Throughout the year, our students have grappled with considerably difficult art material: perspective drawing, cubism, and self-portraits, to be sure, but also more technical and computer-based arts with 3D printing, rendering, and animation. For one of our summer school programs, the Toon Boon Animation Summer Camp, we have students creating animations based on their ideas, which would have been unfeasible in the less computer-based age of even ten years ago. The students who can master these skills at a young age have nearly limitless options regarding how they can express themselves.
Animation and Art
New Paragraph
October 7, 2024
On a national level, arts programs in schools have declined for decades. Sometimes considered extras, the arts, including music, are the most at risk when budgeting. In a world that only seems to care about producing effective test takers, these classes are seen as expendable as they are much more difficult to quantify. At Milwaukee Montessori, however, it is quite different.
Our current teacher of this program, Ian Anastas, says that the ability of these students to produce such astounding work in a short time is the result of how these students come in prepared to work hard with an open mind. Some come with ideas ready for animation with a keenness to tackle new challenges and think critically about each movement of their work. This isn’t by chance; this is the result of a school culture that pushes students to accomplish more than they thought possible and a willingness to keep trying even when the work is challenging.
At MMS, students have tablets beginning in fourth grade. These machines have many art programs built in, and most beneficially, a touch screen and stylus that allows students to draw and play in ways that were once only available on college campuses. Putting this powerful technology in students' hands is just one way our students get a leg up in a heavily computer-based world. By opening up the avenues of self-expression, any student can produce work that satisfies their inner artist.
While rewards aren’t the goal when making art, it doesn’t hurt that many of our students have accomplished incredible feats with their creations. Just a glance at our art page, https://www.milwaukee-montessori.org/art, reveals just how effective the Milwaukee Montessori model is. Professional art teachers like Ian Anastasi and Karen Gorecki allow our students to get the most hands-on and in-depth response to their work imaginable, much like their other teachers with degrees and professional backgrounds in their studies.
Not only is there a benefit in the purely artistic world here by acclimating these students to this type of technology, but real-world data proves that students taking art classes have higher verbal and math SAT scores than those who do not. Far from being an extra or expendable class, these arts programs have vast and far-reaching ramifications for teaching the whole student. What’s more, many students love these classes, and the more students who like coming to school, the more likely it is that that will become the dominant attitude within the community. This creates a cycle of highly invested students who push themselves to accomplish amazing things and create incredible work.
According to their most recent test scores, every MMS 8th grader will graduate as an advanced reader, well above grade level some at the High School level, others at a college level and yes, a handful are reading as graduate students. This statistic is, to put it mildly, absurdly excellent. But nationally, a different trend is emerging, one of a discouraging decline in reading scores. According to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP), only 30% of 8th graders in the United States read at or above a proficient level. In Wisconsin where scores are continuing to slip, only 31% of 4th and 8th graders are able to meet proficiency standards in reading. So why are middle schoolers across the country struggling with comprehension on standardized tests? A growing body of research points to an overlooked culprit: multisyllabic decoding . Many students can read simple words, but they stumble when faced with complex academic vocabulary. In other words, students can read “photograph” but struggle when confronted with the pronunciation of “photosynthesis.” If decoding skills aren’t automatic, comprehension suffers and it’s a bottleneck that is halting growth for 70% of American students by middle school. But not at MMS. The prevailing thought in most schools is that once students are taught to read, they can read to learn, but we know at MMS that this is fundamentally untrue. In our Children’s House, our 3-6 year old students learn fundamental decoding skills. In Lower Elementary, our students in grades 1-3 learn the Dolch Sight Words: these are the thousand most commonly used words in the English language. We continue to build and reinforce sophisticated decoding skills by asking students to read non-fiction books and complete book reports about them. We also ask parents to read aloud with their children every single night to develop reading fluency and listen as their children decode the ever-more complex words in their non-fiction books. Finally, students in Lower Elementary use a program called Lexia that focuses on decoding skills that will apply through middle school texts. In 4th grade, when many American students seem to hit a wall in their reading progress, MMS students are decoding more complex words using Reading Plus and IXL. These are both reading tools that measure reading speed, decoding capacity, and comprehension. In addition, our students in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade read 27 novels a year, far surpassing the average of public schools that relegate reading to textbooks and short passages. MMS Junior High students read a whopping 53 books per year in both 7th and 8th grade, and our reading list is formidable. Titles include Antigone , Macbeth , The Great Gatsby , and Animal Farm . Large portions of these works are read aloud in class, introducing students to difficult new vocabulary while explaining its pronunciation and meaning. This is the perfect instructional strategy for improving multisyllabic decoding. They continue to work through the entire Reading Plus program until they test out at the 12th-grade level. The result? While the national trend shows students stalling out, MMS students are accelerating. According to the latest NAEP assessments, only 4% of American students read at the advanced level. In contrast, 100% of MMS 8th graders scored in the advanced range on this year’s winter assessments. That’s no accident. We’re using a time-tested program that builds and sharpens the key skills essential for long-term success. Monica Van Aken, Ed.D
Last year, when we ordered Jonathon Haidt’s then-new book, The Anxious Generation, we knew it would be a seminal book based on its topic, and it also confirmed that our instincts about technology use among children have been spot on. Haidt proposes four norms that can help restore children to a healthy childhood despite the creep of technology into every area of their lives. At MMS, we had already adopted those norms by 2008, when we became among the very first paperless elementary and middle schools in the nation, earning us recognition as one of six “Schools of the Future,” by the National Association of Independent Schools. Through foresight and implementing these norms over the last fifteen years, we have been able to hold back the tide of problems other schools have had to address. While we are a high-tech school, it should be clear that our version of tech training doesn’t include ‘passive screen time.’ At Milwaukee Montessori, technology is not a distraction, but a sophisticated tool for intellectual development, creativity, and academic excellence.
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