The Minimalist Educator Podcast
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 051: Unlocking Student Potential through the Arts with Amanda Koonlaba
Unlock the secrets of enhancing education through the arts with our special guest, Amanda Koonlaba, on the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Amanda, a talented mixed media artist and dedicated educational leader, takes us on a journey beginning with a pivotal moment in her childhood that sparked her lifelong passion for creative expression. Learn how her early experiences with art have shaped her innovative approaches to integrating arts into literacy and general education, using her unique perspective to advocate for a more inclusive and expansive understanding of art in schools.
Discover the transformative power of arts integration through inspiring stories, like that of a third-grade math teacher who used cubism to help students comprehend complex concepts. This creative approach not only improved academic performance but also boosted student confidence and fostered a more positive school culture. Amanda illustrates how arts integration can enhance emotional and social well-being, creating stronger connections between teachers, students, and the community, and demonstrating the far-reaching benefits of a child-centered, inclusive educational environment.
In our final segment, Amanda provides practical tips to help educators seamlessly integrate arts into their curriculum. She emphasizes the importance of starting with art-related vocabulary that overlaps with other subjects, making the process more accessible and effective for both teaching and learning. Amanda’s passion and expertise shine through as she offers essential insights and tools for empowering students through creativity. This episode is a treasure trove for educators eager to enrich their teaching methods and cultivate a deeper appreciation for the arts in education. Don't miss out on these invaluable strategies for transforming your classroom!
Amanda Koonlaba is a mixed media artist, set designer, and muralist who holds advanced degrees in Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment as well as Educational Leadership. Her rich background as an artist and as a school leader have led her to become an influential teaching artist with the vision to transcend the boundaries of conventional education.
Internationally acclaimed as a keynote presenter, Amanda shares her expertise on Educational Leadership Through the Arts, captivating audiences with her innovative approaches. Her visionary work extends to the Artful Literacy Centers, a groundbreaking program that seamlessly integrates the arts with literacy, fostering creative problem-solving skills. Amanda is known for her work with Party in the Art Room where she bridges the gap between arts classrooms and general education through arts integration.
This episode is sponsored by www.partyintheartroom.com: where you can receive a free arts-integrated guide packed with 25 ideas to align your art lessons with math and ELA standards.
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Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a podcast about paring down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Teacher Book, Tammy Musialski-Bornemann and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:In this episode, we speak with Amanda about arts in education. We discuss the importance of the arts, as well as how integrating the arts with other learning areas can deepen our learning. Amanda Kunlaba is a mixed media artist, set designer and muralist, who holds advanced degrees in curriculum instruction and assessment, as well as educational leadership. Her rich background as an artist and as a school leader have led her to become an influential teaching artist with the vision to transcend the boundaries of conventional education. Internationally acclaimed as a keynote presenter, amanda shares her expertise on educational leadership through the arts, captivating audiences with her innovative approaches. Her visionary work extends to the Artful Literacy Centres, a groundbreaking program that seamlessly integrates the arts with literacy, fostering creative problem-solving skills. Amanda is known for her work with Party in the Art Room, where she bridges the gap between arts classrooms and general education through arts integration.
Speaker 3:Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Today, we are excited to have a guest with us, amanda Kulaba, who is a fellow emerging leader from the ASDV program. Welcome to the show, amanda. How are you today? I'm great. How are you Good? I'm excited to talk some art stuff with you today, because I'm always looking at your pictures and it looks like you have lots of fun stuff going on all the time. And how are you, Christine?
Speaker 2:I am going well. I'm also excited to talk about the arts. It's always a fun topic to get into.
Speaker 3:For sure. So, amanda, I mentioned we're Facebook friends and I often see a lot of the fun stuff that you do with art. So how did you first become interested in the arts and why has it become so such an important part of your life?
Speaker 4:I have this story that I tell about when I was in the third grade and there was this event called Art in the Park and my parents were always really great at taking me to art and music and theatrical things, because we we had a little of that in the school where I went, but not it wasn't like we had a class dedicated to it and my parents came from artsy families, musical families, so they would make sure to take us to those things.
