This post is from Open Dream Ensemble's General Manager, Rebecca Nussbaum.
It’s January in North Carolina so rather than snow, we are getting grey, drippy days. These are good days for thinking and reflecting as Open Dream Ensemble gears up for an eighth season. And, as if on cue this drippy day, the final report on our residency work arrived!
One new element to Season Seven was having an outside evaluator assess our residency work. Why? Because we wanted to better understand what happens over the course of a residency and some of the whys and hows of it. In order to improve, it becomes, at some point, necessary to see what is happening through neutral eyes trained to look at and understand the goings-on.
Open Dream Ensemble Residencies include integration that connects to the essential standards in science and the performing arts. Activities are created that incorporate arts and science concepts. Each day of the residency the Open Dream artists (teamed in pairs of two, mixed by gender and primary art form where possible) go into classrooms and work with elementary students on understanding science through active arts participation.
We undertook an evaluation that would look at three prongs of the residency. The first was looking at student learning and perceived knowledge as well as their attitudes about science and theater arts. The second was looking at classroom teacher reaction to the residency work. The third, was trying to understand the impact of working in a residency situation on the artist of Open Dream Ensemble.
Having a better understanding of all these elements allows for improved residency work on all three fronts. I m learning a great deal from the report and appreciate having more information as plans for teaching artist training and residency structure are considered for the upcoming season.
Included below are the preface and Executive Summary from the report. I do want to thank Debbie Randolph for her great, through, thoughtful and thought-provoking work on this assessment! I will be spending many of my quite January hours in reflection on how to improve the important work Open Dream Ensemble does in the schools of North Carolina.
PREFACE
This evaluation of the Open Dream Ensemble is an important contribution to our understanding of the roles of the arts in learning content in other disciplines. There are simply too few studies of arts integration efforts for us to know what works best and how. This evaluation shows the success of the program in achieving its goals for student learning and in having positive effects on both the artists and the teachers. It also does so for an art form that has not had systemic study as a form of arts integration. The fact that an ensemble art form generated these effects is a testimony to the promise of this approach to arts integration. It is also notable that Open Dream Ensemble built an evaluation into its efforts. Open Dream now knows more about its work but as importantly Open Dream Ensemble also has something to say more broadly because it sought a rigorous evaluation. Open Dream Ensemble has proven itself and challenges other arts integration efforts to do likewise. This challenge needs to be met. We can thank the UNC School for the Arts and the Open Dream Ensemble for issuing it.
George W. Noblit. Joseph R. Neikirk Distinguished Professor of Sociology of Education, School of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Students: To reach students through the arts and enliven science learning. MET IN ALL SCHOOLS
Artists: To help professional artists build skills as teaching artists and impart an enthusiasm for the arts and learning on the schools where they work. MET IN ALL SCHOOLS
Teachers: To help teachers recognize that there are ways to integrate the arts into curriculum in order to make learning deeper and more active. MET IN MOST SCHOOLS
Students
1200 Students served by residencies
+35 Average point increase in 3rd grade science vocab quiz mean score
77% Teachers who agreed that students increased their interest in science because of the residency
Artists
Working across art forms increased knowledge, confidence and risk taking
Demanding pace, intellectual rigor prepared artists for careers
Collaboration provided opportunities to negotiate relationships
Teachers
92% Teachers who agreed the residencies were successful
Teachers learned strategies for integrating the arts and science
81% Teachers who plan to extend ideas generated through residencies into the classroom
