Art Integration: A Turning Point in Becoming

Navigating the space between pre-service teachers' perceptions of teaching and the reality of being in the classroom can create a sense of disequilbrium. Despite teacher education programs working diligently to prepare undergraduates for the demands of an evolving profession, many new teachers can experience a tremendous reality check upon entering the field (Riches & Benson, 2010). This shock is often coupled with the increasing demands placed upon teachers by society, parents, and administrators through district-wide and state-wide testing. The atmosphere of teaching to the test has created an environment in which there is a continual development/ influx/incorporation/demand to adopt new programs that will 'fix' the educational divide (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Nieto, 1999). For new art educators whose primary focus in pre-service coursework is teaching their content, the hype to increase test scores can overshadow the more crucial task of incorporating social justice education in the classroom that integrates visual culture while engaging students and empowering their voices (Dewhurst, 2010; Garber, 2005). As a new art educator, I found myself embroiled in this divide1.I was to be a "good teacher." I believed in a higher purpose and the good of my calling. I was ready to go above and beyond, working numerous unpaid hours. I was prepared to invest resources of time and money into my students' education. I was to be a teacher who cared about children's emotional and social development as strongly as I cared about their grasp of curricular concepts. Like others before and after me, there were numerous reasons I came to this profession (Anderson, 2000). Yet, I had no idea that the journey to becoming such a teacher would be so difficult, as I struggled to reconcile my calling to teach with the lived complexities of teaching.As a student in art education, I believed I knew how to teach, and more importantly, how to support young people in their journey through a diverse and challenging curriculum. My ideas were both grandiose and idealistic. Before I ever set foot in a classroom, I wrote a high school curriculum addressing and challenging issues of diversity through art education, in part because I believed I knew what was missing in art education. Lortie (1975) found that it is not uncommon for pre-service teachers to have strongly developed beliefs about "good" teaching long before they enter their own classroom. I was no different. I boldly believed I could improve what on-the-job, seasoned professionals were currently doing.Despite an awareness of the potentially difficult transition and lack of balance one feels moving from a student to a teacher role (Donahue & Stewart, 2008), I felt prepared to be the kind of teacher that would support learners, and through art, make an indelible mark on their young lives. Agreeing with Eisner (1998) and Gardner (1999) that the arts are integral to the education of the "whole" child, and seeing the value of art as an entry point for student learning, I chose to take a new position as an arts integration specialist in a large, urban school district in the southwestern United States. I was prepared to teach art, yet nothing had prepared me to collaborate and build meaningful lessons while teaching all subjects through art. Armed with a nebulous job description that included collaborating with 30 teachers for two-thirds of my day to develop curricula that would integrate math, science, social studies, and language arts to improve student performance and teaching art as an elective the remaining one-third of my day, I was confident I could do it.In contrast to my confidence during the interview, the reality of those first weeks unsettled me. I was consistently overwhelmed and unsure of what to do. I had been a good student but now I had no one guiding me, offering benchmarks to hit, or strategies for improvement. This was exacerbated by the fact that as an arts integration specialist, rather than working exclusively in my own classroom, I was tasked with the unique position of working with other teachers- teachers who had been teaching for years, some since before I started Kindergarten-and teaching them how to integrate the arts into their content area. …