Hero projects use left and right brain intelligence

English project in sophomore class inspires students to learn and teach.

Hero projects use left and right brain intelligence

Anna Photo REVWhat if raising your SAT score was as easy as painting a picture?

     A recent study conducted by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies proved that students who enroll in art courses often have higher SAT scores (http://www.nasaa-arts.org/Research/Key-Topics/Arts-Education/critical-evidence.pdf). But what if an art course isn’t available to a student? Every year, it seems like fewer are being offered.

     Many think that courses that are labeled “academic” should have priority. All sorts of AP and academic classes are being offered at Linganore, and I will take my share of them, but classes seem to be packed with work to prepare for the final test, with limited opportunity for creativity and expression.

     To fully learn and understand something, one must use her whole brain, and stimulate the left and the right hemispheres. Arts integration, incorporating arts into other subjects, is important for whole brain learning.

I’m thankful for the recent English project that I was assigned that incorporated the creativity and expression. This cultural hero project required students to find and research a hero from a different culture. Then the students wrote an essay about the hero and his/her culture. Finally, students created “museum exhibits” to represent the hero in some way.

 Mrs. Samantha Servey explained the idea behind the actual creation of the exhibit as “a motivation to complete the research and the essay.” Usually, research is one of the most uninspiring units in English. The creation of the museum exhibit helped me to fully understand what I was researching, because my exhibit had to teach somebody else about a Native American god.

     Because of this project, I know and remember the research process, and I practiced using parenthetical documentation. I also learned a lot about the Native American culture.

     I wasn’t the only student who appreciated this particular project. Julia Peigh, a 10th grade English student said that “The cultural hero project was a fun way to get students to interpret the historical texts and find a way to do something they preferred over what the teachers would choose.” We both agreed that the project gave us students a chance to let our creativity shine through our projects.

     Arts Integration could be our saving grace. Mr. Julian Lazarus, drama and dance teacher, describes Arts Integration as, “The simultaneous teaching of two different curriculums,” these two curriculums being arts education and a traditional subject, like math or English.

     It is easier than some may think to incorporate the arts into another subject. There are even websites that give teachers ideas on how to integrate the arts into a specific subject or content area. The website http://artsintegration.com/100-strategies/ is particularly helpful, as it gives a new strategy every week on how to use arts in “academic” classes. Hopefully, in the near future, more teachers will think of more projects like the cultural hero project, to boost students’ creativity and attentiveness to the subject.