STEM + Arts Series | Active Student Learning and Social Emotional Health Through Collaboration | Marie Mattinson

Links Mentioned In This Episode:

• The Arts Educate the Whole Child

An Unusual Route to Becoming a Visual Arts Educator

“Being in the arts endorsement course saved my life.”

Marie Mattinson, visual arts educator at Edgemont Elementary School, is this week’s guest. Marie graduated with a bachelor's in psychology. She worked as a PE teacher and loved working as an aide for an autistic student. She completed the requirements for a teaching license while teaching part time (including special ed math, third-grade, and after-school programs). After teaching third-grade full-time for 12 years, Marie hit burnout because of testing and expectations. Colleagues

Lisa Gardner and Diane Ames convinced her to enroll in the BYU ARTS Partnership’s Arts Integration Endorsement program. “Being in the arts endorsement course saved my life, really. I was happy again. I was happy to be with the kids and as I was happier, and we were creating things together in all art forms the kids were happy, and it created a cycle of everybody being better and happier.”

After being hired as a visual art teacher, Marie earned her master's in Art Education. She works to integrate science and math into the visual arts curriculum in all kinds of ways. Marie is a recent recipient of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson’s Legacy Award for Excellence in arts education for elementary visual arts instruction in the state of Utah.

An Arts-Integrative Pedagogy Actively Engages Struggling Students

Marie shares how the arts deeply impacted the learning of her own child:
“My son was struggling with long-term memory, retrieval, processing and comprehension. His comprehension is really low. He has ADHD and I just watched him crumble as a first grader. As a second grader, he struggled to write and stay engaged; he hated school, he cried every day. PJ day was the best day because it was the one day we didn't have to have a tantrum about clothes. We had tantrums about everything else.

When he learned his vowels, he was in Miss Gardner's class. They learned through songs, so he can decode and read so well because of music. Then in third grade, our music teacher taught him multiplication through songs, and he can do multiplication because of songs. His French third-grade teacher used movement and dance, (she was also in the Arts Integration Endorsement class) and he learned French that way, because he's in the French immersion program.

Then, I realized that I needed to be more patient and engage all the kids because if my kid was struggling, I needed to be a better teacher and be more patient. I watched him do so many things that he couldn't control. Instead of, ‘Why won't you just sit and listen?’ ‘Why won't you just do this?’ He can't. Before my lived experience with my son, I didn't realize that kids who struggle with ADHD and other things, they can't. They don't mean to be like that. Yet, the pedagogy that creates confidence in learning, connections, and success are the arts.”

Educate the Whole Child: Teach Social-Emotional Skills

Marie is passionate about educating the whole child. Students need to learn the skill of knowing how to care for other people, be empathetic and good listeners. Marie believes these skills are just as important as any academic curriculum you could ever put in front of them. Many lessons in her third-grade classroom focus on people: “Let’s look at cultures, let’s look at who is in our class. How can we learn more about them? How can we represent their beliefs and their interests in an authentic, empathetic way that celebrates them?”

For example, including this social-emotional learning during math class: students can practice empathy and listening skills, collaboration skills. When students start breaking down or showing frustration because the math concept isn’t landing, teachers can help support that student’s emotions first, then work together on the math concept: “It all matters.”

Using Art to Celebrate Diversity and Create Culturally-Responsive Classrooms: Puzzling Out Students’ Ancestral Countries

Marie’s school is extremely diverse: the French dual-immersion teachers hail from Rwanda, Spain, Austria, Ukraine, Switzerland, Morocco, and two are from France; students are comprised of all different socio-economic backgrounds and neighborhoods, and include a lot of second-language learners, and students from Columbia, Brazil, Uruguay, Congo, and Haiti.

Second graders are given a puzzle piece made from paper. They find out which country their ancestors came from. Students learn about their ancestors, where they came from: students find a picture of a monument or la...