Although it is part of the Union City School District, Woodrow Wilson
Elementary School is housed in a former high school in Weehawken, New
Jersey. Weehawken hosts Woodrow Wilson because while Weehawken's student
population holds steady at about 1,000 students, Union City gains close
to 12,000 students a year. Union City is one of the mostly densely
populated cities in the country---some 67,000 residents live in the
city's 1.3 square miles---and the Union City's school district is one of
New Jersey's poorest.

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="3.6090551181102364in"
height="2.311811023622047in"}More prosperous than Union City, Weehawken
residents were initially wary of "inner city students" arriving in their
neighborhood. Woodrow Wilson's students are "inner city students"--- 90%
of the students are of Hispanic origin, and about 60% qualify as low
income. They are also highly motivated and high achieving, thanks, in
part, to the school's powerful, student-centered philosophy. In an
openness characteristic of the school, school leaders invited their
Weehawken neighbors into the school at every opportunity; ten years
later the neighborhood takes pride in the school.

Union City was one of New Jersey's first districts to experiment with an
arts-infused curriculum. In 1995, district leaders invited then-Gifted
and Talented teacher Ron Treanor to create a new school, based on the
Gifted and Talented program. As principal, Treanor laid out a vision of
"educated, well-rounded students with self-understanding and an ability
to use their talents." Building on the state's broad support for
arts-based education, and free to hand-pick faculty, Treanor chose
teachers who were passionate about their work and had arts backgrounds,
formal or informal.

Working with Anthony Buschetti, the Curriculum Resource teacher, and
Whole School Reform facilitator Mimi Bair, Treanor drew on Howard
Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences and his own experience with
the arts in education to develop a rigorous, creative, and effective
program of student-centered learning. Students enter the school by
application, and are chosen for their interest and ability in academics
and the arts.

Prominently displayed in the school's lobby is a (student-made) poster
of Howard Gardner's eight intelligences:

![](media/image2.jpeg){width="4.416141732283465in"
height="2.344488188976378in"}Linguistic

Logical-mathematical

Musical

Visual-spatial

Bodily kinesthetic

Interpersonal

Intrapersonal

Naturalist

Gardner suggests that we use other "intelligences" beside the
conventional verbal and mathematic to negotiate the world, and that each
of us has a unique set of cognitive strengths (and weaknesses). At
Woodrow Wilson this means that each student is understood as an
individual learner. Teachers use a range of approaches to ensure that
all students find a way to grasp subject matter and demonstrate their
learning.

The Woodrow Wilson philosophy joins the idea of multiple intelligences
to the practice and appreciation of the arts to create what Treanor
stresses is an arts-integrated curriculum. In many schools the arts are
separate, often elective, classes. At Woodrow Wilson they take center
stage, engaging students, tapping their multiple intelligences to
acquire new knowledge and skills, and challenging them to formulate and
present complex ideas.

The MIAD (Multiple Intelligences Arts Domain) embodies this approach. A
MIAD is regular block of time on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons when
students and teachers leave their regular classrooms to learn and
practice a chosen art activity with the rest of the school, mixing with
different teachers and students from other grades. Recent MIAD offerings
included ballroom dancing, jazz guitar, detective and sci-fi story
writing, opera, ballet, set design, pottery, modern dance, debate,
swimming, golf, popular music, Harry Potter, American sign language, and
Shakespeare. A distinctive Woodrow Wilson MIAD is "forensics," the art
of debate and argumentation. Students prepare and present original
speeches and interpretations of other works in competition with teams
from other schools. The only public school in Hudson County to offer
forensics, Woodrow Wilson students have taken the state championship for
the last three years.

Each of the three yearly MIAD cycles culminates in a "convocation,"
where students share and reflect on their work. Teachers and
administrators see the MIADs as a way to honor students' interests and
choices and provide a hands-on, multidimensional way to practice and
refine their thinking skills.

