that too many people think that they are less intelligent because they can’t learn to read like everyone else. To this moment, this completely false assumption ruins the potential of some of the most interesting brains our species possesses.

My own son went through six different schools in an effort to find the right fit, until he went to the Rhode Island School of Design. Until he was in a school for the arts with other individuals who are artists—a school where probably 30–40 percent of the students had a history of dyslexia—it was the first time he could soar. The Rhode Island School of Design is next to Brown University, so the students do their studio work at RISD and take very difficult classes at Brown. I will never forget that as a junior, Ben called me and said, “Mom, you won’t believe it—I’m on the dean’s list.” He had his first 4.0, in philosophy, German literature, and his studio art. Ben could finally be his full self.

Ben’s experience taught me how essential it is not simply to give space for the [artistic] talents, but for them to have recognition by their worlds—both of the various gifts people with dyslexia were given, and also of the perseverance that they require for their success. It has been many years now since my son graduated from RISD. He’s now a wonderful artist with two studios, one in New York and one in L.A., and is a lecturer at Yale, where he helps critique young artists. It is not coincidental that so many of the people that he works with have a dyslexic background. There is a propensity towards the arts in individuals with dyslexia, as well as towards entrepreneurial professions.

Leonardo da Vinci gives us an example par excellence of how strengths and weaknesses live right next to each other in the same brain. This unbelievable genius had weaknesses that he probably never understood. If I had a time machine, I would wager a great deal that da Vinci possessed a form of dyslexia characterized by issues in fluency and word-retrieval. The mirror writing is ultimately a red herring that actually reflected his strengths. But the historian Vasari described how da Vinci thought of himself as an “analphabetica,” one who couldn’t learn Latin and whose favorite wish was to have someone to read to him.

Da Vinci did not become a lawyer like his father wanted, because he could not learn Latin. Remember that Leonardo’s mother tongue was Italian, which is based on Latin. It is my hypothesis that this characteristic in da Vinci is part of a profile in which weaknesses in the word-retrieval system are revealing the slower speed with which the visual and linguistic areas of the brain are connected. These connections and their automaticity are the basis of reading’s development, and their impediments are the basis of a reading difficulty like dyslexia.

Ed&IS: What are some of the strengths of individuals with dyslexia that give them a unique advantage, especially in the realm of the arts?

WOLF: Many but not all individuals with dyslexia have visual-spatial abilities that allow them to see the world differently. My son started out in Hollywood in set design, and what he was so good at was finding solutions to immediate problems in whatever set was there. He could “see” what was needed before anyone else. He brings that same visualization to problems in many other realms, not just in art and design. He makes connections that are often “out of the box” till you realize that he sees and thinks and solves problems in a whole different way.

I’ve spoken at conferences arranged by very important international and national companies, corporations that wanted to know why so many entrepreneurs are dyslexic. Silicon Valley is full of CEOs and startup managers who are dyslexic. At one of the conferences, they had these small, intimate groups of multimillionaires and entrepreneurs who were dyslexic. Each of them had a different background, but the three things they all said were that they can see visually and spatially in different ways. That leads them to solve problems in different ways—they visualize the problem, and they can translate what they see as a problem into a kind of pattern that they then use as the basis for solution.

A great many architects have an unusual characteristic: they can’t spell. It is non-coincidental that a lot of my son’s friends are architects, and they are dyslexic and can’t spell. Yet they can draw and do things spatially that other people simply can’t do. Again, it is this extraordinary mix of advantages and disadvantages that underlies the cerebrodiversity that made our species survive. The dyslexic brain existed millennia before literacy was invented! We would be the less if that brain hadn’t helped us survive.

Ed&IS: What are some of the societal costs of a lack of understanding for dyslexia and other learning challenges?

WOLF: There is no coincidence that some of the studies out there show as many as 60 percent of people in prisons have some form of learning disability. In some states, they project the amount of prison beds needed on the basis of third- or fourthgrade reading scores. The societal and economic losses are horrific when the potential of these youth is lost.

There’s a wonderful film called “How Do You Spell Murder? Illiteracy and Crime,” that highlights the life of an African-American man who, when he was 18, accompanied someone on what he never realized would turn out to be an armed robbery. The leader of his group panicked, shot, and killed a person. As a result, this [other] man spent his life in prison. When the filmmakers interviewed him about why he was there, he asked, “How do you spell ‘murder’?” This is one example of a thousand in which our youth enter the prison pipeline when they are never given the tools to read, whether through dyslexia or other struggles. We can’t lose these youth, many of whom were never diagnosed with a reading difficulty and never had a chance to contribute their potential.

One of the areas that the UC-CSU Collaborative on Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning is pursuing is to change that pipeline. One way towards that change is the combination of early screening, differential instruction, and intervention that enables our young to show their strengths. For those with dyslexia, emphases on the arts and other strengths can be, literally, a lifesaver.

Maryanne Wolf

Ed&IS: You designed the RAVE-O reading intervention system many years ago and have now revamped it to include a focus on the arts. What are the “minute stories” you are now using?

WOLF: The subtitle of RAVE-O is, “Where Science meets Story.” For me, story is a metaphor for the arts and also, for what I call “deep reading.” We are emphasizing the strengths of dyslexic individuals, all the while we use our understanding of the reading brain to work on the weaknesses. We are using the strengths to strengthen the weaknesses.

A few schools in Orange County are using our newly redesigned RAVE-O and a few more in Massachusetts. It is a work in progress and very rewarding. I have taken and rewritten little “minute stories,” as we call them, that will emphasize the arts and empathy, critical thinking, and perseverance. And then in almost every unit, the children will have a chance to do something in the arts as part of what they’re learning. When I say arts, I mean drawing, music, charades for theater, and motoric activities too.

Ed&IS: How will Prop. 28 support students with dyslexia and other diverse learners across California?

