Chatting creative arts podcasts

Chatting creative arts is a podcast addressing important issues in the arts.

Julia Brennan, K-6 Creative Arts Advisor discusses each artform with a variety of guests including leading arts educators and teachers, artists and industry professionals.

A special collaborative episode with the Early Learning Matters podcast. This episode explores the importance of creative arts in the early years including early childhood and the first years of school.

Transcript of Creative arts in the early years

[upbeat music]

Jacqui Ward

Welcome to another Early Learning Matters podcast, and we've also got a combined podcast today with the Chatting Creative Arts team. So, this podcast is focused in on creative arts in the early years, and that's talking about the importance of creative arts in the early years, including early childhood in the first years of school. My name is Jacqui Ward. I'm the Early Learning coordinator at the Department of Education, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Julia and Gai. I'll leave it to you to introduce yourselves.

Julia Brennan

Hi, my name is Julia Brennan. I'm the K-6 Creative Arts advisor for our Department of Education in New South Wales and today I'm with Doctor Gai Lindsay who's a lecturer in the early years degree at the University of Wollongong. Her PhD thesis explored the visual arts beliefs and pedagogy of early childhood educators. Welcome Gai.

Gai Lindsay

Thank you, it’s great to be here.

Julia

Would you like to tell us a bit more about your research Gai?

Gai

Yes absolutely. So, I guess the background of my story is that I taught preschool for more than 20 years and I was a preschool teacher and director. I had been trained in both primary and early childhood, but my whole career had been in the early childhood space, mainly in New South Wales, but a little time in Western Australia as well. I guess what led me into doing my research, it wasn't something I'd ever had an ambition to do, I hadn't thought I would ever be a university lecturer.

But I'm somebody who has a passion for the arts in early childhood pedagogy, but again and again I used to see examples of practice that made me ask lots of questions. I used to see educators saying the arts were really important, but at the same time putting up lots of identical stencil type activities on the wall in the name of art. And I guess that career experience, my professional experience, was what opened the door to doing research because I just really felt frustrated that while educators were saying the arts were important, it wasn't playing out in what I saw in practice. I’d so often hear my colleagues and other teachers and early childhood educators saying all but I'm not the creative one, I'm not the artistic one on our team and therefore people were floundering a bit.

So, I talked to a colleague at the University of Wollongong and said what can we do about this? Obviously, there's some sort of a glitch, and so that's what's really opened the door for me. Initially it was a masters by research, because again I hadn't pictured myself doing a doctorate. So, I started that and then the findings just really showed that this was an area that needed further exploration and deeper exploration. So it led into me doing a PhD while I taught at the uni, and then now I'm in a full time position as a lecturer in the early years team. So yeah, it's been an interesting and very unexpected journey for me.

Julia

Wow, thank you, Gai for sharing that with us. It's amazing and very inspiring.

So, we've heard a lot about the last, the most recent parts of your career, but how did your arts education journey start before that?

Gai

Well, I guess like all of us, it starts when we're very young with whatever experiences we have in early childhood. I actually do remember my very first experience. I went to one of the first preschools in Toowoomba where I grew up a place called Little Glen. I remember it was in a big old Queenslander house. I don't remember much else about it except for this room where I got to go and do finger painting. So that's a really early memory for me and I guess throughout my primary and high school education, I was always drawn to the arts, both visual arts particularly, but also music. I've always played keyboard and flute and been a singer and been in choirs. But certainly with the visual arts it was just a language that I wanted to speak and that I wanted to learn better and communicate with and play with.

And so for me, that desire to communicate through visual tools and methods was sort of ingrained in me from early childhood. Not that anyone in my family practiced any visual arts so that wasn't an influence. But it was just something I was always drawn to and when I was making art, or enjoying the arts, or going to an art gallery, it just took me to a place that was fulfilling and peaceful and what Csikszentmihalyi calls being in the zone; that flow theory idea of just being in the right place and doing what I was meant to be doing. So no, I haven't had any formal arts training apart from what I did in high school. But then self-taught since then really, doing online courses and different experiences, and I guess just not being afraid to play with materials and try them out and experiment with them, which is what we want for children I think.

Jacqui

Absolutely, that's great. Thanks Gai. I've had the privilege to listen to you speak a few times and find what you say inspirational and am interested to hear about your research. I guess you've covered a little bit there about what it has meant to you personally, but I'd be really interested to see how the arts have influenced your life professionally. Because I know you talk about engaging with the arts and the work that you did as a teacher with children right through to your PhD. Would you like to share a bit of information about that?

Gai

Yes. So professionally, I think this connection of the arts to education, it's been incredibly fulfilling to do some deeper thinking about that and to draw upon some of the foundational theorists in this space. Going back as far as Froebel and Rousseau, who talked about learning by doing, and then, coming into John Dewey’s work, learning through play, and that play-based holistic curriculum where the arts are at the centre of everything. I love Elliot Eisner’s work, in terms of the way he said that the arts should be more centralised in our education systems, he really drew upon Dewey’s work in a lot of his thinking.

Well, where do you begin? I mean, there's lots of research evidence that highlights the benefits that exist when children are engaging in arts experiences. I mean, some of the literature says things like, some of the benefits of the arts are; cross disciplinary learning, Elliot Eisner wrote a lot about that, in Australia, Felicity McArdle has written a lot about that. Carlina Rinaldi in Italy has done a lot of work around that idea of cross disciplinary learning. Children can get - the research backs this up to this isn't just my opinion, so this is children gain motivation, enjoyment, critical thinking, problem solving, self-discipline, self-regulation, which we all know from recent research, is the number one quality that guarantees success at school, is the capacity to self-regulate and cope with frustration and all of that.

The arts foster positive attitudes to learning through creative learning experiences, through fostering and valuing children's imaginations. And don't we want to do that? Inspire children to want to learn, so that if we could teach science utilising drawing activities, if we could learn mathematics through music, then I think we'd see a whole lot of children much more switched on to learning than the really didactic, narrow focused learning in silos that unfortunately can happen.

I think it's also important to remember researchers like Dewey and like Robin Ewing, and like Elliot Eisner, who said that the arts foster aesthetic appreciation, awareness of beauty and that delight in appreciating that all-encompassing feeling you get when you listen to an amazing piece of music or lose yourself in an art making process. But it's also about children developing tools for communication and meaning-making, and Eisner also talked about this idea of developing skills for children to navigate a globalised world. So, they say that the jobs children will have in 30 years’ time; we don't know what those jobs are, so we can't actually prepare them for the future, but what we can do is support them to be creative thinkers and problem solvers and persistent and to tackle problems in different creative ways.

But what I found when I was doing my literature searches for my research is that all of those benefits that I just listed and that are talked about by numerous scholars, Anne Bamford actually said that in her review of all of the literature, she said that those benefits only come about for children when effective and quality provisions are made by the teachers who are working with them. And for me that really impacted the way I was thinking about my work and now my work preparing the next generation of early childhood teachers. It's not enough to put out some activities on a table and think that you're going to achieve all of those benefits for children. The teacher, the adult who is making the curriculum decisions, they are the number one key ingredient to where their children are going to get all of those benefits that can come from the arts. And that was certainly at the centre of my PhD research. I really was focusing on what are the beliefs and choices that the teachers were making that drove their pedagogy or that informed their pedagogy and yes, it was interesting, we found some interesting things.

Jacqui

You’ve said some amazing things there Gai, lots of different things that I would love to comment on, but I'm going to move on to our next question there, which is just thinking about, so we've talked about the pedagogy there, could we bring it around to the curriculum and let's sort of unpack a bit about the misunderstandings about the place of the arts in both the Early Years Learning Framework and in the curriculum in early stage one in schools or beyond. What are your thoughts and would you like to discuss a little bit more about the way the arts are framed in those spaces?

Gai

Yes, sure. I mean obviously in the Early Years Learning Framework one would assume that it would have the arts at the core of it and yet the arts are not really mentioned terribly much in the Early Years Learning Framework. Hopefully that might be something that is addressed a bit more in the review that’s happening now. But essentially, when you look at the Early Years Learning Framework, those visual and creative languages are sort of embedded within notions like communication and children's identity, confidence. Multiple intelligences are mentioned fleetingly, but there's actually no specific guidance for educators, and I'm talking about visual arts here, because that's what I really analysed. But in speaking with colleagues doing research in the music space, there are similar issues around the lack of specificity in the Early Years Learning Framework around what to teach.

That's where the ACARA curriculum is actually quite helpful and I often direct my early years students to have a look at that, because at the very least, it's outlining some of the possibilities around the different visual arts domains. It's spelling out what you might do with drawing, with painting, with clay, and so on. And so, I think the issue around our Early Years Learning Framework, and even to an extent that the curriculum for the primary years, is that if there isn't specific support and guidance around what quality visual arts pedagogy might look like, then educators who lack that knowledge are falling back on their own assumptions or their own individual beliefs. And in fact, the educator’s guide highlights that. In the educator’s guide for the EYLF it says that without a guiding framework or some clear ideas about what quality visual arts pedagogy could and should look like then educator’s individual images, beliefs and values about children and what they should be and what they should become; that's what's actually influencing the planned and the unplanned curriculum.

