Empowering Every Learner: Practical Strategies for Inclusive Arts Education

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Welcome to the show and I'm so glad that you're here!

Rhoda

I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Susan 

of course, of course. So I always like to begin by letting our guests tell their story, their origin story. So how you began and how you've gotten to where you are now.

Rhoda 

How to do this in a way that's short. I we could take the whole time with the origin story. So I'll do the shortest version is that I grew up always singing. I was the kid who sang before she talked, started piano lessons really young, loved my public school music program, and then had sort of a watershed moment that really created my direction for my career. And that is, so I grew up in Massachusetts.

And in the late 70s, I think in 1979, a law passed in Massachusetts called Proposition Two and a Half. That law is still on the books today. And it does a number of things. But one of the things it does is it caps the annual increase in property taxes in any of our 360 odd cities and towns at 2 and 1 half percent. So they can't raise property taxes in any of Massachusetts cities and towns more than 2.5 % without passing what's called a grassroots override. Those are not easy to do. So as most of us know in the States, property taxes are a significant source of funding for public schools. And so when Proposition 2.5 went into effect in 1980, I was starting high school. I'm now aging myself. And I was super excited to be part of my high school music program.

However, it was cut. That was not the only thing that was eliminated. I lived three miles from the school our bus was eliminated. We lost foreign language, we lost sports, we lost library, we lost a bunch of things. It took years for those things to be gradually reinstated. They and I are very much in existence. But I learned firsthand what it meant to lose access to my arts education because of that.

My high school chorus teacher, who was the same person who I had in middle school, called a meeting at the Papagenos across the street from the high school saying, look, as you know, my high school position has been cut. I think they kept her at the elementary schools, but the high school position has been cut, but I don't want your music education to end. So we can't do it on school grounds. We can't do it during the school day.

And even if you want to, you can't pay me, but we're going to keep going. So we found a community center and churches and places to hold things. And I made it into show choir and we practiced in my parents' basement because it was a big room with a piano. So all 16 of us plus the combo, we would be there two nights a week. People would be brownies and that sort of thing. And we all mowed her lawn and

went and bought groceries when she needed groceries and like did everything we could but pay her for this incredible person who had a tremendous impact on all of us by continuing our music education. So I learned from that experience that one person can have a tremendous impact and I'm still in touch with this former teacher, her name is Charlotte Brown, she's amazing, she's since retired, she's now a competitive ballroom dancer and she's pretty awesome.

So one person can have an amazing difference and that arts education is really for everyone and that I needed to devote my professional life to making sure that was true. So went on to college and graduate school and got my doctorate in education, but always with an aim of making sure that everyone has access to a meaningful sequential arts education. And that really fuels my work today which for the last 20 years has been focused on arts education for people with disabilities. And primarily music is my field, so primarily music education. And so that led me to establishing the Institute at Berkeley, establishing our graduate programs, which train people in accessible music education practices, and to writing the book. So that's the easiest way to tell the origin story.

Susan 

That's amazing. I mean, such a heart string pull, right? Because always, always the arts get cut when we know from research and everything else that it is one of the most valuable subjects to hold on to. And so just that that prompted you into the work that you do today, I think is incredible. One of the things that I, when I was doing some research for this episode,

Rhoda 

Absolutely.

Susan 

I saw one of the quotes that you have said, really caught me, is that learning is a process of identity construction. And I would really love for you to expand on what you mean by that and how the arts play a role in that if they do. Sure.

Rhoda 

They certainly do. So you're taking me back to my dissertation work and I'm glad you did. And I believe this really strongly. So when we are learning, we are vulnerable. We are making mistakes. We are trying new things. We are opening up new ways of thinking, of being, of knowing new skills, all that scary stuff, vulnerable stuff. I believe that as we learn, we are saying, this is who I am. This is how this makes meaning to me.

This is how I express the thing that I've learned. And in the arts, it's such a more wide open field for that to happen. So for example, you're learning a new piece of music. You're going to perform that piece in a way that is about who you are and how you relate to it. But even things like basic skills, you're learning technique on an instrument.