WOLF: I think this initiative, which gives art teachers and art a focus of attention in our schools, could not be better conceptualized to help our individuals with neurodiverse patterns. The Arts and Music in Schools Funding Guarantee and Accountability Act is a well-timed but difficult initiative to bring to life and to implement for our children. It will have to be done well, but it has great potential to release the potential of our children. We have studies that show that giving music instruction in kindergarten is correlated with higher reading scores later. Never cancel the arts to increase literacy!

It’s an example of what society and this kind of initiative can do for these individuals … give them an opportunity to show their strengths. One of the darker shadows of my research is that if we can’t get them fluent enough by fourth grade, we lose the potential of some of our most interesting minds and fascinating brains. These children get passed on through the grades, but the teachers don’t know what to do with them and the children think they’re failures. These wounds last a lifetime if they are never treated along the way. The more we can disseminate our ever-expanding research on dyslexia, the better the prospects for our young. For the more a teacher knows about dyslexia the better that teacher will teach all children.

Wolf is the author of more than 160 scientific articles. Among her awards are a Fulbright Fellowship, the Chapman University Presidential Fellow, and the Norman Geschwind and Samuel Orton Awards. She received the Christopher Columbus award for Intellectual Innovation for her work as co-founder of Curious Learning, a global literacy initiative with deployments in Africa, India, Australia, and rural United States. Among Wolf’s publications are “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain” (2007), and “Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World” (2018).

There is no coincidence that some of the studies out there show as many as 60 percent of people in prisons have some form of learning disability. In some states, they project the amount of prison beds needed on the basis of third- or fourthgrade reading scores. The societal and economic losses are horrific when the potential of these youth is lost.

Reimagining Teaching LEARNING RELATIONS

Improvisational and Ensemble Performers

BY JOANIE HARMON

Ananda Marin, a UCLA associate professor of education and the daughter of a jazz musician, studies the ways that artists improvise and how collaboration and community can transform education.

As a learning scientist, Professor Ananda Marin draws upon Indigenous ways of knowing and sociocultural theories to develop research on learning across everyday activities such as walking through a forest, and professional realms of knowledge such as teaching and musical performance.

Marin’s study “Reimagining Teaching/Learning Relations Alongside Improvisational and Ensemble Performers” is funded by a Spencer Foundation Large Grant. The study draws on co-design methodologies and how research collaborators (e.g., improvisational artists) play a central role in designing research activities. The study focuses on jazz artists Hamid Drake, Michael Zerang, Lisa Alvarado, Joshua Abrams, and Zahra Baker. In addition, research activities have been conducted with the support of Brenda Lopez, research associate and media coordinator at the UCLA Center for Critical Race Studies in Education; Lindsay Lindberg, a doctoral student researcher in the Urban Schooling Division; and Shivani Davé, a doctoral student researcher in the Social Research Methodology Division. Last April, at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Lopez and Marin presented the team’s findings in a Vice-Presidential Session on “Consequential Futures: The Contested Pursuit of Truth in Freedom Dreaming.” Their presentation, “Freedom Dreams Nested Within the Small Stories of Improvisational Jazz Artists,” explored the ways that artists develop their expertise, how the arts are a nexus for social, political, and ethical discourses in regard to education, and how freedom dreams often germinate in collaborative and improvisational contexts.

Family dynamics play a significant part in this strand of Professor Marin’s research. Her father is Hamid Drake, a jazz drummer and percussionist who has worked in various ensembles with luminaries such as Fred Anderson, Don Cherry, Jim Pepper, Herbie Hancock, and Pharoah Sanders. Drake is widely regarded as a top percussionist in jazz and improvised music, incorporating his interest in Afro-Cuban, Indian, and African percussion instruments and influences. Marin leverages her unique connection to this community with a study that illustrates the intrinsic value of the arts, not only as a subject to be studied in schools but as a discipline with routine practices that can inform how the field of education understands humans’ diverse capabilities as well as relationships between humans and the morethan-human world.

Marin is an associate professor of Social Research Methodology in the UCLA Department of Education and a faculty member in UCLA American Indian Studies. Her research explores the cultural nature of development with an emphasis on how processes for knowing (e.g., attention, embodiment, collaboration, etc.) vary across multiple communities, generations, and knowledge systems, and how educators can draw upon that variation in the design of teaching/learning environments.

Professor Marin achieved her Ph.D. in learning sciences at Northwestern University; her M.P.P. at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; and her B.A. in sociology at Yale University. Her accolades include the University of California Humanities Research Institute Residential Research Group Fellowship, the International Society of the Learning Sciences Early Career Award, the Lena Astin Faculty Mentoring Award from UCLA, and she was named a distinguished scholar by the Mellon Foundation. Recent publications include the article “Ambulatory sequences: Ecologies of learning by attending and observing on the move” for the journal Cognition and Instruction, and the co-written chapter, “Enacting relationships of kinship and care in research and educational settings” with UCLA’s Nikki Barry (McDaid) for the 2020 book, “Critical Youth Research in Education: Methodologies of Praxis and Care,” co-edited by UCLA professor of education Teresa McCarty and published by Routledge.

Ed&IS Magazine: What inspired your study of improvisational jazz artists?

ANANDA MARIN: I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to seek out a research site solely for the sake of doing research. As a qualitative methodologist, I believe that relationships are extremely important to doing research, and I usually begin a research project with people that I have relationships with or by asking myself who I want to develop relationships with. With that comes some accountability to how we share and engage in the work, how we talk about it, and write about it.

I’m studying the arts in order to better understand collaboration and improvisation, two processes that are central to teaching and learning. I grew up in a family of artists and educators. My dad is a jazz percussionist, and for many years my mom was a dancer. My sister was a dancer. My niece dances. My grandmother was a piano teacher. My other sister was an English, ELL, and Bilingual teacher. My husband was an early childhood educator, a rap artist, and now makes Native American horror movies.

