Arts Education Spans Grade Levels and Disciplines

What do Washington State history, Native American history and culture, geology, mathematics, photography, drawing, and metalworking have in common? They’re all linked to an art project Pateros School students created through Methow Arts’ Artist-in-Residence program.

Under the direction of Riverside artist Bruce Townsend-Cook and Pateros art teacher Tina Tharp, high school art students created a woven copper relief of a Native American basket form to honor the first local inhabitants of our area as well as the 200th anniversary of Canadian explorer David Thompson, who first encountered the Methow Indians living along the Columbia River in 1811.

April 2011 found the Pateros students visiting pictographs (pictures painted on rock) and petroglyphs (pictures chipped into rock) in Black Canyon and Vantage, accompanied by two tribe members from the Colville Nation: fine artist Georgia Tongel and storyteller and write Kathy Wormer. The two tribe members accompanied the class to the rock art sites and provided information about the cultural traditions of the early inhabitants of those areas.

The rock art serves as inspiration for the students, who will design contemporary pictograph symbols to be cut out of sheet copper and colored with a patina before being soldered onto the basket, which will be woven with copper and cable wire. The juxtaposition of the ancient and contemporary designs will represent the time relationship of our past, present, and future.

The basket, which symbolizes how education can fill each student with lifelong lessons, was dedicated and displayed at the Pateros School last October.

It’s residencies like this one—as well as any of the more than 100 classroom residencies coordinated by Methow Arts’ education program—that contribute to overall student academic and social achievement, including higher grades and test scores, future employment success, and community involvement and leadership.

The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities recently released a study that shows a strong correlation between a high-quality arts education and academic accomplishment in other subjects. Additionally, it shows that students exposed to a consistent program of visual and performing arts are more motivated and engaged and have higher attendance rates than those who lack arts education. Those students also develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, a strong grasp of spatial relationships, and the ability to collaborate effectively.

There is little argument against the intrinsic value of arts education and the cultural literacy and artistic techniques it imparts. But the link between arts education and other instrumental outcomes such as improved academic performance is generating broad support, even in the face of reduced arts funding at state and federal levels. If, as studies show, students do well (academically) and do good (socially) due to art, we need to prioritize it in curricula and budgets. After all, as one student wrote, “Art inspires me to do my best work!”

Methow Arts Education Programs are supported generously by: NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS, WASHINGTON STATE ARTS COMMISSION, COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF NORTH CENTRAL WASHINGTON, KIWANIS, ROTARY, NCNB, METHOW VALLEY NEWS, LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICTS, ICICLE FUND, BUTLER FAMILY FOUNDATION and numerous local business sponsors and individual donors who believe in the ARTS! Thank you.

(Left Above, Pateros students make basket after traveling to observe pictographs and petroglyphs in Central Washington)