An outstanding feature of Woodrow Wilson's use of the arts is its
long-standing relationships with major cultural institutions. Across the
Hudson River from midtown Manhattan, Woodrow Wilson partners with the
Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the New York City Ballet,
and the American Ballroom Association, as well as the New Jersey Council
on the Arts, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and Young Audiences
of New Jersey.

Professional artists work closely with students. Fourth grade students
study the "vocabulary" of movement with a professional from the New York
City Ballet; every year first and second grade students create an opera,
from libretto to lighting and publicity, by themselves, with guidance
from a professional from the Metropolitan Opera.

![](media/image3.jpeg){width="2.7574803149606297in"
height="2.175196850393701in"}"We start with the question, 'what does a
student need to know?'" explains Principal Treanor, "and we make a list
and cut across the curriculum and the arts." Teachers work from the New
Jersey state academic standards to define the content and skills
students need to master, then design lessons attuned to their students,
incorporating not only Gardner's Multiple Intelligences but Bloom's
taxonomy of higher order thinking and the Coalition of Essential
Schools' Common Principles. Teachers create class profiles in order to
honor every student's strongest talents while helping to develop others.
Treanor reviews all lesson plans to ensure they are academically and
pedagogically sound.

Teachers have weekly cooperative planning time, both at grade level and
with computer and art, language, and music teachers; both Treanor and
Bair attend the teacher meetings. The school's teaching staff appeared
to hold the school, its leaders, students, and each other in high
esteem. One teacher described Mr. Treanor's attitude as "yes/ yes,
win/win"---"his mantra is, 'we'll find the money.'" Another added: "He's
so inspiring. You want to do your best." One teacher called it "the best
administrative team I have seen in 32 years. We are truly valued here
and we are happy to come to work." The tone among teachers was notably
cooperative.

Students also find the school a safe haven. The 7th and 8th grade
students mentor the 1st and 2nd grade students, easing young students
into the school culture while keeping older students connected. Woodrow
Wilson is like "a big door that leads anywhere," one student said.
Another likened the school to "a big car with lots of streets, and you
won't get lost." "They let us expand here," a 6th grade student said.
"We give students a lot of leeway to learn how they learn," explains a
teacher. "We give the average student an opportunity to try amazing
things, in a non-threatening atmosphere where taking risks is okay. In
fact, their peers respect them for taking risks."

![](media/image4.jpeg){width="3.1736220472440944in"
height="2.839763779527559in"}Teachers said they looked forward to going
to work in the morning---in large part, it seems, because "every day is
different," as one teacher explained. Because the school teaches to the
students as individuals, there is no "standard" way of teaching any
subject, calling on teachers to be newly creative, to find ways to help
all students grasp the academic material. Said another teacher, "We've
seen it work---that every child can learn something some way." Students
with special needs seem to do especially well with hands-on learning,
the resource teacher noted.

Teachers may use professional development opportunities to pursue arts
interests, deepen their content knowledge, or enrich their teaching
skills. Working with a college in New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson designs its
own on-site professional development. New teachers receive focused
assistance in integrating the arts into the curriculum. All teachers
have the freedom to design their own classrooms and are given separate
MIAD budgets to supplement their regular classroom budgets. Teachers
concede that while the work is invigorating, it's hard to encompass the
arts, multiple intelligences, Bloom's taxonomy, the Coalition of
Essential Schools' philosophy---not to mention state and district
standards---when they plan lessons. A few have left the school,
overwhelmed, but the remaining teachers expressed strong commitment.

Parent involvement is strong, and parents frequently volunteer help with
student productions. Thanks to an ambitious technology program, Union
City officials began in 1992, most classrooms and many students' home
have Internet access, and parents and teachers communicate by email
extensively. Almost all of the school's office staff members are ESL
certified and bilingual. Parents described Treanor as willing to do what
is necessary for kids. Together with a local health care facility, the
school sponsors free Mother's Day mammograms---at the school---for all
female members of students' families.