I would go and watch my sister perform and my dad perform. I noticed that the communities they were in were very different from the way we organize teaching and learning in schools. My participation in those communities shaped this current project and how I approached previous work on the role of the body in teaching and learning.

Ed&IS: What qualities do some of these communities have that aren’t typically present in education?

MARIN: This project is guided by a couple of questions. One, I was interested in how people’s histories of relations influence their development over time, and then at a micro level, because part of what I do is study core cognitive processes like attention and embodiment, I was interested in the moment-to-moment of performance, when people are improvising [and] how they attune to one another.

I had spent a lot of time on the periphery of artistic communities. This led me to have a general sense that many of the folks I knew would probably say that even though they are viewed as experts and have contributed to and influenced their field, school was not a place where they developed that expertise. In addition, I would broadly argue that as a society we do not organize classroom environments to facilitate generative long-term relationships. In contrast, the artists who are involved in this project have long-term relationships with one another that span 10, 20, or 30 years, where they work together in different configurations [that] they’ve gone in and out of. How artists develop and sustain relationships and how relationships feed their own creative processes is of interest to me.

I’m studying the arts in order to better understand collaboration and improvisation, two processes that are central to teaching and learning.

Professor Marin’s research included documenting the “Moment to Moment” concert, held in Chicago in September of 2022. As well as performing music, the collaborating artists created a specific environment through their set-up onstage, including the paintings of Lisa Alvarado, visual artist and harmonium player. L–R: Alvarado, Hamid Drake, drums; Joshua Michael Zerang, percussion; and Zahra Baker, vocals.

Photo by Brenda Lopez

Ed&IS: How did your familial connection to this community impact your study?

MARIN: My dad has been in the music performance world, what music critics call the jazz world, since he was 13 years old. I think the collaborating artists said yes to the project because they had a relationship with my dad. It’s not that they wouldn’t have said yes if I had asked them, but I think that relational connection was important. I think they saw the project as an opportunity to learn new things about each other, to get together, to perform together and have conversations that would move their own understanding of their craft in new ways.

Indigenous education scholars often ground their work in the 4 Rs and now, the 5 Rs. These practices include respect, reciprocity, responsibility, relevance, and relationality. I knew that going in, if people were going to participate, relationality, reciprocity, and responsibility were going to be key factors. My father would also include reverence, which is related to respect, as a practice. He has pointed out to me that you have to have a certain reverence for what you do, and for what others before you did.

Ed&IS: How does this study address your interest in embodiment and physical space?

MARIN: I would say that the majority of schools have been designed in ways that are about restraining our bodies versus tapping into the potential of freely using our whole bodies. This is particularly true when it comes to how the bodies of Indigenous, Black, and Brown youth and youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are constricted in relation to schooling. However, when I have observed improvisational jazz performances, it was very clear to me that artists were using their whole bodies to support their own processes for learning and creativity. I want to understand how artists and musical performers are able to cultivate freedom spaces where they are able to engage in whole body movement and what this means for their own development as people and as artists.

I’m working with Ben Rydal Shapiro, a researcher at Georgia State University,

who has developed data visualization tools to support teaching and learning. One of the things Ben researches is the movement of bodies in space. He’s taken clips of the performances I recorded with collaborating artists and looked at the movement of their bodies in relation to time and space. It is not surprising that as percussionists and bass players, they are going to be using their hands and their feet. But they’re often using them together in a coordinated way while their eyes are closed. This coordination is tied to their processes for attending to one another and collaborating to co-create music. This stands in contrast to how people are taught to organize attention in school. In schools, visual attention often holds primacy. However, in this particular performance space, artists are drawing on multiple senses in order to fully participate and collaborate. So, we might ask what are the possible consequences for learning when we create spaces for sensory freedom.

And so, this is a a leap, but I don’t think it’s too far of a leap. If we think about the progression of schooling from early childhood spaces to high school, we are increasingly asking people to sit in ways that constrain their bodies, to not move their hands or their feet or other

I would say that the majority of schools have been designed in ways that are about restraining our bodies versus tapping into the potential of freely using our whole bodies.

Ananda Marin, UCLA associate professor of education, leveraged the stature and relationships of her father, free jazz musician Hamid Drake, in order to conduct her research. Photo by Brenda Lopez

parts of their body unless they’re engaging in “productive activity”—like reading or writing—and to look at the front of the classroom. For example, when we go into some of the Math Science buildings [at UCLA], some of the chairs are bolted to the floor, constraining the design of the learning environment. I’m not saying every classroom should be an empty space, but we could pay more attention to how our bodies move and feel in spaces. There’s so much more we can do and experience as humans when we don’t put these kinds of constraints on ourselves.

The improvisational artists who are participating in this project have a practice for setting up the performance, or teaching and learning, space. It is consequential for how the work that they’re about to do unfolds. Improvisation is not just about doing anything in the moment. They would say that they prepare for improvising, and they would probably say that it’s linked to their own spiritual development as people. When they get to a performance space, there’s a bunch of things they do, some of them very small, some of them larger. Some of it is about how they greet one another, but they are making decisions in that moment about how they’re going to set up the

space and they are thinking about how these decisions might influence how the performance (or teaching and learning) unfolds.

I’m sharing this story because I’m involved in this other group with Indigenous scholars through Arizona State University. It’s a Mellon-funded project, and Natalie Diaz and Brian Brayboy are PIs on the project, looking at Indigenous forms of mentorship. I was sharing the experience of being with the musicians and observing them perform, and how they set up space.

