Arkansas A-Plus Adds Two Little Rock Schools to After-School Arts Program

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Students from Watson Elementary School.

The U of A outreach program, Arkansas A+, provides after-school arts opportunities for students in underserved schools in the Little Rock School District.

Now in its second year, pARTners After School Program has expanded to serve students at Watson and Chicot elementary schools. The grant-funded project is a partnership between Arkansas A+ and Little Rock Community Schools. The goal of the program is to increase access to after-school care for families while providing arts enrichment opportunities for students. In the spring, pARTners will serve two additional community schools for a total of four participating schools.

Each after-school program runs for eight weeks and includes modules in both performing and visual arts led by experienced teaching artists. At the close of this semester's program, Arkansas A+ sponsored a student showcase to share the students' work with their families and school communities.

Arkansas A+ Executive Director Alyssa Wilson held a professional development workshop with the program teams where teaching artists worked with art teachers from each school to begin their planning. "During those sessions, the word 'connection' kept reappearing as important to our work with the program," she said. "Connections across our program team, connections with our program students, connections among the students and connections to the arts that were being explored. This realization led to our adopting 'Connection' as our overarching concept for the program."

When planning the visual arts module, teaching artist Lizzie Gillum said, "It was important for me to give them the opportunity to work 'big,' because elementary students don't usually have the opportunity to create on a larger scale." Students at both schools worked collaboratively to create papier-mache sculptures that also served as focal points and thematic elements for their performance pieces.

Robin Neveu Brown, artistic director of Rock Moves Contemporary Dance, taught the performing arts module at both schools. Brown guided the students to choreograph their own movements structured around their writing on the concept of connection. "We looked at the concept of connection through the lens of the moving human body," Brown said. "We learned how important it is to be connected as a dancing ensemble, seeing and listening to each other as a collaborative tool in crafting our performance."

Arkansas A+ is a U of A College of Education and Health Professions outreach program. It provides schools with ongoing professional development, an intricate network of support and an active research component. In Arkansas A+ schools, teaching the state's mandated curriculum involves a collaborative, multi-disciplined approach with the arts — dance/movement, theater, music, creative writing and visual arts — continuously woven into every aspect of a child's learning. The hands-on curriculum ignites student learning and leads to higher achievement.