And the problem with that, as I see it, is that then children's experiences will vary from teacher to teacher depending upon the confidence of the teacher. But also, the capacity of the teacher to interpret the curriculum documents and see where the arts actually sit, or where they would fit under the banner of communication. So, if you don't have arts knowledge, then you might read that section of the framework that talks about strategies to support children's communication and only be thinking about verbal and auditory communication rather than visual communication or musical communication or communicating through dance. So, we don't know what we don't think about. We don't dwell or we don't plan for something that we aren't aware of and that certainly did come through in my research with my participants. A lot of them said they knew the arts were important, but very few of them could articulate the specifics about what they had learned at uni or in their vocational training for example. So it was all very broad and not specific enough, and I think that's the risk, is that without that specific domain knowledge, that subject content knowledge or pedagogical content knowledge, as Schulman called it, then we’re sort of operating in a vacuum, and what my research suggests is if people have very little memory of their of their coursework at university or in their vocational training, then when they're looking for something to implement in the curriculum, they'll go to what feels safe. And for a lot of people what feels safe is found on Pinterest, and I'm not an enemy of, I don't hate Pinterest, it serves some great purposes for collecting ideas and sharing and disseminating what can be great ideas sometimes.

But, if educators don't have the capacity to evaluate the quality of an experience, because of what they know about how children learn, because of what they know about the visual arts, methods and techniques, for example, then they'll go to what feels safe because people want a formula. They want to know, they want to feel like they're doing the right thing by children, they want to keep children busy and happy, and they want to create items that the parents will like and all of those sorts of traps that that we fall into if we're not confident in our own pedagogy. Does that answer? I'm sort of waffling again, but it’s complex.

Julia

I think that's really good and it actually is a beautiful segue into where we were hoping to take the conversation next, which is the difference between a learning experience and an activity. So busy work, as you have just identified and also that idea of the mass production of identical artworks that we have all seen and then we get into the process versus product debate, there's so many little things in there. But I think even coming back to that first point about your Pinterest teaching, and I mean I've got friends who are high school visual arts teachers and they tell me exactly the same thing is happening there too. So, let's talk about the difference between a learning experience and an activity.

Gai

Yeah, so for me, and I've got to credit my wonderful colleague in Ireland, Evelyn Egan, who has some great resources online, if you want to hunt for her as well. Evelyn and I have had numerous conversations over the years about this difference between an experience and an activity, and certainly John Dewey talked about the difference way back in the 1940s and 50s. So, he talked about art as an experience, which sort of goes back to what we were saying before about that holistic approach to the arts, where the arts is, well, what I call it is the arts are the glue that should hold the curriculum together, that we should be integrating right across the curriculum.

So, from my research, what I really came to the conclusion of, was that art as an activity is certainly something that happens in early childhood centres and in schools. But what that looks like, for me, is those one-off activities, so it's getting the idea off the internet it's preparing all the materials, often huge labour job for the educators, because you're getting all the bits of paper ready and you're making the template, the thing that the children will copy or the example for them to follow, and it has a beginning and an end. It's often very product focused and it often isn't being built upon what the children already know, the skills they might already have or their interests.

And so when Dewey talked about art as an experience he was talking about that idea, and we certainly see examples of this in quality centres, and I'm a bit of a student of the Reggio Emelia approach, and so their approach to utilising the arts as a language sort of draws upon this idea that it's not a one-off experience. We're building, we’re scaffolding, we’re actually basing our experiences on what children have shown an interest in and then we're extending and expanding that. And I love what Dewey, in his very quaint old American style of writing... I mean, he's appalling to read really, because he's a bit like me he waffles on and on, and you fight to get to the point.

But anyway, he sort of likened those one-off activity type experiences being like food that is not nutritious. So, he didn't actually use the word junk food. I've sort of adapted what he said, but if we're thinking about that, well children love junk food so children love these activities too. So, a lot of educators will justify, we all made a hungry caterpillar out of a piece of egg carton, and some pipe-cleaners and some googly eyes and stuck some crepe paper all over it right? And a lot of people will say, “oh but the children love it, they love it!” Well yes they do, but children don’t know what the alternative is if we don't expose them to the richness of that; and if we don't believe that they're capable of doing a drawing of a caterpillar, researching caterpillars, learning about caterpillars and exploring them through multiple arts methods, on multiple occasions. And so, I love what Dewey challenges us to think about. That material relationships, relationships with the materials and tools that we use when we're making art should never be a one-off thing. hat's like saying I'm going to learn French this Friday afternoon. And then I'm going to learn a bit of Chinese next Friday afternoon. It'll be fun! And then the week after that we'll do a bit of Spanish. How do we expect anyone to develop fluency in a language that has such great value for children, if we're just dipping in and out of these transient, meaningless, product-focused activities that don't even empower the child as an artist? That don't even teach them skills and techniques that can sustain them across numerous experiences?

So, I like to think about developing relationships with materials and you don't develop relationships unless you spent time experimenting to start with, getting to know the material, what language does it speak? What marks does it make? What happens if I do this? What happens if I use it, use this charcoal on cardboard instead of paper etc etc. So when people are sort of saying... Oh, I get really frustrated on social media, because I don't know about the primary school teachers listening, but the early childhood teachers will hear what I'm saying. Because there's some social media groups where people will jump on and ask advice. You often hear people jump on and go “ladies”, to which I want to reply there are men in early childhood too let's be respectful in our language. But the, “Ladies, it's Father's Day coming up,” I saw one of them this morning, “Father's Day is coming up, has anyone got any ideas of what we can do?” And I think people are hungry for ideas, which is so ironic because I could use charcoal with a group of children for three months straight and they wouldn't get bored. Because it'd be developing that relationship with the material and meaningfully exploring the kinds of marks you can make and how you might extend that and expand upon that. And I know in my teaching experience with young children, I just never found they ever got bored.

Jacqui

I think you raise some really good points there Gai, and for me that comes down to a disconnect between even the way we refer to those names then activity-based learning experience, and when you think about it as a learning experience, you're going to think about it in a different way as opposed to an activity to do for Father's Day or whatever it might be. So, thank you for that great exploration on those ideas and concepts. I hope we've inspired lots of educators to think a little bit differently I guess about the way they plan experiences and the way they reflect on the learning that is encompassed within those ideas.

So, moving back to, I guess, now that knowledge of self and you talked about the importance of educator identity, confidence, knowledge and self-efficacy for the arts, that concept knowing what to teach and how to teach it, I think is fundamental across a lot of areas that we talk about. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you think this is so important?

Gai

Yes. So, self-efficacy is a concept, like you said, it's that idea of knowing what to teach and how to teach it. But self-efficacy refers to the confidence of the educator to be able to take what they know and translate it into the curriculum that they offer to children. And for me, I sort of intrinsically felt, when I saw all of those issues happening in my practice as an early childhood teacher and director, when I kept hearing people say I'm not artistic, I'm not the artistic one but, but, but, but. I really felt that the core of that was educator confidence with the arts, and that disconnect that had happened for them in their early childhood or in their schooling experience.

[end of transcript]

Transcript of In conversation with Charemaine Seet, Director of Seet Dance in Surry Hills

[upbeat music]

Julia Brennan

Hi everybody and welcome back to chatting Creative Arts. It's great to have you here today. Today is gonna be really exciting, we're actually working with the most incredible dancer. Her name is Charmaine Seet and we are so so lucky to have her with us today.

I met Charemaine for the first time a few weeks ago actually which was really exciting. Working on a collaborative project together with the Sydney Opera House where she does a lot of work in a project all about bodies as buildings and we've been doing a little bit of work on dance and wellbeing and various other exciting things about the ways that teachers in the K-6 classroom can actually use dance with their students in ways that they didn't even know were possible.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to the incredible Charmaine Seet. Hi Charmaine.

Charemaine Seet

Hello Julia and what a lovely introduction. Thank you so much and thank you for the invite.

Julia

And it is all true.

[Charemaine laughs]

It it's all true and listeners what you're gonna learn about Charmaine is that she's just this incredibly humble little lady who is just an incredible surprise package with all of her gifts that she has to share.

So Charemaine currently is the director of Seet Dance in Surry Hills, and she works with the creative leadership and learning team at the Sydney Opera House, working on dance programs for their new Centre for Creativity and really working on ways of building teacher capacity in K-6 dance in the classroom and beyond. And also working with students in how they can understand what dance actually means and how it can work in the classrooms. So, thanks for coming and sharing all of your incredible knowledge with Charmaine.