Natalie suggested to me that the next time I teach, I invite students to first center themselves and then to move around the classroom and to sit wherever they felt comfortable—whether it was on a chair, on a floor, on top of the desks—and then to have a conversation about how that felt and what we wanted to do from there. I did this in a TEP (Teacher Education Program) class, and that was a really interesting day for me in the classroom. I think students appreciated it, and I also think they were kind of skeptical: “Okay, so we did this thing, and we get to collectively decide what we’re going to do. But is this for real? And will we continue to operate in this way?”

The improvisational artists who are participating in this project have a practice for setting up the performance, or teaching and learning, space. It is consequential for how the work that they’re about to do unfolds.

Hamid Drake, a prominent drummer in the creative music movement, performing in the “Moment to Moment Concert” in September 2022.

Photo by Brenda Lopez

I will say that this small practice that came from observing musicians shifted the dynamics of my classroom space. What I’m looking for is not necessarily the big findings, but the small findings that can help us think about what we’re doing moment-to-moment, which is often a challenge when teaching, because classrooms move so quickly. If we’re going to design something different, we have to be okay with what might come up with the unscripted, and that can be scary for teachers, for lots of reasons. It takes a lot of practice to slow down our own thinking and be reflective—not just to automatically respond to what’s going on, but to reflect in the moment and open up possibilities. I believe that one of the things we can learn from jazz artists who improvise is how to sit in/with dissonance while listening and watching for “light trails” that can take the group toward consonance.

Ed&IS: What about the dynamic of the artists’ interactions on and offstage?

MARIN: These jazz musicians are creating something together as a group. We often ask people to teach on their own, with 20, 50, 100-plus students, depending on what grade level you’re at. It’s a very Western, individualistic kind of idea that a single educator will have all that knowledge to impart and that when unexpected things arise, we have the expertise to meet them.

Part of the preparation for [these] improvisers is getting out of their own way. It is about having the substantive knowledge and knowing enough. But there’s another level of preparation that is necessary, they would say, to be in the flow and open to possibilities as they arise. You’re open to being together and apart—you’re an individual, but you’re also a part of the group. You might lead, but then other times, you follow.

In the performance space, a feedback system is created. They come in and do the work together, but every show will vary based upon who is with them that day, who is starting, and who is in the audience. They would talk about this as a circulation of energy. We can ask ourselves as educators, “I have my lesson plan. What is the material that I

want to cover today?” We can also ask ourselves, “What is the energy that I want to build in this space with others today?” We can ask ourselves about how we learn to be better attuned to one another and to ourselves, how we can be present, and how that feeds the creative process.

For example, this past July we organized a public performance at Experimental Sound Studio. Toward the end of the performance, the volume and speed of the music decreased and the sound of the leaves rustling and birds chirping became center stage. Many people in the audience felt this transition. At the same time, there was some uncertainty about whether or not “we” had come to a closing/end for this particular journey. It wasn’t until an audience member, who is the partner of one of the performers, said “thank you” that people began to clap.

Ed&IS: How do you hope that the focus of Prop. 28 on K–12 arts education will impact school cultures?

MARIN: I deeply believe that the arts are an integral part of society. I was trained in the field of learning sciences, where oftentimes if we’re studying the arts, it’s in service of STEM learning. I think that we can and should study the arts for art’s sake. I still think there are questions of equity in the arts and there are questions about the relationship between culture, gender, and race in the arts.

The group that I’m working with aren’t “standard” jazz artists. They would say they’re more part of the creative music or improvising music community. When John Coltrane’s music started to deviate from his original sound there was this question, “Is this still music?” In one of our research meetings, my father pointed out that Coltrane received “a vast amount of criticism and many people called it [the music] discordant, because he wasn’t playing that … which seemed familiar.” He also noted that Coltrane discovered something more and in doing so helped others to feel comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. This practice of bringing multiple dimensions of sound together allowed for processes of remembrance as well as creating new paths that are linked to self-determination and freedom. UCLA Professor of History Robin D.G. Kelley has written about this in his book, “Africa Speaks, America Answers.”

People still get pushed out of the arts because they’re doing something different or something that brings in a cultural perspective that is not appreciated or respected at the time. On the other hand, a lot of Indigenous artists are worried about how the visual arts, sound arts, material arts—things that are closely linked to cultural practices and knowledge—can be misappropriated and used in ways that are not respectful. So, as a research community we need to be careful. We need to return to the 5 Rs.

Artists often use a different language around teaching and learning than many education researchers and learning scientists might. Recently, there’s been a focus around joy and education and Black joy. This focus is important and reminds us of the always-present need to resist deficit orientations. Like scholars who attend to joy, these artists often talk about the power of dreaming and spirit and love and wonder and beauty. All of these practices are important for our full development as humans.

Vocalist Zahra Baker worked with photographs of the artists’ ancestors to create quilt pieces for the group’s unique staging. Photo by Brenda Lopez

CAN THE ART OF Improv BENEFIT ENGLISH-LEARNER STUDENTS ?

Educational Leadership Program study by David Metz suggests improv’s play-based, spontaneous activities can reduce anxiety and increase engagement among newcomer English-language learner students.

BY JOHN MCDONALD

Improv is a form of spontaneous performance where the story, characters and dialogue are made up on the spot and acted out as the story moves along. As the comedian Tina Fey describes it, “You just say yes and figure it out afterward.” Improv performer and coach Rob Schiffman says, “Improv teaches the importance of support through true listening.”

In his Educational Leadership Program dissertation brief, David Metz (Ed.D., ’21) explored the use of improvisational theater to engage newcomer English learners.

