Kids and art go together at Oak Cliff’s Rosemont Elementary School

by Donna Miller of Cliff Dweller

When Anna Brining, principal of Rosemont Elementary and Rosemont Primary Schools, arrived nine years ago, she experienced a few moments of thinking, “What’s all this arts programming? We need more tutoring, more mentoring programs. Then,” she says, “I stopped to listen, and I heard from the parents and the teachers that arts programming was important to this community.”

Rosemont offers visual arts, music, theater and dance to every child, not as electives but as an integral part of the curriculum. Rosemont is the only DISD school to offer dance to every child. Each child receives one full semester of visual art instruction and then one semester split between music and dance instruction. Rosemont employs two full-time visual arts teachers, one dance teacher, one music teacher, one orchestra teacher, and the Dallas Children’s Theater visiting artist-in-residence. “Parents in this community value the arts,” says Kellie Lawson, Rosemont Elementary art teacher, “They want their children in these classes.”

With this devotion to arts programming, an impression might be formed of a well-funded private school or a public school in an affluent suburb, but Rosemont is an urban public school with many of the attendant challenges. Seventy-seven percent of its children are from economically-disadvantaged homes, and many come from homes where English is not the primary language. So this commitment to arts programming is an exceptional one.

It’s a commitment backed by the willingness to raise funding for it. The Rosemont Early Childhood PTA produces an annual auction to raise funds specifically for Rosemont arts programming. This year’s event, Rockin’ for Rosemont, held April 4, raised more than $22,000. Brooke Wise, current president of RECPTA, says, “Government and other sources of funding for arts education are limited, so if we as parents want our local school to have arts programming, we need to support it. I’m amazed at how much arts instruction my son is receiving.”

The Auction is supported by many local business and individuals. Lonnie Goodman, president of Grand Bank of Texas, Presenting Sponsor for Rockin’ for Rosemont, says, “Rosemont Schools and the Rosemont Early Childhood PTA are key assets to our Oak Cliff community, and we are proud to help support them.”

The emphasis on arts education at Rosemont began in the mid-1990s with the introduction of dance classes by Judy Schneider, a former long-time dance instructor at the Arts Magnet High School. Also in the mid-1990s, the Dallas Children’s Theater artist-in-residence program began at Rosemont. Rosemont is one of only five schools in DISD, two of which are magnet schools, with year-long residency programs with Dallas Children’s Theater.

The residency program allows each child to work with the teaching artist, this year, Karl Schaeffer, during five classroom visits to interpret curriculum through drama. Kindergarten and first grade dramatize fairy tales and fables connected with their classroom work. Second through fifth graders dramatize elements of American History such as the Oregon Trail or literature such as The Odyssey. “It’s not so much a performance but more about students participating in the dramatic process and performing for each other,” says Nancy Schaeffer, education director for Dallas Children’s Theater.

Kathy Wu, in her second year as music teacher, says music helps children learn to sing as one voice, to practice discipline and to learn from each other. In addition to her music classes, Wu also conducts an audition-only choir for children in third through fifth grades. The choir currently has twenty members and will attend a competition in May.

“Children should try lots of things to discover their natural talents,” says Alan Carpenter, Rosemont orchestra teacher. Unlike the general music classes, orchestra is an elective for fourth and fifth graders. “Since this was the first year for Rosemont to have an orchestra program, I had to recruit all my students. I played some fiddle music for the children, some Mexican folk music, and showed a video of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. I embraced this year and came at it with a lot of energy — 47 students signed up for orchestra.”

“It’s not just sports that can lead to a career. I think that’s an important lesson to teach our children,” says Principal Brining.

Rosemont’s leadership and arts teachers agree on why arts programming is important. They believe studying the arts develops the whole child, not just the sports child or the academic child, but also the creative child. Studying the arts can be practical, too, developing life-long skills. Drama training can help with presentation, ease of communicating and confidence when speaking in public. The arts can bring perspective to history and literature. Drawing can lead to a career as a traditional artist, commercial artist or graphic designer.

All children have special gifts. Exposure to dance, music, theater and visual arts at an early age opens their eyes to possibilities they might otherwise never have known existed. This theme was echoed by all the arts teachers, but Juliana Williams, dance teacher, has a special perspective.

“I start dance with kindergarteners,” says Williams. “So much emphasis is put on sports, but dance is another way to move around, encourage teamwork, learn responsibility, and build self-confidence. Plus, the boys don’t think dance is ‘girly’ since they’ve been dancing since age five.”

Brining says, “The arts programs give us a special opportunity to involve our children. If they sing in the choir, play in the orchestra or act in the theater they are more involved with the school and their own education. They want to be at school.”

Kellie Lawson was president of the Rosemont PTA when she started teaching visual art at Rosemont 10 years ago. She says, “so many times I’ve had students who are in trouble either academically or behaviorally in their regular classrooms, and they are super stars in art. They find themselves through art.”

Projects in the visual arts are based on six concepts: line, shape, texture, value (lights and darks), space and color. Children working with those concepts are much more likely to relate them to the same concepts they are learning in the academic classroom, like horizontal and vertical lines for instance.

RECPTA was founded in 1926 when the mothers of North Oak Cliff joined together to support each other and improve their community. Eighty-one years later, the more than 225 members continue that tradition of service. Membership is open to any parent or prospective parent in or around the North Oak Cliff neighborhood. You do not need to be in the Rosemont district or involved with any DISD school to participate.

“I think it’s a testament to our sense of neighborhood that RECPTA supports Rosemont, our local public school, even though many of our members do not have children attending there. We all know how central a strong public school is to our prosperity and cohesion as a neighborhood,” says Bonner Hernandez, co-chair of this year’s Rockin’ for Rosemont auction.

“I worked at another DISD school,” explains Stacy Cianciulli, visual arts teacher at Rosemont Primary, “and the art teacher had only crayons, glue, scissors, manila paper and construction paper for her supplies. Children were constantly being taken out of art class for other instruction because art wasn’t considered important. That doesn’t happen at Rosemont. Because of funding from RECPTA, our art classes are well-supplied with clay, glitter glue, colorful yarns, charcoal, flesh-colored pastels, different sorts of paper and paints.”

“Teaching art is the hardest, most rewarding thing I’ve ever done professionally,” says Lawson. “The pace of teaching 150 children each day, a different grade level every 45 minutes, is demanding. Still, children love art, and they love you.”

So, the arts reinforce and illuminate academic learning as well as inspire each child’s creativity, self-expression and love of beauty. Principal Brining got her extra tutoring and mentoring after all.