Hitting the right notes

Between kindergarten and second grade, Iowa elementary students should develop the ability to read and notate simple rhythmic patterns.

Between third and fifth grade, they will have moved on to being able to read, sing and play sheet music. Eventually, they should be able to sequence, imitate, and repeat melodic ideas and use computers to create multimedia compositions around grades six through eight.

[pullout_quote credit="Leon Kuehner, Iowa Alliance for Arts Education" align="left"]“Now is the time when people will understand how we fit in to the total education of the students.” [/pullout_quote]These are just some of the new music standards released this month by the Iowa Department of Education as part of an effort to integrate the arts into the Iowa Core Curriculum.

Leon Kuehner, a retired 36-year music teacher with the Iowa Alliance for Arts Education, introduced the new standards to music educators of the Cedar Rapids school district last week in the Jefferson High School band room.

“This is the time for fine arts,” said Kuehner, formerly of the Hampton-Dumont School District. “Now is the time when people will understand how we fit in to the total education of the students.”

The Iowa Core, which became law in May 2008 under former Gov. Chet Culver, sets down academic standards for Iowa's public school students.

The language of the original legislation created a mandate for the Iowa Core to cover math, science, English and language arts and social studies as “core content areas.” The law also called for the content to address “21st century skills,” which include civic, financial, technological and health literacy.

But fine arts and music, as well as other common content areas such as foreign language, are not mentioned in the law, and were not addressed in the initial versions of the Iowa Core.

That concerned many Iowa teachers in arts-related areas and their professional organizations, such as the Iowa Bandmasters, Iowa Music Educators Association and Art Educators of Iowa. Those groups met with the Iowa Department of Education shortly after the development of the Iowa Core to register their concerns, which began the development of the new standards.

Two years later, a draft of the music standards was released through the education department's website, while standards for other fine arts subjects, such as drama and visual arts, are in the final stages of review.

The process was led by Rosanne Malek, an arts consultant at the Iowa Department of Education and a 16-year music teacher. She created a process for the professional groups that were concerned about the lack of arts in the Iowa Core to create their own standards based on their members' experiences and the national standards of their affiliated organizations.

One of the problems with teaching the arts is that they can be subjective. Whether its visual arts, drama, speech or music, different people frequently have varying interpretations of how the fields are defined. So it's important that the standards are not focused on specific content requirements or they could become overly restrictive, Malek said

“They are not content-controlled, but skills and concepts all kids need to learn regardless of what classroom they are in,” she said. “Many of them were already represented in reading, math and science.”

Districts and teachers using the new standards will get an idea of what students should be taking away from their instruction with the goal being to improve the quality of teaching.

As an example, Malek reviewed an excerpt from the new standards for the teaching of drama to kindergarten through third grade students. The document connects the production of in-class plays to improving students' communication skills.

Some of those skills include assuming different roles, sharing verbally and nonverbally, participating in making changes to their presentations and using feedback to guide those changes.

Such standards help emphasize the importance of arts in school curriculum by demonstrating their value to children, said Kuehner, who encouraged the Cedar Rapids teachers to embrace the change.

“It's so easy for the fine arts to align with these, as our classrooms already are based on what kids can show and demonstrate,” he said. “Either they get it, or they don't.”

Link to report on standards.

K-8 General Music Iowa Core Alignment