Charemaine

Total pleasure Julia thank you actually. It’s lovely.

[Laughter]

Julia

Well, let's get started Charemaine so. Tell us all about where and how and when all of your dance journey first started.

Charemaine

Ok, I have a really interesting story because I grew up in Southeast Asia and the first moment that I thought ‘I love dance and this is going to be my life’ was when I was in, I guess you're 7 and it was a public school where they had to have a dance event and a show and they needed a tiny dancer [laughs]. And they looked through the whole school. No one was really studying dance, so they looked at me and said, your tiny, you're gonna be in it and I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I'm being recruited’. Had no idea what it was going to be. They needed me to be small so the boys could lift me up in the air [laughs].

And so I was in this production and I was like absolutely gobsmacked by the whole event. I just loved every moment of it and that's when I said I have to find a way to learn how to do this for my life. And that was there when I started to look for dance schools and teachers and such. But I thought it was just a great introduction 'cause I was thrown in the deep end and it was an adventure. An adventure with all these different kids, performing in front of people it was just magic.

Julia

Wow. Sounds exciting, and for those of you who can't see Charemaine. There's actually going to be some footage released of Charemaine doing some dancing at the Opera House. She is a tiny dancer [laughs].

Charemaine

Well, I grew a bit more. [laughs]

Julia

And incredible one that.

And then personally, I mean the, you know, wherever you go, whatever pathways you take in your life, you meet people. So I met my husband when I was a dancer, you know what happens. And on a very, very personal level similar to you know what I said before? And life you know as you go through life, you know when you're a kid your experiences are certain thing and dance has been with me the whole way.

And we're gonna come to that one later too. 'Cause that's coming back to that whole idea of skill that we were talking about before. So, we'll come back to that one. So, I just want to tap into something that we've been working on and perhaps unpack a little bit about what dance can mean for our students.

So, a few weeks ago, we were working in the filming of a project about creative arts and wellbeing. And I've talked about that already, called ‘Tuning In’. And you filmed a segment that to me it was just mind boggling and I can't wait for anyone listening to actually see it because I've just had the privilege of showing Charemaine some of it and I think it actually blew your mind as well Charemaine.

[Laughter]

It's such an incredible piece of footage. Anyway, so speaking of which, if you haven't enrolled, you can enrol through DART learning. It's all sitting there, ready to be enrolled in and looked at it. And you were exploring the role of our surroundings. So, place and space in the process of dance composition, or what traditionally some people might know as choreography. Talk to us about this situation and your inspiration in general. So we’re coming back to that inspiration work.

Charemaine

Yeah, so I think one of the things that can be… it's like a writer having a blank page. What do I do? How do I come up with movement or dance? You know know people come across this moment where they're trying to find an idea and one of the things that a lot of dancers use to create that moment of inspiration is to look around their environment and look at things in the room and really look and maybe observed the shape and maybe even the texture of a thing and try and use that as an instruction or an inspiration.

Charemaine

Well, I think what you say about storytelling is so important, Julia. It's all about being human and what we have inside and what we've inherited from family, from culture. And I think that when we as people can bring those into our beings and then express them again. It's like a translation of a legacy or a feeling inside or community, and I think those connections to history and story and community. They bind everyone together in a very loving and beautiful way. And it helps people or students to feel connected to something larger.

But also, at the same time to have that individual voice. And an interpretation of what you've received from your family, your world, your teachers, your community. And also, that personal expression really helps us to actually explore who we are as people, and I think that's part of developing as a young person, if you're a student, but throughout life we all go through changes. And understanding yourself, having that great relationship with self, I think is so important.

Julia

Uh huh, so really building up to that understanding of self and using dance as a way to capture your individual voice and express that individual voice.

Charemaine

Yes, that sounds beautiful.

Julia

You said it, not me.

[Laughter]

Charemaine

But you said it again and I really appreciate that.

[Laughter]

I think one of the things Julia, if I could expand a little, uh, the thing about individual voice and it comes back to what you said about tiaras and tutus et cetera. And how we see these templates of dance around us that seem to exclude others and I think that's why emphasizing your individual voice is very important, because the dance at each of us makes is going to be completely unique.

And that's what we're looking for in contemporary dance, as an ideal, in a way. What can I bring that's new and unique to me and then share that with the world?

Julia

Beautiful thank you. So, everybody needs to hear what you've just said. Everyone needs to hear that.

So, I'm assuming that people have heard that now. Is it possible for a teacher, is the $6 million question here. Is it possible for a teacher with limited experience to teach dance? If your answer is yes, which I'm hoping it is, but no pressure how? How can you do it if you don't have much experience?

I mean the example that I quoted before about the work that we did in the tuning in wellbeing and the arts project. I already said that you blew my mind with the creative way that you looked at something so simple that I've walked past a lot of times, a pattern in concrete. I've never stopped to think I'll one day this will be a dance piece.

What you did was so engaging you just took something so simple as something that's around us all the time and you made it really engaging in a really accessible lesson. So, tell us about how you go about doing things like that for. Remember, we're talking into our teachers here who may be our little nervous about taking this plunge.

Charemaine

Sure. I understanding being nervous because you know, if something seems like it's hard to do or complex, that can make us feel you know, little reluctant or nervous about it.

I think what you said is exactly right Julia. It's really being open to our environment and being open to own sense of creativity. I think as teachers often, we're really good at being good at our job, and sometimes that makes us feel, you know that we're not good at another thing. Like you know, creativity or dance that we've never done before, but it's that moment of trying to be an explorer again. What am I? What can I do? All of us have it and all teachers are super creative. That's you know, absolutely the case. It's just tapping into that creativity. And maybe feeling that ‘Yeah, I can do this. I have confidence that I know what I can do with my body and what I do with my body is absolutely a dance if I want it to be’.

I know that sounds a bit like woah if I say it's a dance, but I really mean that if we just stand in space and look around us as you felt I did the other day. I'm just saying if I can just feel how this environment gives me ideas and be open to that, what I offered to the student is that openness, showing them that my imagination is running free and I'm not gonna edit it. I'm just gonna try it. Experiment, put some music on, move around, get those ideas going and that's all it is. That is, what dance is. I don't think it's much more complicated than that.

Julia

Wow.

Charemaine

And I think it's.

Julia Brennan

So. Sorry. [Laughs]

Ok, so if that's the case, what are some examples that you've used when working with teachers to build their capacity in dance, in the classroom? We're not talking about in a dance studio, we're talking about our K-6 classroom teachers. You can tell us about some of your best lessons or best moments, or whatever floats your boat.

Charemaine

Yeah. I mean one of my favorite lessons to do with people who I've assigned to like activate the imagination can movement is to get them to think about the environment around them in a different way.

Like I'd say, imagine you're standing in a forest, you know and go through like a storytelling thing. Close your eyes and try and smell the forest and walk around and all this and get you know the feeling of what's around you. And I try and get them to think about the sensations as well. Like you know, is it cold? Is it hot? Whatever sensations you can feel. Then I say now imagine you put that inside your body. How does that make you move around the room now?

And it's like you know it's a bit like a meditation in a way. But it's also a kind of an exercise for imagination to be able to be open to that feeling of ‘I'm not sure, but I'm ok to be with the not sure’. So that's one scenario, I really like.

Charemaine

Well, Julia, I think what you have tapped on is like the idea that you have to have a lot of technique and skill in like how you move your body. And I think from a contemporary dance point of view, which is where I'm at. Every person's body has a unique movement to it and so I don't feel like skill comes into it in that sense, in terms of how we move our bodies.

And then there's the other like area of skill, which is do I know how to make a dance and to make meaning out of movement? That sounds very complex and like maybe a little esoteric. And I think in that sense too, I think it's really about, how far imaginations can go and how open we are to just experiment again, that is a skill we all have as humans. Trying something new, being open, using our imaginations.

So, building a dance is as easy as ‘oh I wanna tell a story and this is how I'm gonna do it’. And there's so many ways. There's a million and trillion ways to do it and every, every way is right. Every way is right. I always say this to my students ‘There's no wrong in this room there's only experimenting there's no wrong so just keep going’ you know.

Julia

So in a nutshell, the answer is no, we don't need to have high level dance skills in our classroom.

Charemaine

Julia

Ah. We'll have to do it again sometime. Now for those of you listening, don't forget to subscribe to Chatting Creative Arts, and I will look forward to another inspiring guest very soon.

Thank you again, Charmaine Seet, for being with us today. It has been such a joy to work with you and to have a chat with you this morning. So, thank you and we'll talk again soon everybody. See you later.

[upbeat music]

[end of transcript]

Transcript of In conversation with Ruby Kerr and Olivia Havelka from Anzac Park Public School

[music]

Julia Brennan

Welcome back to chatting Creative Arts at my name is Julia Brennan and I am Creative Arts advisor for K-6 in our great state of New South Wales. So, I'm really glad that you've all joined us today. Today's conversation is going to be truly inspiring. We're working with two early career teachers from Anzac Park Public School.

