Arts Integrated Education
Teaching Academics through the Arts
The arts invite the students to make an active and personal relationship with their learning. Therefore, ALL academics are introduced and explored first through the arts. Many traditional peoples have seen art as inseparable from life, saying, “We have no art, we just do everything as well as we can.” The original Native American languages had no separate words for art and music; these were just expressions of a culture of reverence. So too, Enki is an arts integrated education in which the arts are a part of all learning, as well as a study in their own right.
In our Developmental Immersion-Mastery method, all academic content is introduced and first worked with through immersion in movement, story, music and visual arts. For example, in this arts integrated education, first grades might hear a story of the great king who gave “an equal share to every hand,” to bring them a lively understanding of division. The second grader might begin the study of the changing seasons by reciting the Pima poem, “The Black Snake Wind,” followed by a walk to see the spring winds cut a path through ice and snow, then painting what they have seen. A third grader understands measurement more fully as she hears stories of ancient kings, each making a ruler according to his own foot. The fourth grader learns the history and culture of her own country as she sings Black spirituals, joins in square dancing and learns Native American songs and dances. The fifth grader might begin botany class by recreating the harmony of nature in a Japanese flower arrangement. Whether studying math or history or science or anything else, Enki is a fully arts integrated education.
Continued at: http://www.enkieducation.org/html/arts-integrated-education.htm
Multicultural Education
The Enki Global Cultures Curriculum
At the heart of Enki is a commitment tomulticultural education. For us, multicultural education grows from the understanding that fundamental human decency and dignity, courage, and compassion are inherent in all people. We believe that it is important for each family to support the child’s connection to and pride in her own heritage in the course of family life, but that it is the role of education, whether in a homeschool or classroom program, to help her develop meaningful connections to the larger world. In this context, we believe that students are best nurtured when they see their own strengths and struggles reflected in all mankind and can experience human greatness in any nationality, race, or religion. Therefore, in both the Enki classroom and homeschooling curriculum, all students are immersed in literature, drama, music, arts, and ideas from around the world.
Excerpt of a Writing Project from a 6th Grade Study of Africa Sunu Rao*: the homeland