That's gonna be how that makes sense in your brain, for your body, in terms of who you are, what you bring to it, and what you take from it, right? So I think that as we learn, we are changing who we are and expressing and literally constructing who we are. And in the arts, it happens so beautifully because a lot of that construction is not something that we necessarily have easy words for, but boy, we put it out there when we are drawing, when we are painting, when we are reciting a monologue, when we're creative writing, when we are making music, you bet.

Susan 

Yeah, yeah. And I know that you'll get this with your jazz background, but I also think as a musician myself and somebody who went to a choir college, that when you perform or you are making art in any capacity with others, that that also influences who you become, right, as part of the learning process.

Rhoda 

It's in conversation then with the other people. So you become a different person because of those interactions and that group experience, 100%. And that happens in a choir, in an orchestra, in a very particular set of ways. It also of course happens in a jazz context where there's improvisation, right? So one performer improvises another one, picks up on that and takes it to a new place. Cause that's sort of, know, composition in the moment, right? So we're composing not only music in the moment, but our identities in the moment. Absolutely. But it doesn't have to just be in an improvisational setting. I've sung in many phenomenal choirs. you bet that's happening. It's, and it's a beautiful thing.

Susan 

Yeah. Yeah, it's stunning when it's happening in the moment, absolutely as it is. So I think this goes to the larger picture of accessibility because the more that we have access to, know, Malcolm Gladwell says this all the time, it's the opportunities that you are given that set people apart, not necessarily the smartest or the brightest or whoever, it's the opportunities and the things that you have access to that really allow you to become who you were meant to be. So let's talk about your accessibility work. Let's talk about, let's start with the Institute at Berkeley. Can you tell our audience more about that and what it is that you do there?

Rhoda 

Sure, the Berkelee Institute for Accessible Arts Education is a catalyst for the inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of visual and performing arts education. And we do that work in three main buckets. And you can see all this online, so I'm not gonna get too deep in the weeds, but.

Bucket number one is we do what I call our direct service program. So we offer arts education programs, classes, lessons, ensembles, 19 music programs, two adaptive dance programs, and an adaptive theater program. Only for people with disabilities ages three to yes, we have someone who is 103 years old. And they are in person on our campus on Saturdays, but also online seven days a week, all sorts of times of day and night.

We serve about 350 people a week in those programs. The people who teach in those programs, I've got about 70 of them are all, this gets to bucket number two, either current students or alumni from our graduate programs, which are really focused on accessible music education. They have an academic focus on autism spectrum disorder. We serve all disability populations, but that's our academic specialty. But the work applies quite broadly. So we get these art and music educators on a mission to reach every student in whatever they do. The programs are designed for working teachers so the classes are in the summers and in the evenings. You can be remote and synchronous. So I met one of my students for the very first time at the NISMA conference last weekend, because she's been in Rochester while we've been in Boston. That was wonderful. So those programs, that's bucket number two. And then bucket number three is professional development.

We have an annual conference every April called the ABLE Assembly Arts Better the Lives of Everyone. We have a symposium every November.

We have study groups that we do, which are multi-session workshops that we get externally funded so they're free. We have an online searchable database of resources. We have video workshops that are free that you can access on our website. We have a podcast where disabled artists interview other disabled artists about their art and about their disability. We drop a blog once a month by teachers for teachers about how to do this work. And we do consultations and customized professional professional development for school districts, arts organizations, individual schools, individual people, you name it. I get the good chance to do keynotes and residencies and presentations and fun stuff. And then I guess we'll add my book here. My recent book is sort of the next professional development offering accessible arts education. So what we're really trying to do is make more arts, education, experiences, more possible for more people and from all different angles.

Susan

Yeah, and it's I mean, what a rich resource. Just it's phenomenal the amount of work that you all are doing and how you're sharing that with the world so generously. And I think it's something that it's in public education, at least feels a little hidden, to be honest, like teachers, especially when they come out of fresh out of school, they have had very little, if any, training on how to make accommodations, how to support learners who have who are different in any capacity, right? So I think that the work that you're doing is so important. And I would love to just dig into a couple of pieces of it today so that our audience can kind of get a taste of what's out there from you.

Going back to the idea that teachers don't have a lot of tools, they don't feel equipped to be able to make their arts activities more inclusive. Can you give us some simple adjustments or strategies that could make a big difference for students who have special needs?