We've got Ruby Kerr and Olivia Havelka and they are both stage one teachers who are talking to us about the incredible work they've been doing in creative arts and concept-based curriculum, and we're really excited to hear about the new and innovative ways that they have been approaching their students learning. So welcome ladies, it's great to have you here today.

Olivia Havelka

Thank you for having us.

Ruby Kerr

Yeah

Olivia

Pretty excited to be sharing all that we've learned and some of the great stuff that you've helped us do with our school Julia so keen to share.

Julia

Right, well I am so excited for everybody to hear about the incredible work you two are doing. It's absolutely amazing, so thank you for being here.

Alright, let's get cracking. So first of all, let's find out a little bit about your background, your context, all of those sort of things. So, tell us about you, your school, your passions in education, where it's taken you throughout the years. Off you go, ladies.

Ruby

Uh, so I'm in my fifth year of teaching, and I've been teaching it Anzac Park for two years now and then. Before that I was at another school and so I think I'm really inspired by innovative pedagogy and that's great. 'cause it links really well with what Anzac Park it has as a focus and its tide in really well with all of these programs and things that we've been working on

Olivia

I have been at Anzac Park for four years. I was really attracted Anzac Park’s vision for learning, and especially over the past few years in our school plan, we've really focused on developing as a new school that vision for learning and making it clear. So, we've had a big focus on STEAM education on conceptual programming here at Anzac Park Public so within our innovative learning environments so utilizing those spaces has been a big focus for us in our classrooms. We've also looked at developing 21st century capabilities.

And within our new school plan, we have a focus on synergy which further develops and focuses on those global competence, which serves linked beautifully to our Creative arts conceptual program that we worked on with Julia really developing those critical thinking creative thinking skills.

Julia

Olivia

Absolutely. Beautifully said. So, you know, we obviously believe in this program, but in terms of your assessment and evaluation and all of those kind of things, how successful was this project? Have you got some moments that emerged from this to teaching and learning journey that you might like to share with us?

Ruby

Julia

So exciting and I love too that you're just having those regular check-ins and you're looking out for some specific things around creative thinking as well as all of your arts things that you were trying to achieve and also the understanding of what that concept is. There's so many layers of assessment that you built into it, which is just amazing and so exciting for our students and for their learning.

Alright, so you two would probably describe yourselves as being proficient, but perhaps not experts in creative arts. I'm making it pretty big assumption here.

Ruby

Yeah, I know, right.

Olivia

Absolutely. I think having that base of things for them to you know, experiment with you in the classroom, but also quality pieces of visual arts, music, dance, drama to appreciate. I think you've really opened up my eyes Julia to where I can be looking for those pieces. And you know, thinking about, I know, I remember that you found one Mondrian artwork that I'm familiar with, but I wouldn't have necessarily thought to bring it into my Creative Arts program.

So just thinking about the different types and where we can find them. I know we had a conversation about I think it was one of our art galleries in New South Wales and you had seen an exhibit and bringing something new and current into the classroom was really exciting and a great way to engage our students in the current world of art.

Julia

That's really exciting today. And like you're saying, oh, you know, I learned all this stuff from you. I have learned a lot from you ladies too. In it's been a real shift in thinking and it's absolutely fantastic. Two other words that you said were explore and experiment. I love those, doesn't get any better in the arts, does it?

The safe environment thing absolutely so important and I love that you focused on the importance of process and not on having that perfect product. So the students are still learning so much through going through this whole process and not just relying on, ok, every lesson we've got to come up with a product. Doesn't have to work that way.

You two are an absolute inspiration for everybody. They're looking at each other going no we're not, but they actually are.

[Laughter]

Thank you so much for your time today and really sharing such a unique perspective and your incredible context that you're working in and also about your learning journey. Thank you for being so vulnerable through this entire process. It's just been amazing to learn together. I really appreciated your knowledge and willingness to take on new ideas. It's been absolutely brilliant, so thank you, girls. Well ladies, I should call you sorry.

[Laughter]

Olivia

Thank you, Julia. You provided us with an invaluable experience and we're so grateful and I know that our teams are too.

Ruby

Yep.

Olivia

And our students.

Julia

Well thats super exciting. All right, well everybody thank you so much for joining us today for Chatting Crative Arts and make sure you subscribe and keep listening to more exciting information about creative arts and I look forward to chatting with you all soon. Thanks everybody. See you later.

[upbeat music]

[end of transcript]

Transcript of In conversation with Dr James Humberstone from Sydney University

[upbeat music]

Julia Brennan

Wow. Um, yes. And that, that, look, that's huge. You've covered a lot of stuff in that last little answer. Can I just go back to one thing that you said that may mystify some people, you mentioned an aesthetic moment. What do you mean by that?

James

Yeah. So, I think, I think one of the things that's happened with music education is that back in the 1960s when we were formalising what's become to be, our kind of modern curriculum, the arts felt a real necessity to justify its place. And so, what we would tend to do is that we would say, well, music is very good because it can improve. You know, it can improve the standing of people. It can teach them how to be, you know, good well behaved, that we can make them sing songs about how to be good citizens and that kind of stuff. We can teach them what beautiful is. So that that left us then with a very kind of classical music-based music education and a very strict Western idea of what is beautiful.

Whereas to me, when you are actually ‘music-ing’ to use that word again, when you're actually in music playing with music, having fun with music, making music, listening, talking, discussing playing around with improvising, composing, then you are having aesthetic experiences. You're actually, you're actually getting understandings of those musics and those musical cultures which really contribute to your understanding of the world around you. And there's a lot of research about culturally responsive pedagogy which is something that came out of America to try and encourage teachers to engage with their students when they were teaching students who had a different cultural heritage to themselves.

But actually, every musical, I think every music class has some culturally responsive pedagogy in it. Because music gives us these opportunities to really connect with our students and connect with them through what I called aesthetic experience. But what I mean is that that buzzing moment when you're actually doing music.

Julia

‘The buzzing moment when you're actually doing music’. Beautiful. Thank you. I'm writing that down as we speak. I love it. So, a lot of people might be listening to you talking James and feeling inspired and thinking, wow, this is fantastic. But I might have limited experience in what I can consider to be able to teach music effectively. How do I get over that? Is it possible for me to teach it if I don't have much experience in music? How do we go about it?

James

Okay, so I'm going to turn this question on its head. Uh I really want to speak, I want to speak directly to the music, sorry, to the, to the teachers out there, not just the music teachers out there, to everyday classroom teachers, you know, what does that limited experience actually mean? Because there's nobody in the world who actually has limited experience with music. So, let's understand what we mean when we say that we're actually talking about what I'd call old fashioned music education. That old fashioned music education, which involves lots of writing notation on the board and lots of doing music theory and getting out instruments and being a conductor of the instruments and being able to sight sing off the score so that you can correctly teach the thing right to the kids in front of you. And of course, all of that stuff is incredibly useful if you want to do something like run a traditional concert band and those kind of things and schools have those and that's fantastic. So, I'm not for one second saying that those aren't fantastic things to be able to do.

But what I want to say, is that they are not music education for every child. And when we're in the classroom, we need music education for every child, not just the one whose parents want them to go and get a trumpet or a violin, not just for the ones who want them to be able to read and write music as good as wonderful as those things are. So, we have to turn the question around, we have to say, what should music education for every child look like? And as soon as you do that, you understand, you don't have limited experience because, you know, children, in fact, you know, your children and that is we know that the best thing that any teacher of any subject can have right, knowing the children, the human beings, the people in your class.

So, if you know your children, and you know your music, and you know their music, you don't actually have limited experience anymore because you've got that connection with them now. At this point you're saying yes, but I still don't know how to actually teach the music class. Yes, I know the kids. So, then I say, don't be afraid, you know, get rid of those notions of the high musical literacy being useful. Yes, musical literacy is a thing, we can all learn it, we can all go and do some extra professional development if we want to and add that to our teaching, but it's not what we need for the experience of doing music for every child in our music classrooms. So, sing the songs, you know, sing the songs that they know or that they would like to sing, ask them what they want to sing. Obviously you might be a little wary of some of the music that they'd like to sing. That's okay. These things can happen in negotiation with our kids. They do all day anyway around other things like, you know, the latest tv show or video game or whatever. Don't be afraid.

There's this terrible cultural thing in music education where if we're not playing it ourselves on the piano or reading it off a score, we're not doing it properly. That's rubbish, play the track off Spotify, use a backing track off YouTube. Don't worry about having to have things written down. If you can listen along to a song and tap the beat of the song, you've already got enough stuff to start making music, especially in the earlier stages. Immediately remember that most musical cultures around the world. And I'm talking about more than 90% whether traditional or modern commercial, do music by ear.

