New program brings out the artist in students

Local artist Linda Lovisa is bringing art into classrooms around the district, but not during art class.
This past spring, Lovisa taught students in Grade 4 at Atikokan’s North Star School about rocks and minerals. Her tools are paper, glue, pencils, sand of various colours and coarseness, and her son’s collection of rocks and minerals.
The assignment is for students to create a landscape using these tools, and to become more familiar with rocks and minerals that people use everyday, like the graphite found in a pencil.
Students spent the next hour creating various landscapes—including trees, water, and the sun—by glueing sand and stone to paper.
While this may sound like an unusual way to teach kids about rocks and minerals, this artistic method has proven very effective across Canada and around the world.
Lovisa is an instructor for the Learning Through the Arts program, which aims to incorporate arts of all kinds into the standard classroom curriculum. “It’s a fresh way of teaching kids. It gives teachers a break and a boost to the kids,” she noted.
The program originated at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 1994. It has since spread to the United States and Europe.
An artist is brought into the classroom to teach math, social studies, science, and language. “Not all kids learn the same way. A lot of kids learn visually,” Lovisa said.
The artist teaches three 90-minute sessions in each subject, and may teach from one to four of the subjects, depending on the amount of time he or she wants to dedicate to the program.
While Lovisa uses visual arts to teach a lesson, the program also includes dance, theatre, and music instructors.
Artists are chosen from the school’s local community wherever possible, so students gain a sense of community as well as a better understanding of their subjects.
“It depends if a community has an artist who is willing to take on the job,” Lovisa said.
For example, in Fort Frances, the program co-ordinators were not able to find instructors in music and dance, so they were brought in from Thunder Bay.
Lovisa is the first instructor from the LTTA program to go into classrooms in this area.
Beginning in April, she visited Grade 1 and 4 classes at Robert Moore School here, North Star in Atikokan, and Our Lady of the Way in Stratton.
These last three months of the school year were used for the pilot project to see how the program would work in the district. Since then, seven more district schools have signed up for it.
Lovisa may be teaching at all 10 schools. And because she’s bilingual, she also may be asked to teach at some schools in Thunder Bay.
Lovisa said the children’s reactions to the classes are wonderful. “The kids just love it,” she enthused. “The response is incredible.”
She also stressed what she teaches is not an art class. “I’m not really teaching what I myself do as an artist. I have to follow the curriculum,” Lovisa noted.
This includes preparing a lesson plan and submitting it to the class’s regular teacher—an experience Lovisa described as “scary.”
“It’s very challenging. You get a little panicked,” she admitted.
Lovisa has been an art instructor for nearly 15 years, both in private and group lessons, but she’s never had to use a lesson plan.
She works with the classroom teacher to prepare her lesson and set the date and time for her sessions, so she can make the lesson appropriate to where the children are in their studies.
“It’s a really great working relationship between the teacher and the artist,” Lovisa remarked.
These lesson plans then are available for the teachers to go back to, if they want to revisit the material, or look for ways to include art in their everyday lessons.
“The difference is in the way the material is presented,” Lovisa said.
It is imperative the artists who enter the classroom stick to the curriculum. They just have to present it in their own way. While Lovisa uses paper and glue, paint, or Plasticine to teach her lessons, other artists use other methods.
In Marilyn Stinson’s Grade 1 class, for instance, the theatre instructor used creative movement to illustrate a science unit. “They were being baby animals and growing,” she recalled. “The students were really excited, and enjoyed it.
“I’m thrilled with the program,” Stinson added. “It’s good for the students, and it gives us [teachers] a chance to sit back and observe somebody else teaching, and to observe our students learning.”
The children were so receptive, she said, that Lovisa came back on her own time for another lesson.
“Linda [Lovisa] volunteered after her sessions were over with to come back in another time to demonstrate her art work,” Stinson said. “Those kids were absolutely spellbound.”
Brad Oster, a Grade 4 teacher at Robert Moore, also said it was a positive experience for his class.
“So far it’s been an excellent program,” he remarked. “The kids really responded well. It gives the kids a new face to look at, and gives us as teachers new ideas to work with in our classroom.”
Oster also said he appreciated the program’s emphasis on local talent.
“Getting people from the community to come in, and to tap into our community, is so important,” he stressed. “The Royal Conservatory has given us the opportunity to do that.”
To become an instructor in the LTTA program, Lovisa attended a three-day convention in Niagara Falls with school teachers and principals, as well as other artists.
“There were people there from Sweden, England, Australia, and the United States,” she noted. “The program has received lots of recognition all over the world.”
Instructors for LTTA generally do not apply for the job.
“They found me. They look for residents in the community they want to offer the program in,” Lovisa said, usually by searching local newspapers for articles about local artists.
LTTA co-ordinators then contact these artists and ask if they would like to know more about the program—and possibly get involved. But not all artists who are contacted accept the offer.
“Because it’s so structured, I think it scared a lot of other artists away,” Lovisa admitted. “It does involve quite a bit of time.”
Lovisa spends 15-20 hours preparing for each session. “And I don’t know how many sleepless nights in between,” she laughed.
“You have to be creative and find some other approaches to things they’re already doing. You can’t just throw it together,” she added.
The program will resume in October.