Rhoda 

I really love that question. just to also what you said right before the question about how this is hidden. one of the principles that I discuss in the book is that when you are centering accessibility, that work is necessary for some and helpful for all. So this is good teaching that makes everybody's experience better, whether there's a disability or a diagnosis or not. So to answer your question, when people ask me, give me like,

Quick and dirty, what are some things I can do tomorrow, right? Here's where I go. I'll start with two of them that I think, two strategies that I think can help everybody. And they sound so intuitive and simple, and yet, you know, we get, we do with the things that we do and don't always have this right at hand. So the first is using more visuals, and I'll explain why.

So we all know that there are the big three learning modalities, visual, auditory, kinesthetic. We all know that some people gravitate towards one or the other. So that's not surprising. We also all know that if we activate more than one, the learning sticks better. So if I hear it and I move it, it's going to matter more in my brain. It's going to be more embedded in my brain than if I just did one of those things, for example. So that's not surprising. We also all know that every art form has a modality that dominates it. In music, of course, that is the auditory, right? In visual art, that may be the visual. All of our arts are multimodal, but all of them also have one that's sort of the highlight, you know? Arts educators tend to privilege the modality that dominates their art form when they teach, which is not a surprise. If you're a visual arts teacher, you are trafficking in visuals.

So you're working with visuals, you're helping your students create visuals, you're analyzing visuals, all of that. So of course you're gonna use a lot of them when you teach. Similarly in music, we are manipulating trafficking in sound all the time, helping our students to create sounds, organize sounds, manipulate sounds, right? So it's not surprising that we would be more auditory. So one important thing to note is that we wanna try to cover all of the modalities, but I feel very strongly

And this is, I am super auditory. That is my jam. Not surprising, I'm a musician. A lot of us are. But I believe that the visual modality is the most significant and powerful teaching and learning modality for this reason. And there's a chapter about this in the book. It's relationship with time. So an auditory experience is temporary. Yeah, you can record it and listen, but the actual experience is it happens in a moment and then it's over. Similarly, a kinesthetic experience is temporary. You did the movements and then you stop doing them. Visuals stick around. So imagine I had a whiteboard here with a list of the instructions for the task that I want the students to do. And I explain the instructions and showed them on the whiteboard. That whiteboard is still there after I've explained the instructions. So let's say you have a student who's distracted.

The whiteboard is there to support them. Let's say you have a student for whom English is not their first language. The whiteboard is there to support them. Let's say you have a student who needs extra processing time. The whiteboard is there to support them. So you get the idea that the visuals have dual function. They are both part of the teaching and learning modality, obviously, but they are also a support.

So, and the visuals don't need to be complicated. They can just be words on the board or a symbol here or some notation there. You don't need to go on and get fancy clip art and you don't need to spend that kind of time. But if you augment your teaching with more visuals, and it could be not on the board, it could be a checklist that students have at their seats. It could be a handout. But the visuals will support your teaching and make it more accessible for everyone. So that's piece number one.

The second piece, oh please, I love it, you go.

Susan

Can I pause you? Because I've got questions. I've got questions. So because what I find really interesting here is when you said visuals, I immediately went to symbols or to some sort of pictorial explanation of what you were talking about. And I see that a lot. Right. I see a lot of pictures, but I really like the idea that it could just be written text that it can hold. And when you also said that it was about a time component, I immediately went to, because it's short, it captures it quickly, whereas something might contain it longer, but you're actually explaining that it's a lengthening in time. Now I do have a question about in visual form.

What would be best in terms of chunking? Do you find that chunking the visual into like one, two, three, or whether it's a written text or if it's pictures or whatever, or is there an optimal number of steps in order for students to really hold onto it?

Rhoda

I love that question. I love the complexity of how you're thinking about visuals. And if all we talk about is visuals, I'm cool. But a couple of things. So some of this is individual. And some of this you're not going to know what is the sweet spot until you get to know the students. But for a lot of folks, too much text on a page or too many pixels on a screen, it's overwhelming. Skimming is hard.

