Helping Teachers Integrate Math, Science and the Performing Arts

Those of us who were plopped in front of a piano at a young age (or, any parent who will drop their child off for music lessons after school today) might remember the mathematical challenges of learning how to read music. By counting the beats signified by all those half-notes and quarter notes, fledgling musicians work to gradually draw a melody out of what is written on the page.

These are a couple of the numerous connections between math and music—and though both mathematicians and musicians have long recognized the links, the two are often taught separately in early childhood classrooms or, as research has shown  to be the case with early math, hardly taught at all.

A new program from the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Va., will work to bridge the divide between science and art in early childhood settings. The program, called Early Childhood STEM Learning Through the Arts, is designed to train educators how to teach performing arts and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills side by side.

The program will be funded through a four-year, $1.15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination grant program. This year is focused on planning;  next year it will open as a pilot program with 10 artists who will train 40 teachers who serve 1,440 children in Fairfax County, Virginia. The American Institute of Research in Washington, D.C., will study the program’s impact.

Wolf Trap currently runs similar professional development workshops for early childhood educators, but without the focus on STEM training. These programs have been scaled up through partnerships with early childcare providers in 16 areas across the country. Mimi Falherty Willis, Wolf Trap’s senior director for education, hopes that if research shows the new program to be successful, Wolf Trap will eventually broaden access to its STEM Learning Through the Arts program as well.

Teachers who participate in Wolf Trap’s program will attend 16 sessions with an artist-in-residence. During the sessions, teachers are expected to learn about the artist’s performing art (dance, drama, or music), and how different science, technology, engineering, or math concepts can be taught via that art form. Once they have completed the programs, Wolf Trap hopes these teachers will be able to use new techniques and lesson plans that blend the performing arts with STEM teaching.

For example, teaching artist Rachel Knudson currently runs workshops for Wolf Trap’s early childhood professional development program. Her workshops focus on dance and math and are similar to those Wolf Trap will be creating as part of its new program. Rachel trains teachers how to expose young children to fundamental principles of math and dance. I took a look at the plan for one of her teaching sessions, which outlines a variety different mathematic and motor skills that kids can learn through dancing. Children are taught to count different movements, recognize different geometric shapes by forming them with their bodies, and make patterns by sequencing different moves in different orders.

Knudson sees pre-k children learning many mathematical skills and concepts from dance because it draws on complex understandings of geometry, measurements, timing, and mathematical processing.

When successful, giving pre-k teachers professional development in teaching these (and other STEM) concepts alongside performing arts in the classroom is a twofer: science and art learning are enriched by each other, and both are given starring roles in the classroom.