Metz’s research adds to what is known about the benefits of the use of improv in education, extending the research to include English-learner students. To Metz’s knowledge, it’s the first study to detail what happens when you do improv with newcomer English learners as a group. The brief highlights the benefits of using improv with English learners, making clear that it is effective

All but one participant in the study reported feeling social anxiety when attempting language tasks, but the improv activities offered a point of entry to all levels of students. Participation in a variety of games and other improv activities helped to reduce their anxiety.

to a format that could be performed on Zoom, as distance learning protocols had been in place at the time of the study. All students were Latinx, and all but one used Spanish as his primary language (his first was Kʼicheʼ, a Mesoamerican language). The students participated in improv theater activities and recorded their engagement and anxiety levels in a journal. Ten of the eleven students also shared their thoughts in semi-structured exit interviews.

in helping to reduce anxiety and encourage engagement. The brief also identifies effective aspects of improv and offers recommendations for practitioners.

There are a lot of English learner students in Los Angeles schools, and Metz started working with them at the Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts. The school agreed to have him implement improv as an enrichment program with the students after school once or twice a week. He started playing theater games with the kids (and provided the ever-popular incentive of hot pizza) and the program evolved into a kind of English learner improv workshop. Eventually, the newcomers in the program would also engage in mask work activities with improvisation using Commedia dell’Arte-style masks, as a culmination, and put on a show for their parents and classmates.

Metz did that for five years. It was intense and exciting, and he had a sense it was helping students. However, he did not know how to measure it and he had a hard time justifying what he was doing to his ever-changing cadre of administrators. He knew he needed to do some research, so he applied to the UCLA Educational Leadership Program.

To conduct the study, Metz designed and taught a seven-week improv program, whereby he observed and interviewed eleven high school newcomer students enrolled in a sheltered English class. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the improv activities were adapted

“It was just a chance to kind of listen to what these students were saying about their experiences with improv,” Metz says. “I wanted to know, ‘How does doing improv make you feel?’”

All but one participant in the study reported feeling social anxiety when attempting language tasks, but the improv activities offered a point of entry to all levels of students. Participation in a variety of games and other improv activities helped to reduce their anxiety. One student described the experience as “letting go” of his anxiety. The students pointed to specific ways that the games had an effect, including building group trust, engaging their bodies, and redirecting their minds, allowing them to transition from being spectators to participants.

Photos by Allison Shelley for EDUimages

“English learners or second-language learners are notoriously anxious. The kids were anxious about speaking English and being made fun of, especially the beginners,” Metz says. “In a way, improv kind of tricks you out of doing certain things, a sort of benevolent manipulator. It’s kind of like magic, a magician is redirecting you, or a good teacher redirecting your attention into something that’s going to take up all your bandwidth, so that you don’t have the energy to be worrying about what that guy over there is thinking about you.”

Metz’s research also highlights the effective aspects of improv, underscoring that it is enjoyable and accessible and that it offers opportunities for collaborative learning and numerous points of access to participation. The students also enjoyed and embraced the diversity of games in the improv exercises.

“Improv that kids do is just play; it’s play in its purest sense. And that is essential to meaningful learning,” Metz says.

Most importantly, Metz wants educators to try improv with their students. “There are plenty of resources out there to learn about improv. Go take an improv class and start letting improv build your students’ confidence and unleash their imaginations.”

How did improv reduce students’ anxiety?

Building group trust: The English learners in the study reported that the collaborative nature of the improv activities built feelings of trust and community with their peers.

Engaging bodies and redirecting minds: Students’ feedback indicates that the improv games helped prevent them from excessively monitoring themselves and their use of English because they had to commit fully to a physical activity.

From spectator to participant: Engagement gradually increased for some students as their anxiety lessened and their role shifted from spectator to participant.

Three best practices in implementing improv with ELs emerged from the research.

1. Include an array of difficulty levels. Including games that are sufficiently simple as well as more complex will help ensure that game play engages all levels of ELs. Over time, even the most reluctant students will progress from passive spectators to active participants.

2. Employ heterogeneous student grouping. As advanced students engage with complex vocabulary and grammar combinations, students who are less actively engaged may be overlooked. However, those in the silent period of language acquisition may comprehend bits and pieces of their classmates’ spontaneous linguistic contributions, and they should not be excluded from these classroom performances. Much like a room full of mousetraps, when one student “snaps” into a spontaneous state (Mann, 1970), it may inspire others with less skill or confidence to give it a try. This can create a cascading wave of participation over time.

3. Incorporate reflective journaling. EL students’ reflections in their primary language about their emotions (especially anxiety) and engagement during and after improv games offer a window into their minds and can help identify which students may be ready to “pop up” to a new level of language mastery.

David Metz was classically trained in acting at Carnegie Mellon University and in improv at The Groundlings and Second City. His essays have appeared in The New York Times’ Education Life magazine and Carnegie Mellon Drama’s Stage Centre magazine. He has taught high school drama in the Los Angeles Unified School District for eight years. He completed his doctorate at UCLA’s Educational Leadership Program in 2021. In addition to being an Apple Learning Coach, Metz currently teaches high school theater at Santee Education Complex in downtown Los Angeles. This year, he has designed and is teaching a newcomer English Language Learner class for 25 students using improv strategies to engage the students and improve their English Language skills. Metz is also integrating students with moderate-to-severe special needs into the class.

Access to High Quality Arts Education

BY JOANIE HARMON

As a K–12 dance instructor, consultant for dance and art teachers’ professional development, and doctoral candidate in the UCLA Department of Education, Lindsay Lindberg discusses the beneficial impacts of Prop. 28 on schools, educators, and students.

Lindsay Lindberg’s experiences as a graduate student researcher at UCLA have led her to discover many connections between the sciences and the arts, dance in particular. The projects she has taken part in have varied, from designing computer science and arts curriculum for high school students, to helping elementary students explore the states of matter in a mixed-reality environment, to supporting research on a coding and art summer camp. While STEM and STEAM have been elements in Lindberg’s work, art—dance in particular—was always at the foundation of it. Today, as president-elect of the California Dance Education Association, Lindberg (’10, B.A., World Arts and Cultures/Dance) looks forward with her teaching colleagues to the advent of a new era of arts education statewide after the passing of Proposition 28.

