Playing a musical instrument is one of the few activities that requires both hemispheres of the brain to work together. Dancing is another. I found this out for myself many years ago in a tap dancing class. It was more about counting and patterns than top hats and canes—a very cerebral exercise. My head hurt more than my feet—as it should have—because in its most elemental form, music makes you better at math, and math makes you better at music…or art…or dance. Neurological research supports this.
That’s some of the thinking behind STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) education, which is a framework for working across disciplines. It’s not just a means to an end—the end being to ultimately make students better scientists and mathematicians—but also a way to make students better “artists.” In this context, “artists” does not mean that all students become the next Monets or Mozarts, but simply that they become better abstract and creative thinkers—increasingly prized skills in business.
My affiliation with the arts-in-education community has refueled my interest in helping people see the merit of STEAM education. In the last two years, I’ve collaborated with Kristin Hughes, who teaches design at CMU, to create two projects that centered on STEAM education. Also participating in the projects were fellow ThoughtFormers Steve Frank, Lindsay Quinter, and Lindsay Grauvogel.
In the first year, the students had to design materials for an annual Pittsburgh STEAM Day to educate local communities on how STEAM works and why it’s important. In the second year, we shifted the focus to the STEAM work being done by Gateway to the Arts, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit, and asked Kristin’s design students to create communications pieces that would bring Gateway’s work to light. One of the pieces, created by students Suzanne Choi and Hyun Soo’s Andrew, is shown above.
The CMU students quickly learned that to tell the story of STEAM, they had to understand both its champions and its critics—then find a middle ground. To rally communities toward STEAM, they had to get beyond the real and perceived obstacles, such as standardized testing and lack of arts funding, and start to re-focus on the student. Once people accept that every student is an “individual” thinker and learner with the capacity to be creative, pretty much anything is possible.
This sense of hope was an underlying theme for a STEAM event hosted at ThoughtForm on June 5th. We held a fundraiser for Gateway to the Arts that brought together people from the arts, education, and business communities to help celebrate Gateway’s contribution to education. “Teaching artists” Amber Fantini and Margaret Hooton gave live STEAM demonstrations. While they typically teach pupils between the ages of three and five, that night we were the pupils, and we were all perfectly willing to sing and clap along with the teachers, especially since it illustrated the power of the arts in education.
For anyone interested in STEAM education, read Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future or see the links below. But for a crash course in STEAM, take up tap dancing.
STEAM
Stem to Steam
Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts
Gateway to the Arts