So, if you love music and you know the right music to put on in your classroom, start there, start with the kids start tapping a beat around, start trying to work out what notes are on the baseline. If you've got a random instrument in the class, something, get the kids to help you muck in and do it alongside them. And don't necessarily think that proper repertoire means classical music or folk songs out of those old school books. And again, I'm not being anti classical me, I'm a classically trained composer, so obviously I'm not being anti classical music, but the syllabus doesn't ask us to just teach classical music and folk songs. The syllabus asked us to teach a wide variety of musics that I'm saying ‘musics’ again.

Okay, so, so start with the culturally relevant repertoire, the repertoire that you like, and, you know, your kids will like because you know them well, that's incredibly valuable teaching resources, what's in your brain and your knowledge of issues and start with the music that they like and then work out from there. And if at that point then you sort of get into that dead end where you feel like you're doing a lot of the same kind of stuff, then that's a great time to start talking to creative arts advisors or get online and find other people and find what they're using.

You know, if you teach, if you teach Year 3 or you teach year 6, you might find that there's a specific number of songs that are just in the zeitgeist of the moment. You know, it's there's always two or three songs that every teacher is doing and they have worked out some fun way of, you know, turning it into a body percussion thing or stuff that doesn't require any theoretical music literacy is just a fun active way of doing it, but involves actively making music.

Julia

Fantastic. I'm actually working on teaching strategies guide as we speak, strategies that can be used across any sort of repertoire. So, fantastic. I love your idea of starting with something culturally appropriate for not only yourself, but also the students in your class and then basically getting out of the way.

James

That's right.

Julia

Yeah, that's right. So, James talked to us more specifically about composition as an overarching process. We know that in the case of the K-6 syllabus it's referred to as organizing sound and we know that that changes when the students get to stage 4. You and I recently had a conversation about research by Elliott and Silverman describing this process as ‘finger painting sound’. Give us your thoughts here.

James

Yeah, so, I mean, organizing sound is a wonderful term. We're very lucky to actually have that and not composition early on because it gets rid of a little bit of that idea, but similar to this idea of, you know, of having prior experience. I think the problem with, with composition as an idea for lots and lots of teachers and by the way this is exactly the same in high school with specialist music teachers, generally they hate teaching composition and the reason is because when we think of a composer and composition, we think of two things. Firstly, we think of a genius, usually a dead white male, but some kind of genius who thinks up these ready-made pieces of music. That's the first thing.

And then the second thing is that they write them down on a score for other people to play. And that's a very fixed idea of what composition and being a composer is. So, we have to kind of blow that up first. I'm a composer. I never, ever sit down with a fully formed piece in my head and write it straight down on a score. So as a composer, I'm sitting in my studio as we speak and I've got a bunch of different musical instruments around me. I've got my old trombone behind me and I've got a guitar, I've got several keyboards, I've got piano upstairs, and I will sit and tinker and play around with those. I love the I love the idea of tinkering because it sort of gets us across all of the different arts, doesn't it?

Julia

Yeah.

James

That's why the idea of ‘finger painting sound’ is a nice idea because when we finger paint, we dip our finger into the paint and then we pull it along the paper, we don't sit there saying what is the fully formed picture that I'm going to create going to look like. Now I can't possibly put my finger in the paint until I know exactly how this is going. And also, when we start making it, we don't think this isn't a Renoir so I must stop do we? We just finger paint. There's quite often this thing with teachers where they will say, you know, I can't teach composition because I can't write music like Beethoven. Well neither can I, you know, I make a living writing music and I can't write music like Beethoven and like, you know those geniuses only come along once in a while. But I can write a lot of music and a lot of people think a lot of my music's great. So that's enough.

So, with kids you've got to give them the same permission that you'd give them with that finger painting. So, give them a limited number of colours. What's the musical equivalent of a limited number of colours? A different number of sounds that don't have to be traditional instruments. If you've got traditional instruments for sure, give them some chime bars or some xylophones or whatever you've got in your classroom, some percussion instruments. But if you've just got, you know, voices and tables and chairs around you, you can those can be your materials and allow kids to make a cacophony. It's actually okay, you look at your average Year 3 finger painting. It's not great, it’s really not great, but it is expressive. It does usually show evidence of thinking and evidence of following some kind of artistic model because kids copy that's what kids do. Right?

So, we can do this with music, give them a limited number of paints, three or four paints, in this case sounds are enough. Give them a model. So, give them a song to play along with or give them a rhythm to imitate and then say get to painting, play around with those sounds start tinkering and that's actually what composers do. Anyway, we've just got this kind of highfalutin idea of what it really is, but it is just playing around.

Julia

I think that is just such an incredibly powerful thing that you've said. And I hope that message gets across to anybody listening here that we can all do this. And it's really a very simple process and it's about allowing our students the freedom to just explore or an experiment? Thank you. All right now, you've talked to us a little, a fair bit about composition there. And just in the interest of time, I'm going to push on a little bit further and drill down into notation because you touched on notation.

We know that the syllabus expects us from as early as stage one to begin recognising that relationship between sound and symbol. We know that symbol systems are then interwoven into our outcomes the whole way through. Can you unpack your thoughts a little bit for us on notation and how a teacher, who perhaps going back to our reference earlier to the limited experience, might be reading that outcome and thinking, ‘I don't actually know how to use commonly understood symbols to represent my works or the students work, how can I possibly teach that?’

Can you give us some strategies or unpack your thinking on that?

James

Yeah. So again, it's another place where in New south Wales we’re really, really lucky because our syllabus is really open on this. So, you mustn't be precious about this. You mustn't think I'm not doing notation. Again, if it isn't the written score, as I said, more than 90% of the music out there in the world is made without ever making a return score. So, don't make that your benchmark even if you want to actually get there at some point. So, what could a notation be if you're doing a song? A notation could be the lyrics, even know what the notes are called on the score. I've seen kids writing, drawing, pictures of keyboards and writing numbers on the different keys and things like that and equivalent things on guitars. Of course, we know the classic graphic score. And there's lots of good examples of graphic scores around the internet that you can have a look at. So, we can then kind of use the idea of, you know, linear time. So, pitch being high and low on a on a sheet of paper and time going from left to right.

I would say, don't discount technology. If you've got some kind of devices that students can use at school, you will have access to some kind of ability to record music into them, whether that's music through a microphone that your kids make and then they can see the wave shape of it or whether it's midi instruments, which means that you may be using an on screen keyboard or something like that and it can actually save the data. Now, I know I've heard teachers say, well, that's cheating. If you just get the computer to do it and create the notation, then that's cheating. But it's not cheating at all, get the students to interact with that. What happens if they cut it up and move it around?

What happens if they copy it out onto onto a piece of paper hat? When one student looks at another student's work, how do they see the relationship between the musical blobs on the computer screen and what's going on? So, all of these different entryways that don't actually require any prior experience are genuine legitimate music notations. And actually, they relate really well to what's happening professionally in the music industry around us at large.

Now, if we want to move towards music notation, that training is available out there. If you want to go and learn a bit of music theory yourself and you want to draw a treble clef and five lines on the board, then you can and you can go and learn those things and you can teach kids how to know notate simple melodies and simple chords and things, but you need to remember the syllabus does not say teach all of the kids to read and write scores. Notation is a fairly loose concept and just like musical repertoire. We want kids to have broad experiences. So as my aisle mate, Richard Gill used to say, ‘sound before sight’. Don't let the notation get in the way of making music.

And so, if you ever find yourself, you know, you think I've prepared this great activity and you get into doing it. But actually, your poor kids are sitting there with pencil and paper and all sitting having arguments about how to write something down. Well now the sight has got in the way of the sound. We're too worried about, about notated and we're not making enough music. So that's the trick. That's the chicken. If you get to that point, you know, you've tipped too far over and then bring it straight back to making music. And how many times has that stopped a musical education journey for people? I know that for myself personally, that mind started very much like that with the tradition, teacher showing notation and I thought I can't do this, this is too hard. I don't have formal education in this.

Julia

Yeah, that's right.

James

And it's really important to remember that music is an embodied art. We don't just make music with our brains, we make music with our whole bodies. And actually, there aren't very many musical cultures in the world where people sit still, even when they're listening to music in most musical cultures, people move as part of experiencing music. Listening is a very active thing, with the concert hall being a relatively recent invention. It's only really for one kind of music and maybe the congregation role as well in a church. So not that there's anything particularly wrong with that, but that's just one kind of musical experience in most kinds of musical experience. We move our whole body and we use our whole body.

Kirra

Teachers can feel confident that the information on the gallery has this sort of consistent credibility and while it's good to be mindful of the, you know, the responsibility of talking about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art culture in the classroom also, not to be afraid either. You know, to remember that it's this really enjoyable and special area of art and to just have fun with it.

