Preparation
A Guide to Teacher Preparation for CAL
Effective arts learning begins with teachers who understand their own cultural backgrounds, the backgrounds of their students, the values of their communities, and the priorities of their school. When customized arts learning experiences are aligned within this context, they become highly engaging and relevant learning opportunities for students of all ages.
In this section, toolkit users will find information and resources to:
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Reflect on their own cultural and artistic perspectives
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Understand the cultural context of students and their communities
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Effectively plan customized arts learning opportunities
Step 1: Know myself.
It is important for teachers to cultivate an understanding of their own cultural and artistic perspectives.
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The CAL resource Preparing to Connect Around Culture (Customized Arts Learning) offers valuable reflection questions for teachers to examine their cultural perspectives.
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The CAL resource Mapping Your Artistic Influence (Customized Arts Learning) offers valuable reflection questions for teachers to examine their artistic perspective.
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An additional tool teachers can use to reflect on their personal cultural identity is the CAL Resource Who Am I (Customized Arts Learning). A similar concept for teacher use and consideration is the Cultural Iceberg Model (Edward T. Hall).
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In the next section, we illuminate tools to explore student cultural perspectives. Teachers should reflectively use these tools themselves before presenting them to students in the classroom.
Step 2: Know my students to gain deeper understanding of the cultural composition of the district, school, and classroom.
Classroom activities help students discover and express their unique cultural viewpoints, allowing the teacher to better understand their students.
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The teacher should reflectively use these tools before implementing them in the classroom with students.
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A teacher may survey students to learn more about their prior experiences, artistic interests, and ancestry/heritage.
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The Cultural Backpack (ORTESOL Journal) is a class activity that encourages teachers and students to identify objects or artifacts that connect to their values, sense of self, culture, and beliefs.
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Here are a few tools and ideas for reflection in specific artistic disciplines. Additional tools and resources will be added in the future.
Dance
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Invite students to create gestures or movements from important people in their life, creating a short phrase.
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Have students think of a dance, perform it if they like, and tell where they learned it.
Media Arts
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Students may use available technologies to create a mini-documentary of their lived experience through film, photography, sound sampling, etc.
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Identify characters experienced through film or on television.
Music
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Soundtrack of My Life (CAL)
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Invite students to keep a journal of music they experience over a week in their life.
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As you work with students, ask them about their personal music experiences. What do they listen to in the car? What music events do they attend on the weekends?
Theatre
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Share or enact stories your family tells (folk or fairy tales, nursery rhymes, etc.).
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Identify characters experienced through books, folk tales, stories, etc.
Visual Arts
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Identity Boxes (Kennedy Center)
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Invite students to curate a journal of material/visual culture.
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Analyze paintings representing diverse cultures and share personal experiences of that culture.
Teachers can gain insights about students’ cultural contexts from families and community members.
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A sample Family Welcome Questionnaire Resource (Madison Metropolitan School District) demonstrates one way to collect information.
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The school or district may provide access to information gathered in other ways, including:
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State Report Card or other state-level data sources.
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Building or district-level surveys, such as school climate surveys.
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Asset mapping (Digital Promise).
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Step 3: Plan
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1. Assess
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The assessment process begins by first knowing who you are teaching and what interests/needs they have.
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What additional knowledge or perspectives do you need to gain to assist with learning about the cultural composite of the community?
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What do you notice about your students and their identities that will guide the selection of cultural experiences?
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How will a cultural experience center students’ common identities, broaden their horizons, or celebrate diverse cultural assets within the student body?​
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2. Select & Analyze
What we teach is as important as how we teach it. Care must be taken when considering the quality and authenticity of the content we ask our students to study. The following tool has been developed to assist you: The Customized Arts Learning Resource Reflection Tool
3. Outcomes
It is in the planning of outcomes where the teacher’s role grows in importance. We become less a reactionary educator, always in triage mode, and more of a guide with a thoughtful, intentional plan. Your learning objectives or outcomes may align to NCAS anchor standards, state standards, and/or local learning outcomes.
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Use this frame to create a learning objective aligned to NCAS Anchor Standard 10: “Students will apply their knowledge of ______ to create/perform/present/produce/respond to _______.”
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Use this frame to create a learning objective aligned to NCAS Anchor Standard 11: “Students will explain the cultural context and significance of ________.”
Other learning objectives may include:
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To learn more about an under-represented cultural community within our school community.
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To expose students to working artists in their community.
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Objectives generated by the teacher or school, aligned with curricular goals.
Make sure your vision is aligned with your school or district’s instructional vision. Share your plans and ideas with the administration to meet intended outcomes.
4. Strategies
Outcomes define what we want students to learn. Strategies are how we get them there. Be creative, consider resources already available, and keep the students interests and readiness levels in mind.
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Bring a local artist (teaching artist, parent, community member, etc.) into the classroom to provide a culturally accurate perspective or experience.
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Incorporate culturally aligned museums, historical societies, cultural centers, arts councils, or local community group resources.
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Contact your state’s or region’s arts agency by searching the Directory of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA). Your state or regional arts agency may be able to connect you to possible resources and collaborators.
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Smithsonian Learning Lab - virtual option
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Description: The Smithsonian Learning Lab contains over 1 million museum artifacts that can be included in your classroom. Its main features are searching and curating resources for classroom use. Users can search for resources including images, videos, texts, audio recordings, and learning activities.
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Other Considerations
Planning can ensure that a cultural experience is positive and meaningful for all. Ideas include:
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Include a description of the project or experience in the syllabus or in a parent info letter at the beginning of the year to give everyone time to understand the goal.
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Example: At Back-to-School Night, display artwork or media students can look forward to experiencing later in the year.
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Share information about the learning opportunity in advance so the community is aware. Offer previews of the material and content.
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Example: On a field trip permission slip, link to the website that offers information about the cultural organization.
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Share information with colleagues, especially if the students will be missing other classes to participate.
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Example: Use teacher planning time to brainstorm cross-curricular connections with teachers of other subjects.
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Preparation Resources
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