On her way to becoming a double Bruin, Lindberg is currently completing her Ph.D. in Urban Schooling at Ed&IS. She earned her master of arts degree in dance education at New York University. She has served as a lecturer in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, teaching and assisting with a variety of courses including an introduction to arts education, food and politics, and community engagement through the arts. In addition, Lindberg supported dancers and education students to develop Creative-Movement-based lesson plans for students at UCLA Lab School and across LAUSD. She has also served as program coordinator for the Visual and Performing Arts Education Program at UCLA.

Among Lindberg’s awards are the UCLA Graduate Student Summer Research Mentorship Award (2019); the Elwood Zillgitt and Mildred Finney Scholarship (2017–18); and the New York University Steinhardt Distinguished Service Award in Dance Education (2012).

Lindberg, a former K–12 dance educator, consultant, and facilitator of numerous professional development workshops for teachers, discusses her hopes that Prop. 28 will afford more support and full-time arts educators across California; alleviate the extra burden upon classroom teachers to give their students a minimum level of arts education; and further social justice in public education by affording all students life-changing experiences in the arts.

Most of the money has to be spent on paying teachers and so the excitement is around making sure we have enough qualified and trained educators who can enter the workforce and not only be beautiful artists, but who will engage students in meaningful ways.

Ed&IS Magazine: How will Prop. 28 enhance the profession for K–12 dance educators and for arts educators in general?

LINDSAY LINDBERG: In addition to being a doctoral candidate at UCLA, I’m president-elect of the California Dance Education Association, and so I work with and represent dance educators from across the state. We’re obviously really excited about Prop. 28. One of the research participants from my dissertation works at a public high school, grades 9–12. There are about 2,000 students, and her school is going to get $200,000 a year from Prop 28. that will be divided up between the art forms.

Most of the money has to be spent on paying teachers and so the excitement is around making sure we have enough qualified and trained educators who can enter the workforce and not only be beautiful artists, but who will engage students in meaningful ways. That means inquiry-based learning experiences through dance [with] creative experiences, making sure that [students] have choreographic experience, not just performing the steps that the teacher teaches; and having an opportunity to develop a set of skills through dance that can translate beyond the dance classroom.

What I think is challenging for school districts is that right now, nobody really knows how to get the money. It passed and it was really exciting. And then [teachers] are asking, “What do we do?” Many of the dance educators we’re talking to are reaching out to the California Dance Education Association [asking], “How do I tell my administrators that this money is for me? Or, this money [can be used] to hire another dance teacher.”

There are a lot of job openings, but it’s kind of stressful, because for many years there hasn’t been really a viable way to make a living wage as an artist, as an arts educator especially. It’s kind of a crunch to make sure that there are qualified educators who are able and interested in being teachers in schools.

Ed&IS: How can universities prepare a new workforce of arts educators for California’s schools?

LINDBERG: I think universities like UCLA and other institutions of research can play a role in developing programs that train artists to be educators. There is a teaching artist track through the VAPAE program (Visual and Performing Arts Education at UCLA), developing working artists with a creative practice that’s meaningful to them, and teaching that in a school. But very few teaching artists have been able to make a living wage having full time jobs. This Prop. 28 funding allows that to be more of a possibility. But, we have to get the word out. Just because you’re an artist, it doesn’t mean that you have the skills to teach. Research universities offering programs, credentialing programs for visual art, for dance, for theater—UCLA already has one for music—is a really important step.

We have generations of classroom educators who have been teaching for many years, and they grew up without any arts education in their own K–12 experience. We have been unfairly expecting these folks who have had no introduction to the arts to suddenly introduce their students to the arts in a meaningful way—not making paper hand turkeys for Thanksgiving and doing simple crafts.

Prop. 28 invites an historic investment in the arts in California schools and having these funds with which to hire qualified arts educators to teach in schools, gives us as a state a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create ongoing, artsrich experiences for K–12 youth in public schools.

This isn’t the reality yet, but I hope that universities will be able to get some of the Prop. 28 funding. Right now, it’s for K–12 and that’s really important. But universities are also going to play a pivotal role in training and preparing educators, and some already are. Most state universities are the ones who are stepping up—Cal State East Bay had the first dance credential. But I really think the research [institutions] play an important role … leading the way in what it looks like to have well-trained and prepared arts educators who believe in equity and believe that the arts are a place where young people and educators can transform education. Using research-backed methods to prepare arts educators is essential.

Ed&IS: How will Prop. 28 help non-arts educators and school culture?

LINDBERG: We’re asking too much of teachers. I see it lightening their load by providing trained arts educators to have a stable, consistent presence in a school. We see the effect that the presence of arts has on students, on attendance, on community culture, on socialemotional learning. The presence of an art teacher, dance teacher, or theater teacher has shown that school culture improves. That’s helpful for non-art teachers, and everyone working and learning at the school.

I help train teachers in Pasadena Unified School District. I teach professional development on how elementary teachers can integrate visual art and dance into their day, and it’s overwhelming. They do a great job. It’s hard work, and they’re already doing so much. So, the introduction of not just itinerant dance teachers, but hopefully full-time dance teachers and other arts educators working in one school, can lighten the load of the classroom teachers and increase school morale, for the faculty as well.

Lindsay Lindberg teaching pre-ballet to five and six-yearold students in the “Everybody Dance!” program, which took place in 2014 at Gabriella Charter School in Echo Park. Courtesy of Lindsay Lindberg

Ed&IS: Why do you think California’s voters recognized now that something must be done about statewide arts education?

LINDBERG: One of the exciting things about Prop. 28 is that the voters have spoken. Something that I’ve heard is that perhaps an older generation is concerned that without training young people to be artists, the arts will disappear.