Julia Brennan

They are just such wise words. That's fantastic. And the art gallery website is somewhere I send people all the time if they’re confused about whether something is appropriate or whether you know how to use things that the gallery website is just packed full of ideas and we know that it's appropriate for a classroom, which is great. Thank you, Kirra. So how do we encourage our teachers to engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in a culturally appropriate way?

Kirra

Well, yeah, I guess the first thing is sort of just like starting the dialogue and maybe asking questions that can be uncomfortable. I guess following on from that first question, there are obviously culturally respectful protocols and ways for talking about Aboriginal art inside the classroom, outside the classroom. And I know there might be hesitation around doing the right thing, which is why looking at those larger cultural institutions, you know, like the Art Gallery of New south Wales and others across Australia.

Yeah, I guess this definitely comes up pretty often when you're talking about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. Often it's really easy to sort of categorise ATSI art as either traditional or contemporary. This is definitely something we work hard to address at the gallery. And one of the ways that we sort of do that is by not using those terms or that language at all, because the art will always be both. And I guess also, there are ways to echo those ideas, but in different ways.

Yeah, well, I guess you know, the arts have definitely transformed my life in such a positive way as I've already kind of touched on. But I guess what I find really unique about my role delivering the daily tours is that you get to meet people every day that you would never normally interact with and from my experience, the tours do have a really strong impact on people.

Absolutely. And, you know, you're really focusing there on a lot of, well being aspects that the arts does so, so well. That's great, thank you.

That's actually a really good point, Julia, because there's one student in the class that at the beginning of the year seemed a little bit disengaged. And when I said to them, you know, as you do at the end of the lesson, okay, we'll go out to recess one at a time, and I said, “look at your mind map, look at the one that we all created together. Spell one of the words that describes the giant.” And one of the students that I had no idea how clever he was, he said, “forgivable.” And then he spelt it. And this is an eight-year-old, so he spelt forgivable correctly, and, um, he went on his way. And his teacher said, “Yes, I have been noticing that he's.” So in a sense, that was a work sample. Or even if it's articulating a question or answering a question, it could be, you know all those things.

Julia

Great. Okay, thank you, Jen. That's absolutely fantastic and I think, you know, if nothing else comes out of this, that realisation that it doesn't have to be the end product that we're assessing here, it's an ongoing process. Thank you for really highlighting that.

So, you recently described to me some incredible changes that you'd seen in your students results over time through intervention with drama and I'm assuming that's connected to the fantastic way in which you've described that you formatively assess, and you use your consistent teacher judgement along the way with that. So can you describe to us a little bit about those changes that you've noticed in your students?

Jan

So, one thing I've used over the time as a teacher and also as a leader is that concept of pre and post-testing. So it could be the pre-testing could be, you know, a piece of writing where you've looked at, it could be a NAPLAN result that you've seen, it could be the Neale analysis which we actually used in one intervention. We had some students in the group that had, you know, had really struggled with learning to read and particularly in that, you know, learning to read phonetically and using letters and sounds and all of that.

So this particular group of students were assessed using the Neale analysis before we engaged in a programme around readers theatre. So we used the text ‘Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book.’ Children learned how to write their own readers theatres, and the whole school really focused on readers theatre at that time. And we, um, which was very, very powerful, So I wasn't actually, my own class wasn't in the study, but there were two classes at my school, two at North Sydney Dem (North Sydney Demonstration School) and there were two at Manly West. So what we did was we analysed or we tested everyone in the Neale analysis at the beginning in the classes that were involved in the study and then we tested them again at the end after it was actually two terms, the programme. So, what the Children would do would be each week, they would work on their reader's theatres. They studied the book in literature circles to start with. Then they worked on their reader's theatres and then they would stand at the front of the class and they would present their reader's theatres and they would use, they would wear glasses so that they were the actors. They wore wigs and then they ended up presenting that to a festival at the end of the whole project.

But there was many students went up several years in that programme. One particular child that had really struggled right through, and then what was interesting with her was that she went up three years in her reading through that reader's theatre. But then when I taught her in year six, she needed to, with her writing, she needed to draw pictures to tell the story before she wrote the story. And over the year, and she really improved her reading. But then she also became one of the main characters in our play about Skellig by David Almond, which, when we got into the state drama festival doing that play well done.

Julia

Well done, and I think you just hit the nail on the head there with to action a change like you're talking about and really see significant change that we need to look at a whole school approach as the best option to do it and then pulling out, as you've described there, drama forms, such as readers theatre is a great way to do it to action change across the whole school. And it’s something that's really accessible to everybody, isn't it?

Jan

Yes. And we had a critical friend in that and, you know, she was an academic partner. That was Professor Robin Ewing. So she was working with us, as teachers and helping to guide us. And I really believe, firmly believe, that it's great to have those partnerships with universities and with, you know bodies such as the Sydney Theatre Company because then that helps to, it really inspires everyone. And I said to one of my colleagues, said to Gretal, what did we actually do in some of these projects? She said we inspired each other, so yeah.

Julia

Magical. Again, that's coming back to what you said about your students earlier collaborating and all owning their learning. Well, you’ve just modelled that yourselves haven’t you, so that's fantastic, you’re practising what you’re preaching.

Look Jan, we're running out of time and I'm really loving talking to you. I always do every time I talk to you. But I know that one of your great loves is the power of storytelling. And you know, your eyes light up every time you talk about storytelling through drama and to me my mind instantly goes to dance as well. Um, a lot of teachers out there are really afraid to let loose with storytelling. So I'm just wondering, I can't, it would be remiss of me to let you go without talking a little bit about storytelling and how teachers out there, I often hear, you know, particularly in stage three, teachers are a little bit worried about doing storytelling with the boys particularly. So fill us in on some of the gaps and how, you know, how it's worked for you and how maybe other teachers out there could go about taking on storytelling.

Jan

And actually, it was a school very close to you and maybe it was your school, I don't know. But what blew me away was that every student in that school was involved in dance. Every student. It wasn't just an elitist thing for certain children who had learnt outside of school. And you've already talked about that. There was no giggling. There was no, you know, there were no frills. There was no sequins. There were no leotards, that's for sure. There was a story. There was expression. There's that word again. I was absolutely engrossed and so moved by those students and their performances. And we’re talking, this is a K-6 situation here. Why is dance so important for our students?

Rebecca

I believe, specifically for dance, it is really inclusive for all students. It promotes their physical exercise and their self-expression, as I mentioned, their collaborative teamwork. And really find the challenges of the performing but the sense of achievement they get from performing is really important and it's just a really positive subject for them. I find it’s just so positive, especially because it's music as well, and you can do tasks in silence. But it's just a very high energy with the music. And of course, it's really great to select songs that are relevant for the students. But it's also very educational to use a wide range of genres. So that's why I think it's really important in education to have dance and especially the arts.

But when you're talking about the festival you went to, so I was working in the primary school, and then I mentioned we have the regional festival and I had the opportunity to join the committee there and become part of the production team, and so that was really wonderful. So, we had a lot of primary school and secondary teachers across the Sydney region that came together for an annual dance festival event. And I just was in that for a very long time and really just valued that event that we provided all the schools… and really promoted dance in schools because it had a performance outcome to then go and have all the parents attend and watch. It was great promotions for the school. But then, looking at the dance festivals more specifically, they are an equitable performance platform. And for all the teachers and the students of public schools, they built the capacity of our classroom teachers to step out of their comfort zone and to get ensembles together and to come and perform.

But then we had classroom teachers who have had… they were even studying dance as a student, and they've now found that there's a need for dance in their school, so they were able to start up dance ensembles. And then we even had normal classroom teachers who actually didn't have anything to do with dance but they were the organisers to bring in the external dance tutors to get these performances together. And we had… it fostered the accessibility in the arts for a range of students. So, we also could offer performance outcomes for students with special needs, from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds and also refugee students. So, um, these public school dance festivals are fabulous. They're really wonderful.

Julia

So, I think a lot of teachers out there, however, will still think that dance education is all about leotards and interpretive dance and tap shoes or something else like that, something that has to be done by an external provider or a specialist teacher or is only done in a festival. I want to blow that myth out of the water. I don't agree with that. I think we need to see dance in the classroom. Is it possible for a teacher who has limited experience in the art… will stop limited experience, limited knowledge and limited confidence in dance? Can they do it? And if so, how can they do it? Come on, blow that myth out of the water for me?

Rebecca

So, today I’m going to start by just introducing what we do in the creative arts in our NSW public schools and just giving you a few little ideas and information about things that are going on. To follow this series of podcasts you go to soundcloud.com/primarycurriculum all one word and click on the orange follow button, simple as that. Now, if you don’t have access to that you can log in with your @education.nsw.gov.au account. Or if you’re not DoE you can go through Facebook or alternatively create your own SoundCloud account. So, we’ll have lots of interviews and discussions coming up and I promise they’ll all be super exciting and informative for you.