Finding patterns is hard, and it just feels like too much, so the student disengages. So I would go, I'd say less is more, first of all. I'd also say, if you need to have multiple things, if there's a relationship that you can color code for students who can see colors to say, OK, here's that phrase, it comes back here, right, can be very helpful. And if the students are color blind, you can indicate it with a symbol instead of colors, right? But if you're going to have a fair amount of material, organize it for them simply. But I would say less is more. the thing about chunking that's really tricky. So just to back up on what chunking is. So good teachers always take a complex task and break it down. But for some individuals, because of how they process, because of how their brains work, maybe because of the brain-body connection, they need more smaller steps. Some of knowing what that's gonna be is the individual, but I would say the steps that you're used to, break them down at least one time more. And start there and only show a couple of steps at a time because you're right, it's overwhelming and see if the students are with you. And if they're not with you, it probably means the piece was too big or they were asked to combine pieces too quickly.

Susan 

Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, that was my only question about the visuals, but I thought that was super helpful as an explanation. Thank you. Yeah. Yes, absolutely.

Rhoda 

Well, of course. Do we have time for the next one? Awesome. So the next one is easy and a lot of teachers do it. And I'm going to put it out there. And that is consistency in structure and different aspects of how classes are run. So everybody knows this. Anxiety in our society as human beings is on the rise.

You add the fact that you have a disability or a diagnosis to that mix. And there's a lot of studies, it's like an exponential increase in anxiety. There's also a lot of research in how anxiety interferes with learning. That a lot of times students can't learn because they are feeling anxious and that's a barrier to their learning. So one easy way to start making, helping students feel less anxious is to create clarity, consistency, and structure and safety in the classroom. things like, I talk in the book about the macro structure and the micro structure. So things like the macro structure, which is something you don't even communicate to the students, but something you put together in your planning, that the beginning of class, is usually the same. So they come in, they do some sort of warm up, they get their materials, right? There might be announcements, that's sort of the beginning of class. The middle is we're working on stuff. And the end might be we do something that we feel really successful in, and we have a closing ritual of some kind, we put materials away, we go away. That's very broad, but that's all it needs to be. And you don't even need to communicate that to the students, it's just that

The fact that you do that again and again helps them to feel safe. Now, it can't happen all the time. Right before the concert, the structure is going to be different. Right after the concert, the structure is going to be different. Right before an exhibition for an art class, right? Or at the beginning of a new semester, or like the day after Halloween. Things are different in schools, right? So we need to allow for that. But more often than not,

This gives students the subliminal sense of what to expect. And then the more concrete piece, which a lot of teachers do, is the agenda on the board, right? But it's not enough just to say, and I call this the microstructure. It's not enough just to put it on the board. We need to, what I call, telegraph the agenda. So we just did our warmups. Now we're going on to this piece. So literally using it with them so the students see, I know what to expect.

I'm led in on how things are going. It's not happening to me. I am part of the experience in a way that gives me more power and also lessens my anxiety. I have talked with teachers who, when they institute that, it completely, after a little bit of time, it completely changes how students are able to participate and learn.

Susan 

That's amazing. Now, when I'm listening to this, it sounds very similar to some of the things that I was taught about universal design for learning. Do they match? Am I correct in that there's a lot of alignment and overlap between what you're sharing and the idea of universal design for learning?

Rhoda

Yes. Universal Design for Learning is philosophically extremely compatible with my work. There's a call out in here to Universal Design for Learning, and I credit the folks there. That phrase, necessary for some and helpful for all, comes from Universal Design for Learning. So there's a lot of compatibility there. The folks at CAST have done tremendous work in Universal Design for Learning.

What I'm trying to do in the book is to make it as practical as possible for real world teachers. Universal Design for Learning has a tremendous research base and the principles are extremely well thought through. But a lot of times teachers are like, okay, sure, but what do I do? Well, this is trying to take that to the what do I do place.

Susan

Yes, which is, am all about the how, the practical, tactical, let's make that work, which is amazing. So before we head out, wanna ask you, you said in your last component about that there are so many stories that you know of seeing this work for students or have students who have blossomed because they have had these kind of tools provided for them. Can you share one of those? think everybody likes to hear a really good story about how this is working.

Rhoda

Sure, I have to think which one is the best. I'm gonna share a story from a college student because I think that will highlight a few things and also bring something new into the mix. So at Berkeley, we have a student who has a diagnosed disability who is in ear training class. And his teacher came to me, I do a lot of consulting with my faculty colleagues, and she said, This student is failing every ear training test. He's obviously not studying. He's going to fail my class.

Susan 

Pause. Explain what ear training is for people who don't know.