Artists are generating content, creating things that entertain us, make us question ourselves, our role in the world. That is one of the roles of the artist, to entertain, to challenge. One of the functions of art is to hold up a mirror to society, to see what’s happening; to challenge what’s happening, and to imagine a more just future.

The arts play a huge role in our lives. There is also a huge creative economy in Los Angeles, in Hollywood. We’ve seen this with the strikes—there’s an economic reason to keep this kind of engine and education running. We need people not only onstage, but backstage. We need directors, we need stage producers, we need lighting designers.

I think there are some folks who think, “Oh, my granddaughter loves her dance class—why would I not vote to support something that brings joy and goodness to our lives, in a climate that’s so dark?” We’re facing ecological disasters every week, social challenges. The arts can be a spark of joy within a dark landscape.

And, I want to believe that people see it as an issue of equity. It’s an issue of social justice. Access to high quality arts education is something that all students need. California is one of the richest states, and the fact that we haven’t been offering sequential high-quality arts education across disciplines to people who go to public schools is a travesty. I don’t think people realize that public K–12 schools are often the only place that young people are exposed to the arts. Without access to high quality arts education, we have generations growing up without these tools to make sense of the world, to understand themselves, and to be the creative critical thinkers that we need for the future.

Ed&IS: What are your greatest hopes for the students who will ultimately benefit from Prop. 28?

LINDBERG: There are so many ways to argue the importance of art. One is to train to be a professional artist. Students say, “I’m going to be an artist. I want to have my piece at the Hammer Museum, at the Fowler, at the Met.” In the VAPAE program, I taught a course in an arts education teaching sequence. We had students who are pre-med, and they say, “I’m going to be a doctor, but I love art.” We had students who are undergraduate education majors who said, “When I grew up, I had this art teacher who really changed my life. I want to provide that experience.”

So, in one classroom, we get a whole swath from across campus: art majors, dance majors, psychology and biology majors, who are all drawn to the arts. These were high achieving high schoolers. They get to college, and some of them have had art education, but some haven’t. And, consistently at the end, these courses are transformational. They say, “You know, I never had a class where I knew everybody’s name.” Or, they say, “I’ve never had the opportunity to reflect on who I am, who I want to be.” Ultimately, I hope that young people are exposed to the arts in ways that feel meaningful to them. I’m hopeful that the passage of Prop. 28 can serve as a catalyst for a paradigm shift in education, that brings us closer to the arts being central to our culture and schooling system.

I don’t think people realize that public K–12 schools are often the only place that young people are exposed to the arts. Without access to

high quality arts education, we have generations growing up without these tools to make sense of the world, to understand themselves, and to be the creative critical thinkers that we need for the future.

Doctoral candidate Lindsay Lindberg (’10, B.A., World Arts and Cultures/ Dance) serves as president-elect of the California Dance Education Association.

Photo by Ivy Reynolds

Engaging K–12 Audiences in Archival Studies and Memory Work

BY JOANIE HARMON

While speaking to middle and high school students as the co-author of the 2022 book, “A People’s Guide to Orange County,” Thuy Vo Dang has found that young people are interested in archives as a concept, even if they don’t exactly know the pre-digital meaning of the word.

“They hear the word ‘archive’ and they usually think it means putting a couple of photographs on your computer and putting it in a folder,” says Vo Dang, an assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Information Studies. “They don’t really understand the nuance and complexity of what archival studies is and what memory work really means, like the stakes of that work for your community … empowering your community to have a voice in history books and in narratives that we tell in public about ourselves, our families or communities.”

Professor Vo Dang is currently working on a project funded by the Wallace Foundation to assess the needs of BIPOCserving arts organizations in preserving their history, with UCLA colleagues Michelle Caswell, professor of information studies, and Tonia Sutherland, assistant professor of information studies.

“So much of community history is located in these arts institutions, and they are even more underfunded than the mainstream arts organizations,” Vo Dang says. “They’re usually small in capacity. Their operating budgets are so small that they sometimes don’t qualify for these larger grants, and so to really understand and address their needs, we needed to do field research.

“This past year, we surveyed 113 arts organizations across the country that serve Black, Indigenous, People of Color communities, from dance to visual arts,” she says. “They are led by BIPOC folks as well. Our survey results weren’t very surprising. A lot of these organizations felt like when they [worked] with universities, academic researchers, or students who are sent to intern with them, they often wouldn’t support anything that was sustainable for these organizations in preserving their histories in the long run. It was always a one-and-done situation, so there’s a lot of mistrust of institutions that continue to inform the way that BIPOC arts organizations operate.”

Professors Caswell, Sutherland, and Vo Dang are codirectors of the UCLA Community Archives Lab, which matches students with community archives such as the Chinese Historical Society, the El Monte La Historia Historical Society and Museum, and the Texas After Violence Project. The students, who are trained in community archiving principles, work on projects to help catalog, preserve, and exhibit the holdings of these archives.

Thuy Vo Dang, assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Information Studies, discusses how an understanding of memory work and archives will enhance K–12 learning, with ways to preserve and empower marginalized communities with a commitment to teaching about identity based on primary sources such as refugee art.

Below: Vietnamese refugees from the First Indo-Chinese War, 1955. Image is called “Prayer for Refuge.”

“Before sending them out to partner with these arts organizations, we need to understand what the organizations’ unmet needs are,” says Vo Dang. “I see the work that we’re doing with the Wallace Foundation BIPOC arts study as having a potential ripple effect. We’re focused on the organizations, how to serve them, and how to train our students while doing that.”

Professor Vo Dang is serving on a UCLA Information Studies committee to develop an undergraduate degree program, and says that, “The urgency is getting the work we do in information studies and archival studies to translate to a much younger audience than we’ve been able to do so far through our graduate program. That’s one step, scaling from graduate studies to undergraduate studies. And then for me, even younger audiences are really important to engage.”