Speaker 4:But there was this event, art in the Park, and I just remember we had to bring a T-shirt and my brother, you know they had told everybody just bring like a white package of T-shirts, but mine I had to have a pink T-shirt. So my mom found me a plain pink t-shirt that I could paint on and when I got there we made string art on the t-shirt. So we just took yarn, dipped it in paint and put it on the shirt and and pulled it under a piece of cardboard and it made this really cool design and I was hooked. I was like the main thing I knew about art at that point was like I could draw a house with the sun in the corner with my crayons. I could color in a coloring book with my crayons. But I was like, oh my gosh, you can do stuff like this, and it's like with paint, and it doesn't have to look like anything, it can be non-objective, it's it. It just opened my eyes to what like possibilities that there could be. And there were other activities too. I just really remember that t-shirt. I wore that t-shirt everywhere. My mom had to get me some pants that matched it. I mean it. I just opened my eyes to the possibilities. I also really remember being that there were a lot of people there and I I had I remember thinking these are not the people I go to school with, these are people that I've not met before. And there was people who didn't look like me, there were people who weren't in my social group, and I remember feeling like that was something really special too at the time, thinking all these people can come together for this. Like art is just for everybody. So that was really an impactful day for me as a kid as far as the arts go, but so I really fell in love with it then. So that's like me as a human being, but as a teacher, I have this story that I always tell too, you ready. I was so y'all.
Speaker 4:I was so lucky that when I was coming out of college for undergrad, I did my student teaching at a school that was an arts integration school with Mississippi Whole Schools. Mississippi Whole Schools has different kind of levels for participation in their programming and the school that I got assigned to was a model school. It's like the top tier you had to prove, it's like winning an award to be a model school. So they were really doing arts integration like it should be done. It was like oozing from the walls of that campus and I mean I landed there as a student teacher and then I managed to get hired at that school and I was.
Speaker 4:I worked in that environment for six years and so it was really. And I said, you know, we didn't have the arts like individual classes for the arts when I was in elementary school, but we did have we did a lot of project-based learning, a lot of hands-on stuff. So I had that in my background and then I had only ever worked at this arts integrated school and I just thought that's the way it was everywhere and because I was, you know, young and I worked there for six years and I got the opportunity. I was actually approached to go to another school in the district that was kind of across town to be the art teacher there. They were like, can you pass the praxis? And I was like, oh yeah, I can pass the praxis and teach art. But they said we want someone with that arts integrated background that can come here and help us. We need some leaders over here. And it was like it felt like a really great opportunity to be art teacher plus sort of helping with the arts integration.
Speaker 4:I have never, I just couldn't believe the difference in the two schools. The school that I was at, where the arts were oozing from the walls to move across town where they're they almost had they had like the bare minimum at that time and it was a good school. They just didn't have, they had not built up an arts culture at all. It was. It was just like so eye-opening and so I just started doing my thing in those art classes and I just seeing those kids come alive and like they in a way that I had not seen before because I don't think they had had it as much. I was just being everywhere, you know, and I was seeing kids really get to do some of this stuff for the first time and it really changed me. I really started to better understand like the equity around the arts and what it can really do for kids. So there's like a story there about the arts and me as a human being, and then there's the story of me as an educator and how it became so important to me.
Speaker 2:Amanda, I am loving your accent so much right now I think I could just listen to you talk for hours. I should probably ask a question in here. So what would you say to people who do find themselves whether it's family or a teacher who find themselves in a context where it is seen as art is an extra? It's a nice thing on the side, but, like we're here for academics, what would you say to try and convince people to adjust their way of thinking about the arts?
Speaker 4:I think I might try to give them some examples to look at or some like, until it's almost like you can't see how not extra it is until you see it in action. So I would try to say, let's see if we can find you some examples, or I would sit there and tell stories. I have tons of stories. I have this had this student at the new school where I was that I had to work, do a lot of training and we had to do a lot of grant writing to get all the teachers trained and went to a lot of PD and stuff. One of the third grade math teachers came to me and she's like my kids are not getting this, they're just not and I don't know what else to do. I've tried everything. I was like let's see if we can make up an arts integrated lesson. So I just made up something from scratch. We made. It was a cubism lesson and I worked with her to make sure she could teach it. I went to her classroom and kind of helped a little and so she taught it to all of her classes because she had, like they changed classes in the third grade and one of her students came to me. He was like Miss Kuliba, did you know? My teacher was doing art in her classroom and when we were doing math and he was like that was cool, I need that all the time and it was so cute. But he didn't know that I had helped with that.
Speaker 4:And then later I was walking down the hall and she was like, get in here, come in here, I want you to see this. Um, she said they, they got it. Like they got it. Even the ones that I didn't think would ever get it got it. And she was so proud of herself, it's like, and proud of her students.
Speaker 4:So I, you know, I think that's a powerful story and I love to tell that story because the kid appreciated and it meant so much to him and I that was one of my students who was really having a particularly hard time that year didn't know if he was going to pass his third grade. They have to pass a reading test. There's just a lot going on for him. And this teacher, too, doesn't see herself as a creative person, didn't think she could teach it, but it was transformational for her. So being I'm being able to say this was like this worked for my students and for a kid to be like that is something I need more of. I think that's powerful. I think it's powerful to tell those stories. I think that's helpful to people that maybe are on the fence or non-believers. And. But I would also say, if you can, if we could find like videos we have a lot of. We have Mississippi Whole Schools has a ton of data around this too.
