Despite the National Coalition for Arts Standards providing a framework for creative and integrative music education, relatively few opportunities for students to express their creativity and connect with music in their lives and culture exist due to a fixation on competitive performance. Such a disproportionate reliance on performance-based music education ignores students’ creative potential and severs their connection to more-than-human musics. Meanwhile, during a student mental health crisis, competition not only ignores the health and wellness needs of students and teachers but leads to unhealthy and unsustainable life practices causing stress and anxiety. The expressive and creative arts offer dramatic alternatives, actively engaging senses and creating embodied experiences that can foster curiosity, wellness, positive development, and social emotional learning. Anchored in poiesis, person-centered psychotherapy, intermodal arts integration, eco-consciousness, and health and wellness, this curriculum helps educators facilitate expressive and creative arts experiences in the context of standards-based music learning.
Keywords: expressive arts, creative music education, curriculum, well-being, eco-consciousness
In July 2020, I was enrolled in my first expressive arts course at Salve Regina University. I was attending the class over Zoom, logging in from the woods outside my partner’s family cottage. It felt like the perfect environment to participate in a class called The Arts, Nature, and Eco-consciousness, which was taught by Susan Fox and Christopher Carbone. I remember logging on the first time and being warmly greeted. After graduating from music school twice, I was taken aback by the friendly, inclusive, welcoming atmosphere of the online classroom. I remember nervously picking up a crayon for the first time in years. I remember wanting to move away from the camera’s view as I first started to stretch and move with the group.
But as I followed along with the gentle guidance from Susan and Christopher, my initial hesitations melted away. “Oh, look at that, I made a mark!” “Oh, my arms are moving!” When I experienced a re-connection with the Earth through movement, it was proven to me that my instincts were right all along. There was something in and beyond me that I could sense, but I was not fully tapped into.
Eager to share my feelings and experiences from class, I immediately incorporated their teachings and inspirations into my work with elementary students. Now in April 2023, at the end of this chapter of my studies, I have compiled the activities and lessons I think best represent my accumulated curricula and instructional practices developed over my course of study. This is a final project for HLC611, Group and Individual Applications of the Expressive and Creative Arts, taught by Christopher and Katherine Carbone, and Andrea Epstein. It was completed in partial fulfillment for the CAGS in Professional Applications of the Expressive and Creative Arts, in the Department of Counseling, Leadership, and Expressive Arts at Salve Regina University in Newport, RI.
After reflecting on my teaching and editing these documents to suit a wider audience than myself alone, I offer them to you here with the hope they empower you to witness, feel, and hear some of the beautiful things I have experienced with my students. I hope they permit you to soften where you want to. I hope they lead students who have yet to hear their song, to sing them proudly.
I know your journey will be different from mine, as we are different people with different students, and changing class rosters. But the broad strokes remain, celebrating your creativity and providing care through the arts will be beautiful every time, in unique ways. In these lessons and activities, the beauty is not in the song itself, but in how and why it is sung.
I became a teacher because I wanted to have meaningful connections with people and make music. I wanted not only to create but collaborate and play a supportive role in the musical lives of my students. Meanwhile, I struggled to authentically connect with many others and sensed there was something I was not yet tapping into. I could sense there was another world out there, perhaps bubbling under the surface.
I now understand that traditional forms of music education did not serve me properly, and they continue to exclude many students in various ways. As I became a teacher and learned about the world of expressive arts from Dr. Tawnya Smith, I felt safe and inspired—that a key was about to unlock that other world. With the right intentionality, music education could be so much more and serve people in the ways they need.
A lot of what we already do as music educators can empower people to find their voice, explore new worlds, express who they are, and connect with others. This is why social emotional learning is a natural fit. Making music and participating in group musical activities can lead to self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness—core competencies in social emotional learning. But without explicit intentionality for these humanistic goals, many students get left behind, and music education plays only a shallow, hollow role in the lives of students. The shine of a trophy fades.