So, to start today just a bit of general information about the creative arts in NSW. So, I think it’s really important to get that message out that the key learning area is actually called the creative arts. And when you go to syllabus information from NESA you look at your time allocation well, we do make up a substantial one and a half to two and half hours per week and that incorporates all four of your art forms, so music, dance, drama and visual arts. The way the syllabus is presented is to allow you lots of flexibility and how that can be delivered. But I guess from my point of view it’s really important to reinforce that a little often is how your arts program should look in your schools. Don’t think of it as a necessity to be an external program or to have an external provider coming in. A little bit in your classroom every day is fantastic if you can do it and all four art forms are equally important, really must get that message out that we need to be working on all four of those art forms.

So, in talking about that though I think it’s really important we first of all establish why the arts are important to be teaching in our schools. So, we know within our syllabus content that we’ve got making, performing, composing, or organising sound and appreciating and listening. They’re all important for our learning and they’re all part of the history of our world, they teach us about different cultures, they teach us about different ways of seeing the world. You know if you look around at the original inhabitants of this country and you also look at universal cave drawings around the world we see that the arts form the basis of communication throughout history – artefact, ceremonies, rituals, buildings, they’re all part of our history and so much of it is embedded in the arts.

I’ll just indulge you with a little personal story that I always used to talk to parents about at the beginning of the year and I’d have this fictitious character called Alice. And Alice was this student who was from a very middle class family and was sort of sitting in there going okay at school, not really thriving in the way that she possibly could have. And then Year 4 along came Miss Dodds. I wonder if Miss Dodds is still out there somewhere I hope she is listening to this it would be great. But Miss Dodds came along with a guitar and she promised our Year 4 class that if we worked hard on things that we could sing every day. Now, for me that just switched something on. It was the first time I’d had a teacher who really embraced the arts and thought that that was fantastic. We did visual arts, we did a lot of dancing and we did so much singing and I’m sure there was some drama in there too, I just can’t really remember it at this stage but I just remember that for me that’s when I started to really focus on school and it became important for me and I really started to learn and flourish.

I’m sure we’ve all got those people in our lives, those students who it just takes something to switch them on. I mean I can look at my own family and I’ve got one child who loves the arts and the other one who thrives on STEM, science and technology is his world. So, we’re all different, something makes us tick but we need to understand as a primary school teacher that we need to cover all of those bases so that we do find the thing that makes each one of those students in front of us really tick.

I’d also like to just draw your attention to the rationale that’s in the front of our syllabus, I know it might sound a little bit dry but I think it’s really important that we actually read that from time to time because it tells us why we do what we do in the creative arts. And yes I know our syllabus is old, we’re looking at a revised 2006 document but it does say to us at the beginning that the Creative Arts provides opportunities for students to respect the views of different genders, different cultures, different social groups, people from different religions, belief systems and people with disabilities. All of that diversity can be covered through the arts and it really unites us as a society. So, visual arts, music, drama and dance offer students and people of all ages an opportunity for personal expression, enjoyment, creative action, imagination, emotional response, aesthetic pleasure in the creation of shared meanings.

We learn about the arts, we learn about culture so that we can be informed consumers when we grow up, we can empathise with others not only because it might offer us a career path but just so that we can be out there in the world and knowing those aesthetic things that the creative arts can teach us. I love Sir Ken Robinson and I listen to his podcasts and TED Talks and things and have read his books. And what I love is one particular comment. ‘Learning in and about the arts is essential to our intellectual development. And engaging in the arts is the most vibrant way of seeing and feeling the world as we do. The arts illustrates the diversity of intelligence and provides practical ways of promoting it they’re amongst the most vivid expressions of human cultures.’ That’s just magical. So, I want you to think about those things that I’ve just said from Sir Ken Robinson. So, the arts are about the qualities of human experiences through music, dance, visual arts, drama we give form to our feelings and thoughts about ourselves and we experience the world around us.

So, reflect on that about your own experience and your own teaching. If you’re afraid of teaching the arts, don’t be, focus on what your students need. So, I think the first step in this journey in these podcasts is to talk about how we can go about teaching the arts and to focus on the outcomes and indicators. Take onboard whatever suggestions you can and do let the students have some time to explore. Be a connoisseur of the resources in front of you, not a bowerbird, so don’t just collect stuff, actually really think about what it can do for your students but remember what I said before, a little, often. Integrate arts wherever you can, make it about the real life, it gives it a real context.

So, again coming back to Sir Ken Robinson his comments have been the main role of a teacher is knowing, how, when and ways to teach something, that’s your job, you don’t have to know absolutely everything about every art form, it’s about knowing your students and how they learn. You don’t have to be a specialist or to have specialist skills but you have to have a willingness to learn to accept the offers for advice, assistance and also working with your students. I guess I like that sort of management quote idea with a staircase of which step have I reached today? You know you might start with I won’t do it. I can’t do it. I want to do it. How do I do it? I’ll try to do it. I can do it. I will do it. And yes, I did it.

For me, I just think if you deprive a child of an education with a rich day-to-day opportunity in the arts then you are starving them of a full and well-rounded chance to flourish. You’re also depriving our country of the full extent of its creative potential and the wellbeing needs of its people. I just cannot underestimate what I just said, it’s so important we can’t ignore the arts, it’s our responsibility as educators to give our students every opportunity to thrive. I know you know that but it’s something I feel really passionately about and felt I had to say today.

So, through these podcasts I’m going to talk about each of the art forms separately through some different interviews with different people but today I just sort I’d give you a really brief overview of each of the art forms and some ideas and some teaching tips and things just to breakdown some of those barriers that you might have.

So, if we think about music, you know there’s a lot of media hype around at the moment about ‘Oh, we should do music because it makes you smarter.’ Yes, there’s a lot of research around it and yes, there’s a lot of discussion about it and most of that focuses around these very true facts that are important that yes, music is our first language. Yes, it improves our focus, our concentration, collaboration, cooperation, aesthetic skills, judgement, time management, teamwork, organisation, discretion, judgement, critical and creative thinking and so on the list could go on forever. I would also say that I think this applies to every art form. One thing that I think is really important but is missing from this argument about music making you smarter is what about the joy? Music is about joy and it’s about wellbeing, it’s something that makes us happy. So, music yes also links to literacy and numeracy, we read a text, we compose around it, we read, we recite lyrics, we discuss their meanings. In literacy and numeracy we are also decoding symbols and counting beats, sub dividing beats, creating rhythms, we’re graphing structures, we’re following scores and codes.

So, there’s so many links to literacy and numeracy with music. I’d also draw your attention to one of our outcomes which starts at Stage 1 which is that symbols have to link to sound right from Stage 1. So, if you think about that that’s a very mathematical skill, we’re graphing, we’re looking at shapes, we’re doing that sound to symbol link. The other thing to remember too is that if we’re talking about music being a joyous thing it doesn’t have to necessarily be done by an expert. So, not withdrawn from your classroom.

Music in the classroom is about not necessarily playing instruments or being in a band or a choir, it’s about experiencing music as a class, bring yourselves together enjoying the delight and fun of music whilst developing knowledge skills and appreciation at the same time. It can be as simple as having a beat underneath your spelling words or creating or exploring a musical structure, singing, exploring beats, rhythms, pitches, using nursery rhymes, creating soundscapes or you know pictures through sound based upon a familiar text, right through to accompanying songs with chord notes or getting the students to engage with garage band which in my case they teach me a lot about. You don’t have to be able to read music. I get that all the time I can’t teach music because I can’t read it. You don’t have to be able to do that, you do need to try. I would also really encourage you to incorporate some classical music into your teaching and some music from a variety of cultures and really inclusive for the students in your class.

I’ll just relate you to a story of when you know in a former life I was doing some university work and I had a student who I put on I can’t remember which Beethoven Symphony it was but we were doing some movement to a Beethoven Symphony and she said ‘I would never put on classical music in my class.’ ‘So, why not?’ She said ‘The students won’t like it, they don’t like that sort of music’. ‘So, how would you know that if you’ve never given them the opportunity to try? By all means put on some pop music as a hook in but then also gradually try and introduce some Beethoven or some other classical music or music from other cultures and make them experience other things, that’s our job as educators is to expose students to things that they may not necessarily have had exposure to in the past.’

Now, let’s just talk about visual arts. Visual arts is not about replication, it’s not about copying an artwork or colouring in something, it’s about exploring and discovering, use what you see as inspiration by all means, you know there’s some fantastic artworks out there that we need to be using for that sort of inspiration and using those techniques and those colours and that sort of thing but allow the students to do it in their own way.