Speaker 3:That is a powerful story, because when you do hear those kinds of words coming from students like this is what I need, then they can start advocating for themselves, and that's just like. Isn't that what we want our students to do to recognize like I'm good at this, I'm making connections. I need more of this.
Speaker 4:It made him feel good too, like it was. I got the math, I got it, I can do something, um, and and then there's just that emotional connection that you make when to art, when you're creating, and it made it just boosted his confidence, it made him feel good. I think that's why he said I need more of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. And so that kind of leads into what I was going to ask you next. So it's, it can be a great confidence booster for students and teachers. Right, they might not recognize that, oh, I can bring these creative elements into my ELA class or my math or my science, and so what are some other benefits do you see that you've seen emerge with working with teachers and students from bringing arts into classrooms?
Speaker 4:We saw a decline in some of our behavior, our unwanted behavior, and our numbers kind of went down at that school. I was there for seven years so we saw a lot of improvement there. Just the culture of the school became a much more positive, child-centered culture. I think feedback that I got from teachers and I can say this for myself too because I was I can understand the burnout. You know, it's really easy, a real easy thing to get burned out because the job is so, so hard. But when you are, when you're in a, when you can be creative, like it can help balance some of that out. I mean, because it can be an emotional, a social, emotional thing for the teachers too, um, and it can balance out some of that stress. But I think I think there's a bonding aspect to the building relationships between the teachers and students that can happen around the arts in a way that some can't around a worksheet, um. And I think I have another story about that school. I'll just I'll tell it.
Speaker 4:We had a lot of like vandalism and stuff going on when I first got there.
Speaker 4:We had some windows that were shot, we had some break-ins where people destroyed things and over the course of that seven years, we started doing as much as we could to get the students and the families to help us make that campus artful, like we were painting murals. On Saturday mornings we would just have a family day and people would walk from the surrounding neighborhoods that didn't have transportation. Their parents would come, like we had to do a lot of outreach and relationship building, but we could get them there, and especially when we would work on stuff during the school week with the kids, they, they like, took so much ownership of that, of that actual school campus, that those school buildings they were like we can't destroy that, like that's ours. We did that. Or my sister. My sister was here two years ago and she helped paint that mural and it just I think it that was part of us building a more positive culture too. This is so many, so many good things, so many benefits.
Speaker 2:You mentioned already about integrating arts in math and I definitely have so many anecdotal experiences where a kid might really really struggle with number and operations. But as soon as you get to shape and space like shining star when you're doing, you know the 3D models and you know all of that, all of that stuff where you can incorporate the arts a little bit more naturally. But can you think of any other learning areas that just naturally go with the arts and the visual arts and you can create and have a good time, everything?
Speaker 4:not found a standard. I have not found a standard that I can't hadn't been able to come up with a lesson for. I have schools call me all the time and they'll say we cannot figure out how to teach this standard we have. I mean, historically, the whole school struggles with this and I don't. You know. A times, unfortunately, they've waited and it's their last ditch effort. They can't think of anything else to try before they call me when I wish they would call. Call me first, yeah, call me first, but I haven't. I mean, I'm thinking right now about I went to a fifth grade school and they were they were reading a story in their reading book.
Speaker 4:I can't remember the name of the story, but it was about the Boston Tea Party and I found like the propaganda, like drawings that they printed and where they like had people print and make it look a certain way, and so I was able to bring those images in and we analyzed those images for the elements of art, like line, shape, color, all of that, and it helped their comprehension so much because they better understood what all of the context around that story was. Maybe it was can't you make them behave, king George? Does that have something about the Boston Tea Party in it, but it gave them so much more context. And I remember those teachers were like they were like, well, you didn't know this, but we combined all of our students that were struggling with that into one room, set with that, whatever the standard was, it was something comprehension I don't remember the number of the specific standards several years ago, but they said we put them all in there so they could all get in. She was, she said I, they just some of the ones that we would never have thought would have things to say about the boston tea party were involved in that conversation and I said it wasn't me, it's the art, it's the art. It's the art. That is like the hook.