These resources include 12 lesson plans that can be integrated with your existing curricula and easily adapted to fit any student age range. There are also 12 activity descriptions to practice eco-conscious musicking, and a sample "check-out" activity to assess what students learned or took away from a lesson. For teacher leaders, there are three additional activities to help teachers reconnect with their passion, critically reflect on instructional practices, and celebrate successes at the end of the year. Even if you are new to expressive arts or social emotional learning, these lessons will allow you to safely dip your toes or dive right in. And while you are a professional musician, you do not have to be a trained visual artist, writer, or thespian to lead the intermodal connections outlined in the activities. Sensitivity is much more important than skill for the benefits of expressive arts to be realized.
You may desire further professional development in expressive arts facilitation as your journey unfolds. I encourage you to visit the references to dig your roots into the soil my exercises grew from. And by "my," I do not claim to offer any completely original activities in these lesson plans, as they have all stemmed from those readings and my expressive arts experiences at Salve Regina University. I offer distillations for classroom applications from those theories and lived experiences.
I am particularly grateful for the deep care and guidance Christopher and Katherine Carbone, and Dr. Tawnya Smith have given me throughout my journey to become an expressive arts facilitator. I aspire to offer others what you have afforded me! This collection of resources is just the beginning of my pursuit.
Education traditionally only offers students access to external knowledge, tuning them out from their inner awareness, and ignoring the gifts they bring into the classroom—if not actively dissuading students from celebrating their heritage and identities, to assimilate into the dominant culture. The expressive arts can provide methods to access inner knowledge—some may refer to this as psyche, spirit, physical self, energy levels, thoughts, or emotions—and celebrate the richly diverse backgrounds and dreams our students have.
I primarily developed these activities as an elementary general music teacher. Therefore, they focus on sound and musical elements, situated in intermodal processes including drama, movement, visual arts, and writing. But try not to let the "elementary" modifier dissuade you. You know your students and teaching context, and you know your comforts and abilities as an educator or group facilitator. Trust your instincts and abilities to adapt and interpret the suggestions in the lesson plans in your way.
The expressive arts serve a plurality of purposes that education has historically ignored. We can use the arts to heal from emotional and physical pain. We can use the arts to make meaning and create connections that foster understanding. We can find inner strength or release painful feelings in healthy ways. The myriad of other benefits from the expressive arts cannot be fully described and quantified here, nor can they be measured and assessed in meaningful ways that can appear on report cards. Nonetheless, teachers are expected to prepare students to meet standards and prove they are doing so effectively. This too can be accomplished—along with all the other benefits—through the expressive arts.
Thus, here in the lesson plans I have included the corresponding National Core Arts Standards for music, and for selected lessons, dance, theatre, and visual arts too. Similar standards for other disciplines can be applied as well, but as a music educator, these are what I must regularly prove I am teaching and evaluating. I hope their inclusion is helpful to you as you incorporate these activities into your curriculum.
Additionally, to help convey the deeper value of these lessons, I included correlations to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning’s Core Competencies with each activity. If you, your school, or your district have the initiative to teach social and emotional skills, this alignment can help you communicate those connections.
Fostering a safe learning environment is essential. When exploring through the expressive arts, some additional considerations are necessary.
Expressive arts practices require one’s sensitivity rather than artistic skills, so the focus is not on aesthetics, but on feelings and experiences. But to help students feel comfortable, it is important to start with warm-ups to explore materials, movement, instruments, and voices, or to warm up to ideas. Then a main activity can be more deeply meaningful because students will have fewer technical hurdles. And finally, when these important moments are over, closing in a way that honors the experience and allows students to feel a sense of comfort with leaving the activity or group can help them further integrate what they have learned, and successfully transition. Barbara Ganim describes this process as “ART,” to access, release, and transform.
Traditional education is teacher-centric and assumes students are to enter without information and leave with new information. The expectation is that everybody learns homogenously in the same ways, or at least experiences the same activity together. The expressive arts can provide opportunities for students to make decisions, and voice their thoughts. These activities are student-centered and will empower them to self-direct their expressive work going forward. Not everyone has to do the same thing, and everyone will hopefully walk away with their own personal treasures.