Rhoda

Your training is learning how to hear something that is played and then identify what it is and produce musical notation for it. Thank you. So she said he's failing every test. He's obviously not practicing or studying. He's going to fail my class. Now, I don't want to fault this teacher because the train of thought that she just laid out is, I think, how a lot of folks think.

Susan 

Perfect.

Rhoda

I don't necessarily think that just because he's failing every test means that he's not studying or practicing. And this is the mindset of accessible music education. There might be a barrier here. So does the student really know what he needs to know, but something is making it less possible for him to share that, to show that. So I asked her a question that I knew the answer to. And any of you who have studied ear training will know this. I said, how do you give ear training tests?

Air training tests have been given the same way since the beginning of time. And she gave me the answer I expected. She said, I play something on the piano and the students write it down. So that says to me, where could the barrier be? Could it be that the paper and pencil act of writing it down is a problem? Maybe he knows all that he needs to know, but he can't get it out on paper and pencil. That is not an uncommon situation.

So I asked her to call him into office hours to meet with him individually. I told her to create a grand staff on a big piece of construction paper to go into a software program and print out lots and lots of notes of various values. Cut them up so each one gets an individual small piece of paper. We're making manipulatives. And then I asked her to play something on the piano and have him take the little pieces, put them on the staff to show what she played. So I'm taking the paper and pencil out of the task, but trying to get to, does he really know it? She called me right afterwards. He got everything perfectly correct. So this means that the assessment, the test, was a barrier because it was paper and pencil. He was studying, he was practicing, he knew all that he needed to know, but she couldn't see it because there was only one way that she was assessing ear training.

Not to her discredit, it's how it's been done forever. So now the student was able to get occupational therapy. The student was able to use manipulatives in class. The student was able to use a software program and the student succeeded and did really well in ear training. So what this shows us is that when a student is not successful, we need to ask the next layer of questions. What could be happening?

Is there really learning happening, but the student in this case can't demonstrate it? Or if a student, for example, is refusing to participate, is something else a barrier there? Why are they refusing? Could it be some kind of social anxiety? Could it be some kind of fear of perfectionism, being afraid of making a mistake? Could there be something going on at home? We need to understand the next deeper level because that's often what leads us to the barriers that could be at play for particular students. And then when we know those barriers, it's about trying to reduce and remove them. So that example, I think, is pretty dramatic.

Susan

Yeah, absolutely. It leads us to curiosity rather than just a Yeah. Please do.

Rhoda 

Thank you. I love that word. I may steal that from you because I'll credit you. I won't steal it. I will credit you. But curiosity is exactly the stance. That's right.

Susan

Yeah, absolutely. So now I'm assuming that that much of this is in your new book. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about that and where we can pick it up?

Rhoda

Sure, so the book is called Accessible Arts Education, Principles, Habits, and Strategies to Unleash Every Student's Creativity and Learning. It came out in September, published by Solution Tree Press. You can get it wherever you get books. It's on Amazon. And I'm very, pleased with the book. think the press, the publishers did a really good job. in addition to laying out what accessible arts education is and lots of strategies,

I incorporated first-person perspectives. I interviewed 20 disabled artists about their education and there are quotes from them throughout the book. I commissioned artwork, one of the pieces on the cover, but every chapter begins with, I'll show you a different one, a piece of artwork by a disabled artist. The same artist did all eight pieces. And so I love that it's not just people talking about teaching, but it's rooted in more of a first-person perspective because those voices are so often absent from our conversations.

Susan 

That is wonderful. I am so excited to pick it up. We're going to put the links to where you can get it and everything in our show notes. Before we head out, can you let people know where they can stay in touch with you?

Rhoda 

Absolutely, and thank you. So the easiest way is over email, rbernard at berkeley.edu. Berkelee has two E's, B-E-R, actually three, B-E-R-K-L-E-E.edu. And also our website, which I'm sure will be in the show notes. I'm very active on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook as well, so that's another way to stay connected.

And yes, I would love to connect with anyone who has questions or comments or wants to engage more. That would be my pleasure.

Susan 

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today and your time. I learned a lot. I know our audience will as well.

Rhoda 

Thank you so much for having me. This was such a fun conversation. I don't want it to end.

Susan 

You know, I know. Thank you.

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