Visual Art and Reading Comprehension

In last weeks post I described a student who improved his writing using visual art representations and learning about the writing process through the drawing process. This time I'd like to describe the use of visual art as a reading comprehension scaffold. 

J.N. is a student who had a really hard time comprehending texts that were two grade levels below her biological age. Her decoding and fluency were adequate but when she tried to retell a story or answer comprehension question it was clear that she was not able to locate main idea. In fact in text retell she would often mention details sporadically with no connection or clear understanding of what the text was about. After a conversation with me J.N.'s tutor decided to use drawing after reading as a comprehension strategy.

After each chapter in the book J.N. was asked to choose a scene from the chapter. Here, the direction were aimed at creating a thought process that would lead J.N. to choose the key scene - the main idea. The tutor used modeling and scaffolded self-talk to promote this kind of thinking. Next J.N. was asked to draw the scene in as great a detail as possible. As she draw she explained her choices to her tutor and how they made sense based on her interpretation of the story. Finally J.N. wrote a summary based on her drawing. 

Within a few week J.N. acquired a deep understanding of locating main idea and supporting detail using the scaffold and metaphor of visual art decision making process. This strategy was extremely useful and J.N. ended up raising her comprehension level to grade level expectations by the end of the five week session. 

Change in Teacher Practice

It is still cold but I am assured that spring is almost here...
The question that is always on our mind is how do we help teachers change their every day practices while honoring the efforts and pressures they have to contend with daily.
Recently I read a masters thesis by Alinda Stelk one of Dr Kathy Wilson's students in it she quotes from Black and William:
Similiarly, Black and William state in their 1998 volume Inside the Black Box, "Teachers will not take up attractive sounding ideas, albeit based on extensive research, if these are presented as general principles which leave entirely to them the task of translating them into everyday practice- their classroom lives are too busy and too fragile for this to be possible for all but an outstanding few. What they need is a variety of living examples of implementation, by teacher with whom they can identify and from whom they can can both derive conviction and confidence that they can do better, and see concrete examples of what doing better means in practice" (pp.15-16)... Cahnages require teachers seeing temselves as learners and working with researchers to learn more."
The fit to our experiences is immediatly validating and daunting. Validating since it is identical in many ways to our practice, daunting because we need to imagine what such a system might look like. It does show as many of the AEMDD grants have in past and present that demonstration projects are invaluable labs for examining such change.
The question still remains; How do we translate it beyond existing projects? Or are we 'doomed' to have pockets of excellence in a sea almost completely devoid of Education in and trough the Arts? One possible answer has grown out of practice in Reading and more recently Math- coaching. Coaches are part of schools but they have the great advantage of focusing on "close distance". They are not of the classroom, but available enough and know enough to be immediately helpful. Their focus is mainly on helping teachers reach their potential and thus reach students mostly through the change in teachers practice. Coaches have the time and distance to think compare and transfer new ideas as well as plan, assess, and critique.
In a recent visit to a reading first school I discussed the new vocabulary emphasis with the coach (one of our best).
She said "We wanted all of our teachers to go into the units and decide which vocabulary should be taught. It was too much for them, finally me and [a coach from another school] used some time in the summer to go through the units and pull the vocabulary out. They simply did not have the time!" Her experience similar to ours is that teachers can be asked to do so much at any point, as expertise grows they can do more but still they need modeling, support and ideas- and I would claim, coaches in their close distance are the way to go.
We can think about it as re purposing the teaching artist/ artist in residence more explicitly guiding them to work with teachers as many projects have been doing to a certain degree for a long while. But as I read my own text I realize that repurposing is the wrong approach. We need the artists to help us build domain knowledge but coaches who are (were) classroom teachers as coaches. It goes back to the observation of Black and William:"What they need is a variety of living examples of implementation, by teacher with whom they can identify and from whom they can can both derive conviction and confidence that they can do better".
Can we (those outside the classroom) do better?