Vo Dang is about to do just that. She was invited to write a chapter on Vietnamese American history for “Foundations and Futures: Multimedia Textbook on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.” Led by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, the textbook is aimed at ninth grade to early college and is being created with a $10 million grant from the California State legislature.

Vo Dang, who used digital primary source materials that include refugee artwork and oral history interviews, is excited about the project and says it is a true collaboration between higher education and K–12 educators, including STEM and history teachers.

“The textbook involves hundreds of experts and curriculum designers,” she says. “We have a whole lot of involvement from partners who are K–12 STEM and history teachers. The curriculum developer that I’m working with on

So much of community history is located in these arts institutions, and they are even more underfunded than the mainstream arts organizations. They’re usually small in capacity. Their operating budgets are so small that they sometimes don’t qualify for these larger grants, and so to really understand and address their needs, we needed to do field research.

Life in the camp by Nguyen Dai Giang, 1990 Southeast Asian Archive, UC Irvine Libraries Project Ngoc Records

Crewmen

my chapter is a history teacher from the Irvine Unified School District. She’s great at fostering creativi ty among young learners, so there are some assignments that include making art, conducting oral history interviews with elders, or even thinking about food as an accessible entry point.

“We try to make these kinds of materials and entry points accessible to younger learners, and then the out puts they create serve to focus on their own empowerment as creators,” says Vo Dang. “So many students first learn about a different point of view, commu nity, or their neighbors through food. There is a module focused on bánh mì, the Vietnamese sandwich and Cà Phê Sữa Đá, or Vietnamese iced coffee, as a way to think about the history of French colonialism and the way cultures get hybridized as a consequence of terrible geopolitical forces. We ask students to analyze aspects of Vietnamese identity embedded in these products that came out of colonialism, then we prompt them to think about other such food or products from [their] own community—spaghetti or pizza, or whatever that they take for granted, as everyday products of consumption. These might tell a deeper and richer history, if you only pause to reflect and think about how your identity might be related to them.”

The textbook’s commitment to teaching about the complexity of identity is evident in the assignments, many of which are based on primary sources such as refugee art. Vo Dang says that these materials particularly resonate with younger learners.

of the USS Durham take Vietnamese refugees aboard a small craft in the South China Sea.

Above: Vietnamese refugees arrive on USS Hancock (CVA-19) in 1975.

Right: Ma Kim Ai, a young Vietnamese boatperson and refugee, rescued from the sea in 1980.

“It’s both art history [and] history … that really captures the lived experience, the feelings and the sentiments of people who are escaping a war-torn country,” she says.

“When you teach about refugees, what you’ll find is there are a ton of records that exist on refugee communities because they tend to be over-documented by state actors, by governments, by the United Nations, and all of these larger external forces … these are top-down records and were not created by these communities. They do not capture how individuals actually lived through, coped with, and survived these moments. You can’t really get at that without looking at the artwork that’s produced by them and the oral history and testimony that comes out of the community.

“That younger learners can be creative themselves and produce meaningful artwork from what they’re learning or co-create with their elders and community members … teaching all of that fosters a sense of a deeper investment in the stories that they’re learning,” says Vo Dang. “And for students who are represented by curriculum like that, it is empowering to see themselves represented, to see their stories be valued and taught. Students who aren’t represented in a chapter like the Vietnamese American experience can enrich and deepen their understanding of another culture and find intersections with their own culture.”

Professor Vo Dang underscores the inquiry-based connections between how students in the UCLA Department of Information Studies are trained in the archival fields, and how those same points of inquiry translate to K–12 education.

“These are models that can be scaled to the K–12 sector because these are all questions relevant in the high school curriculum: Whose voice matters? Who gets to write the narrative about the past? What are the tools that we use to write these narratives?” she says. “These are the types of questions that UCLA IS is training [our] students to ask, so it makes perfect sense to ask those questions at a younger age. When they are in their American history class or their world history class and they’re studying colonialism, they can apply these more critical and complex questions and think about themselves as actors in the creation and dissemination of these stories, so that when they see a gap in the K–12 textbook, they can ask, ‘What can I do to write counternarratives or fill in the gaps, and what are some of the methods that I can use?’

“It’s the sense of social responsibility that you want to instill [in students], that they have a role to play in knowledge production and the dissemination of knowledge,” says Professor Vo Dang. “And it leverages what students already have in their possession—that you kind of pull out a little bit more—which is curiosity.”

It’s both art history [and] history … that really captures the lived experience, the feelings and the sentiments of people who are escaping a war-torn country. When you teach about refugees, what you’ll find is there are a ton of records that exist on refugee communities because they tend to be over-documented by state actors, by governments, by the United Nations, and all of these larger external forces … these are top-down records and were not created by these communities. They do not capture how individuals actually lived through, coped with, and survived these moments.

Professor Vo Dang holds a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from University of California, San Diego and a B.A. in English and Asian American Studies from Scripps College. Before arriving at UCLA in 2022, she served as curator for the UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Archive and research librarian for Asian American Studies at UC Irvine. With research and teaching expertise in oral history, Southeast Asian diaspora, community archives, and cultural memory, Vo Dang brings an interdisciplinary approach to co-creating digital humanities and archival documentation projects with educators and community-based organizations. She serves on the board of directors for Arts OC and the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association.

A Tradition of Creativity and Artistic Expression

Throughout its history, UCLA Lab School has incorporated the visual and performing arts into every area of the curriculum, using the visual arts, music, creative movement, and dance to teach students ways to express emotions and represent ideas or understand culture.

The arts help children observe our world in new ways. They serve as a dynamic lens that can widen and deepen learning in other subject areas and enhance our ability to know and appreciate the variety of languages, cultures, and people that make up our global mosaic.