Speaker 4:And I'm thinking too, about another lesson that was science that I did at a school. They were, it was about the planets and we looked at satellite images of planets, so that we looked at that like elements of art, like what lines? Do we see what? I've done this with cells too. I think what lines, what colors, how? What does that make you think of? What can you connect that to? And then like then it's like well, what is that? What does that have to do with that planet is there? Is it a gas? Do we? You know? So, any subject, any standard, but a lot of times it just comes back down to that like let's look at something and get some vocabulary built, like to start. That's like the heart of it.
Speaker 3:I love that you are just so excited about like, yep, any standard can just do. You know, pick one, we'll figure it out. And I think it would be so valuable I know it would be so valuable if there was someone like you that was available to way more schools, because I think it would just really open up a lot of learning for so many students that just don't like school or just you know it's not their thing. I say that loosely, but it's every kid's thing if the right things are happening there and sometimes that's the arts but they don't know what they don't know right. So I know that you have a website and a business that you have called Party in the Art Room. Can you talk about some of the things that you do there?
Speaker 4:Yes, so Party in the Art Room was born out of me going to that other school to be the art teacher and just being so surprised at the way those kids were getting into what we were doing. And just I was like, man, this is amazing, how can I help other people feel this and do this? And I was doing my national boards at the time, so I was doing a lot of writing. I just started a blog and I was so shy about it at the time I wouldn't even put my name on it. And we had a meeting for the art teachers in our district and one of the other art teachers said hey, amanda, there's this really great website. I'm going to tell you all about it. And it was my. I was like that's my, that's my blog, that's. They were like you need to put your name on it. So when I put my name on it, I started like people. I Like people started getting a lot of could you write a, could you write an article for what we're doing? Or can PBS teachers and things like that or want to do a presentation? Can you help us figure things out? So it really just sort of I didn't know it was going to play out like that, but it did and I just really found a way to try to help more teachers and so Parting the Art Room focuses a lot on the visual arts and trying to bridge the gap between the visual arts instruction and general education.
Speaker 4:I have a lot of gen ed teachers, elementary especially, who follow me and are on my email list because it's so I can help help them bridge the gap. Like that. This is not working and what can I do? So I think I have more of an audience for general education teachers than art teachers, even though it's called party in the art room. But I have recently been really trying to do more work around creativity and reaching administrators and like helping administrators and district leaders and just understand that the importance of arts integration and what the arts can do across the board. I have this workshop that I do called Educational Leadership Through the Arts and it's for, like school leaders. I talk a lot about data and you know what cultural change means and how the arts impact that.
Speaker 4:I do a lot of different things. I wear a lot of hats. I go to a lot of schools and model teach for teachers, for PD. I'll walk into their classroom and do a lesson with kids. I've never met on something that they told me they needed help with, and then I will follow up with those teachers to help make sure that they can keep going with it, that they have the tools they need. But they got to see it in action with their actual students. So party in the art room, but there's a lot kind of going on behind the scenes. I keep trying to figure out how do I communicate about all the other online it's. You know there's just a lot to do there. There's a lot of things to manage online.
Speaker 2:That does sound like great PD, though, to actually see it come alive in action and have the follow-up afterwards.
Speaker 4:It's my favorite. It's my favorite PD. I would so much rather be in the room teaching the kids and let the teachers watch it, because you know I was, I think sometimes I was all the time. Sure they can, but but when you get in the room with those actual students, um, you can really. That message really hits home that they can do it, and then the teachers see that they can do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, amanda, I think we're gonna have to start wrapping up the end of the the episode. Um, but we do love to ask our guests for a pare down pointer. If you've got one, it could be about arts, education, or it could be something from your own life, something that would help our listeners.
Speaker 4:So I want to bring it back to that vocabulary. Arts integration and the arts in schools can be a really massive big thing, but the basic starting point get your foot in the door. The most important, foundational, fundamental thing about it is vocabulary and finding vocabulary that overlaps with whatever else it is. You're teaching and then teaching the art vocabulary words, and you can do so much with just that.
Speaker 3:That's an awesome tip because, you know, we're all about streamlining and integrating and whenever we can do that to make it easier for teachers to teach and kids to learn, it's just, you know, gives us the goosies. Thank you so much for joining us today, amanda. I loved hearing about your passion for the arts. Thank you so much for joining us today, amanda. I loved hearing about your passion for the arts, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:This episode was brought to you by Party in the Art Room. Visit wwwpartyintheartroomcom to receive a free arts integrated guide packed with 25 ideas to align your art lessons with math and ELL standards ideas to align your art lessons with math and ELL standards.
Speaker 1:Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for more episodes of the Minimalist Educator podcast. They would love to hear about your journey with minimalism. Connect with them at PlanZPLS on Twitter or Instagram. The music for the podcast has been written and performed by Gaia Moretti. Thank you.