There are so many incredible links in visual arts to critical and creative thinking and literacy and numeracy. We are depicting and creating narratives, factual texts through artworks, we’re illustrating, we’re discussing, we’re making meaning about various artworks that we might see, we’re measuring when we’re doing say for example a portrait. There’s a lot of measurement involved in that. We’re examining proportions and perspective both physically and mentally. I think it’s really important too with visual arts to be asking lots of why and how questions when you’re looking at artworks and illustrations. I read a magical quote the other day about a teacher who thrived on seeing her students’ crinkly eyebrows. I thought isn’t that magical, that’s through those why and how questions, that real critical thinking.

So, visual arts is a journey of appreciation, it’s just so extensive. You can explore techniques and forms, look at the context and the meaning of artworks and relate to your own environment but give the students time to explore. In saying that though I really think it’s important you preface it with clear guidelines for behaviour and clean up. Much as I was saying with the music example that people won’t do it because they think they can’t read music. A lot of people say ‘visual arts, I’m not doing that because it’s too messy’. Establish some clear routines, the clean-up and setting up. Get a team together whose responsibility it is for each of those parts of the visual arts experience, it’s about establishing those guidelines and then smooth sailing.

I’d also really encourage you to use resources that we’ve got around us like the Art Gallery of NSW for example, their website is fantastic and it’s full of artworks, look at those artworks, discuss them, then use the techniques or the inspiration or the themes or the meanings to create your own artworks. I’m a little bit of an outcome nerd here but I do love, it’s VAS 2.1 which it says represents the qualities of experiences and things that are interesting or beautiful by choosing amongst aspects of subject matter. So, in this context what they reinforce is that beautiful doesn’t mean pretty, it means something that excites or arouses or wonder, fascination and delight. For me that encapsulates so much about the visual arts, getting our students excited, getting them to feel that amazing thing that only the arts I believe can really do. Now, let’s talk a little bit about dance.

Now, dance has got a bit of a bad rap with a lot of people, it’s got a bit of a reputation with teachers thinking ‘Oh no, you know I’m not into lycra and I’m no expert dance teacher’. It’s not about that, it’s not about the Macarena, it’s not about doing ballet and it’s also not about your school dance group. For me the amazing power of dance is through its storytelling ability. So, the ability that dance has to link ideas together through movement and it links so beautifully with drama too with that idea of mime and movement and bringing story out.

So, in dance we can read a story and retell it through dance. It links so beautifully to literacy particularly through that aspect of storytelling whether we’re either retelling a story or creating our own. We’re learning to express ourselves and to be creative. In mathematics we can look at things like mapping pathways and that sort of stuff. We are moving to a set number of steps or beats. We don’t have to but that’s one aspect that links beautifully into numeracy. We’re using different dance techniques such as high, middle and low levels so the students are standing up really tall and high, middle, low, we’re counting, we’re exploring, we’re subdividing rhythms, we’re trying out different tempos or speeds. It’s also encouraging our students to be physically active. Now, we know we have to do this so why not do it through dance. So, you’re not only getting that physical activity but you’re also getting into the expressive aspects and that’s what the arts can do, creative and expressive movement side of dance is fantastic. Let’s talk a little bit about drama too.

So, drama traditionally I think most of us have known links beautifully to literacy, it’s a fantastic way of re-enforcing meaning and adding to the comprehension or helping to our students understand what a text might be about but also helps to increase their fluency and therefore their understanding. Drama’s fantastic for getting that student engagement, the students absolutely love drama, they love working together in groups, cooperating, it can be so much fun. Yes, a lot of students will get performance anxiety and that’s something that you can work through, maybe those students don’t always get a big role in something but you can build those skills up slowly.

For me looking at drama there’s such an incredible power of storytelling and also a way of exploring emotions and ways of feeling and knowing. You can deal with those really big, complex issues through making it an unreal or staged situation. The students don’t actually really know they’re even dealing with it. The power of role play is incredible in those sort of situations so the students are problem solving through creating their own scenarios. Also things like improvisation is absolutely fantastic for getting our students to think critically and creatively on their feet, they’ve got to move fast and it’s also a great way of helping our students to develop empathy for each other’s views, understanding different perspectives. And why not reverse the roles in a situation and then they get to see things from the other perspective.

So, the arts often gets talked about as being important purely because of the future career or future focus sort of discussion and I think that is really important, I think we do need to equip our students for the future. Now, I’ve talked a lot about the benefits of the various art forms and ways to go about doing it.

So, let’s just talk a little bit about this sort of future career thing that’s being discussed a lot around at the moment. So, there’s a great text called ‘Thrive’ by a lady called Valerie Hannon and one of the things that she mentions in there is that the purpose of learning in this century is not simply to recite inert knowledge but rather to transform it. So, we’ve sort of moved on from that industrial age idea of replicating knowledge, we’ve now got this emphasis on thinking, transforming, people skills, empathy, critique, transferring knowledge.

The most recent Deloitte study from 2019 found that interpersonal and creative roles will be the hardest to fill in the future and they’re going to be the hardest to mechanise as well so therefore their estimate is that eighty six percent of jobs created will be brain jobs rather than labour intensive. Two thirds of those jobs will be soft skills. So, things like being able to communicate and think critically and get on with others and the boring and repetitive work will be done by robots leaving us humans the more challenging and interesting work. I think that’s exciting, I think that’s fantastic and the arts is so well placed to set up our students to create those connections.

We know that the arts really helps to connect the sides of the brain, we know it helps to develop a growth mindset and the ability to generate new ideas. So, the arts are about so much more than just that as well though. Yes, they can teach us about this sort of correlation and the future but we know too that the arts is great just for the joy that it can bring as well.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about creativity because let’s face it the KLA is called the creative arts, so I think creativity is a really important thing to discuss here. And we’re going to talk about this a lot in future podcasts but one thing I just wanted to discuss today was creativity is being this increasing, well, it’s being increasingly recognised now as a globally competitive commodity as 21st Century skills and the 4Cs about raising new questions, new possibilities regarding old problems from a new angle requiring creative imagination. Now, Albert Einstein said that back in 1938.

So, we know that creativity is something important and we know that the arts is really well placed to help us with that. There’s a lot of research around about the big C and the little c. The big C’s where we’ve got those big ideas that can transform an entire society or culture. And the little c are those everyday creative decisions that we make. But I love this quote by Kerry Freedman: ‘Creativity can only be achieved to the extent that conditions will allow’. I’ll say that again. ‘Creativity can only be achieved to the extent that conditions will allow’. Now, that’s just my favourite quote, I actually have it on a chalkboard in my house for those moments when I cannot get my kids off their devices. You’ve got to think about how we can set up our environment in our classrooms to best allow our students to be creative. We know that creativity takes time. We know that we need to give students some skills obviously. We know however that for this creative process to be done properly we need to encourage our students to take time, be persistent, not be afraid of mistakes and just keep trying to make different solutions. So, creativity cannot be underestimated, it’s something we really need to develop in our students and the arts is a fantastic place to start with that.

Now, as I mentioned these podcasts are going to feature different people over the coming weeks and coming episodes and all of those people will be addressing various art forms and other issues that we’ve brought up today. In closing though today I would just like to point out to you that online there’s a lot of resources available on the education.nsw.gov.au if you follow Learning and Teaching Curriculum then Creative Arts you’ll find something for every art form up on there, they’re practical, they’re based in curriculum, you don’t need to do that curating as I mentioned before. I’ve been the connoisseur for you, it’s all up there. There’s also stuff for other KLAs up there, every KLA has got some practical things that you can use. There’s also information about PL that’s coming up and also about the curriculum team and who you need to talk to if you need help for various things.

So, in finishing today I’d just like to let you know that in the future we will be looking at assessment and ideas about how to get those sort of formative assessment practices happening in your classroom. And also just making you aware of one very important quote before we finish which is a Dylan Wiliam quote and we all know that he’s most famous for his work on formative assessment and I just love this quote and it’s something that we all need to takeaway with us because I think sometimes we feel like we’re stuck in a vice and it’s really hard to get out there and do our work in the Creative Arts. But just let go, find some time and let your students really engage with it and listen to this quote and hopefully this will inspire you. ‘The curriculum should promote the intellectual, moral, spiritual, aesthetic, creative, emotional and physical development of the child. And while the traditional disciplines of language, arts, mathematics, science, history, geography should figure strongly, the creative arts are just as important. Indeed given the increasing capability of technology to do almost anything that can be reduced to routines it maybe that the greatest contributions to economic growth will in the future come from the Creative Arts.’ Wow, that’s it from me today for this first podcast.

Now, if you enjoyed this podcast and you’d like to get a hold of more of them, as I said at the beginning go to soundcloud.com/primarycurriculum all one word and click on the orange follow button. Log in with your @education.nsw.gov.au account. And if you’re not a DoE person you can go through Facebook or alternatively create your own SoundCloud account.

That’s it from me today, I look forward to talking to you soon.

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