Teachers are expected to grade student work based on standards, examples, and rubrics, and help students refine their work. To open up through the expressive arts, an environment of non-judgment is essential. Furthermore, as educators, we are not prepared, credentialed, or expected to meet the complete mental health needs of our students or to help them solve the big problems they face. Thus, teachers and students using the expressive arts should strive to avoid:
Judging others and their work
Fixing or critiquing aesthetic work
Making assumptions
Criticizing others
Simply witnessing others with acceptance and compassion is extremely powerful.
When you envision these activities playing out, what is the environment like? What does it sound like? What does it look like? When is it silent? When are people still? When is it loud? When are people moving freely? To empower everybody's successful participation and access to the gifts that can be received through the expressive arts, it is important to clearly state and demonstrate how you envision the environment and share with students why you think that is necessary. Younger students may need specific guidelines to safely move or dance and know when touch may be unwanted while working with others. And while we want to focus on processes rather than products, clearly demonstrating how to use or safely treat instruments, utensils, or other materials can help remove barriers to engagement and prevent physical damage. Assuming that all students know how they are expected to behave can lead to confusion, exclusion, withdrawal, or otherwise unsuccessful participation.
To access, release, and transform through the arts requires safety, trust, and gentle guidance. Getting to know materials, preparing the body for movement, preparing the voice to sing, and checking in with our feelings are essential scaffolds for successful artistic experiences—even though the purpose of the expressive arts is not to create something aesthetically pleasing. Feeling ready, well-prepared, and comfortable with materials can allow us to journey inward, release to the world, and eventually integrate what has been learned into our lives.
Regardless of your teaching context, warming up is probably already part of your routine. As you bring these expressive lessons to life, be aware of what you will ask students to do. Warm-ups and grounding experiences have been written into all the plans presented here, but knowing your students and your teaching context, consider what else your students might need to feel comfortable. What I wrote might not be complete or true for your students. Furthermore, considering how these lessons fit into your curricula can help ease students into their zone of expression. For example, if you are teaching a composition unit, the Graphic Score lesson might be a natural extension for your students.
Breathing
Body scanning
Stretching and movement
Vocalizing
Theater games
Exploring visual arts materials
Exploring instruments
Writing with prompts
As we heighten our sensitivities through expressive and creative arts practices, we become more attuned to our inner world and external environment. What we can sense, we can understand. This heightened consciousness extends beyond our physical self, teaching us about how we are not only connected to the Earth and universe but how we literally are Earth. This radical reconnection can help us unload the burdens of self-reliance, find beauty in nature, and self-acceptance in recognizing our own beautiful and wild nature. It can also help us notice how our life practices impact ourselves, our communities, and our ecosystems.
This shift in thinking calls for a broader conceptualization of what "music" is. If we only consider music to be a human-centric activity, we tune out the symphony playing around us, all the time. Attuning to more-than-human music lets us hear beautiful melodies, but it also informs us when something in our ecosystem might need attention. This is how music education can lead to positive social change that impacts individuals and the Earth.
The lessons and activities provided here were designed to help you start dabbling with the expressive arts. As you continue this journey, you may start to incorporate themes with greater emotional depth into the work. This powerful work is a vital form of self-healing and community care. However, I must provide a gentle word of caution before you start.
Accessing deeply held thoughts, feelings, and experiences that may be challenging sources of trauma is the first step in healing with the expressive arts. Some students may require more assistance than you or their peers can provide them. Referrals to school social workers or other administrators may be necessary. Furthermore, your status as a mandated reporter should be shared with students, so they may monitor their level of disclosure throughout the process.
I hear cars passing outside now
but the tears of joy remain
where are the cars going? I wonder
who is driving on a day like today?
I am sitting, remaining still
but hearing the songs of students from months ago
many miles away
I am feeling the fire inside after hearing the postlude of criticism from a teacher
reminder: you celebrated
reminder: they celebrated
reminder: they did not hear the negativity
I hear hundreds of songs
hundreds of celebrations
every one – perfect
every one – them
and me
and me
and me
and me
and me
and me