Over the years, parents and educators have touted the benefits of arts programming in schools.
Visual arts, music, dance and theatre have long been promoted as creative outlets for kids during what might otherwise be considered a fairly routine schedule of classes: math, English, science, social studies.
But many artists and educators in Milwaukee see things a different way. They say it’s all about integrating the arts into those other subjects, to make the school day one big lesson and help kids make connections in their learning lives.
The Arts in Community Education program, or ACE, is an initiative that’s worked to make the arts a part of every class for more than 25 years. Run through the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, ACE serves students in kindergarten through fifth grade, in more than 25 Milwaukee area schools.
As part of the ACE program, each grade level is assigned a theme. Cultural partnersvisit member schools three to four times per year to administer lessons according to that theme. They include members of the MSO, Milwaukee Ballet and Skylight Music Theatre, as well as international partner institutions.
Every grade level also attends their own related "culminating concert" performed by the full MSO.
Karli Larsen, the MSO's director of education, says symphony members enjoy coming in and working with the kids.
"They get that immediate gratification of seeing [the kids] smile and enjoy -- as a performer that always feels good," she says. "I think they also feel a sense of satisfaction knowing that they're really contributing to a child's education in a very meaningful way."
But music class isn't the only place these experiences happen. The focus of the program is infusing arts into the rest of the school day.
One simple way this happens: each classroom teacher is issued a CD provided by the MSO, containing repertoire specific to each grade level's theme.
Walt Boyer, the music teacher at ACE member school Atwater Elementary in Shorewood, says this practice helps students not only learn but understand the concepts from his lessons.
"As the music educator, it's my job to give them active listening lessons about the form, the style, the story behind the music, and the classroom teachers, whenever possible, will actually play the music," Boyer explains. "The kids are really being saturated. They know it on a deeper level."
Over the course of the school year, students also participate in mini- and multi-phase projects connecting the musical repertoire they're learning to objectives in other courses. This brings all subject teachers and specialists together to plan and design learning experiences for kids -- not just music and art instructors.
"I think that's one of the most powerful things about the program, and about integrated learning in general," Larsen says.
Boyer says he thinks the project-based learning, infuse the arts throughout a student's day -- helps some of the students who might otherwise struggle in specific subjects.
"We all know that we have different skill levels -- some kids are more visual learners, some more tactile," Boyer says. "The ACE program gives kids an opportunity to really take advantage of their skill points that are strong, and then expand beyond them."
The new school year brings another exciting development for ACE schools. The MSO has commissioned local composer John Tanner to create original music for each grade, according to its' designated theme.