Students learn through projects drawn from the district's annual set of
grade-level themes. One year, for example, the 7th grade theme was the
Civil War. At Woodrow Wilson, students pitched a Hollywood movie about
the Civil War, which required them to write scene synopses, enact parts
of the movie, and develop project a budget. Another Civil War project
entailed writing perspective journals---students wrote from the point of
view of a male slave in the South, or a free female slave in the North,
or a White slave owner, then acted out scenes from their journals and
delivered PowerPoint presentations on their characters.

![](media/image5.jpeg){width="3.8043307086614173in"
height="2.854724409448819in"}All students learn to give PowerPoint
presentations. Technology is a strong theme throughout the school: each
classroom has computers and Internet access, and the computer room, with
banks of computers, is open all day. Woodrow Wilson is electronically
connected to all the other Union City schools and now, through a new
"thin client" technology, students can access their work from anywhere
in the world. All 7th and 8th grade students create
e-portfolios---digital collections of their best work framed by student
reflections on each piece of work. The e-portfolios go with the students
when they graduate, entrées to challenging programs at their next
destinations. The school also has a low-power radio station where
students learn how to produce and present radio shows.

Presentation is an important part of student learning. Throughout the
year, students are involved in both informal MIAD convocations and full
productions of operas, musicals, or plays. Performing, Wilson teachers
hold, prepares students for public presentations later in life, where
poise and composure before an audience are valuable assets. But it also
helps students see the value of honing a performance through rehearsals
and feedback. "Students learn that polishing presentations is as
important as conceiving ideas," observed Carol Fineberg in her "Portrait
of Woodrow Wilson Integrated School, 2001." Students learn that, through
effort, they can meet their own high standards, she adds.

Students are assessed through a battery of standardized state tests as
well as teacher-designed assessments and rubrics for each learning
project and each student. The district has set 20 benchmarks in each
core subject: teachers benchmark student progress every eight weeks.
Teachers maintain classroom and student portfolios, both to assess
student progress and to create assessments. The school offers an
extended day program of state test preparation from January through
March for 7th and 8th grade students.

![](media/image6.jpeg){width="3.203543307086614in"
height="4.289763779527559in"}

Students enter Woodrow Wilson in first grade---there is one first and
one second grade---and again in third grade, when another class is
added. These students all enter via the application and interview
process, but some students enter in 6th grade, placed at Woodrow Wilson
to relieve overcrowding at their old schools. These entering 6th graders
provide a useful instance of so-called "ordinary" (non arts-oriented)
students in an arts-integrated school. As might be imagined, they have
the hardest time adjusting to Wilson---"they have to learn how to budget
their own time, make decisions, and generally be more independent than
they are usually asked to be," one teacher explains---but even the most
cynical of these students has eventually found a way into the school
life and out of his or her "shell."

These students reinforce Treanor's contention that his school's model is
replicable. He and his teachers maintain that a school modeled on Wilson
could succeed with any early elementary school students, artistically
inclined or not. In their experience, all children can benefit from an
arts-based education.

Most Wilson students test well above average in district-mandated tests,
and show significant growth in higher order thinking on cognitive tests.
And despite low-income backgrounds, students score high on measures of
self such as social skills, competence, emotional balance, and physical
and academic ability. Woodrow Wilson graduates tend to do well, forming
the highest number of honors students at one district high school and
the greatest number of 1000+ scores on the SAT exams in the district.
They typically attend either arts-oriented Union Hill High School or
technology-oriented Emerson High school, although a number go on to
private high schools such as Philips Exeter and Andover Academies. A
state program, SEEDS, helps low-income students attend these prep
schools.

"Our alumni come back and tell us they are more prepared for college
than their peers because of the responsibility they learn to assume at
Woodrow Wilson," a teacher said. Treanor contends that "a well rounded
student has a lot to contribute. \[Our\] graduating student has a sense
of himself and what he or she has to offer the world."

![](media/image7.jpeg){width="3.398425196850394in"
height="2.5799212598425196in"}