Sunset Middle School experimenting with arts focus

Sunset Middle School seventh graders Eric Fayeville, left, on the bass and Ben Stockert, playing guitar, perform The Beatles "Please, Please Me" during Jazz Band practice. The school is exploring moving to a performing arts focus. Kira Horvath photo

It’s a math class, but the students are studying a sculpture to learn ratios. In a different math class, students create “trees” using the Pythagorean theorem. In a science class, an Alexander Calder-type mobile demonstrates balance and weight. And students listen to music in language arts classes to inspire their creative writing and aid language acquisition.

Teachers and administratorsare exploring the integration of performing and visual arts into core academic classes at Sunset Middle School, which is in the “beginning stages” of adding a performing and visual arts focus. The program is part of the St. Vrain Valley School District’s encouragement to schools to develop a focus. If all goes as planned, the school will open with that focus this fall.

“This school is already a proponent of the performing arts and art education in our school, and this is a way to embrace more options for our students,” said Sunset Middle School principal Dawn Macy. “We already have strengths in those areas. So when the focus idea was mentioned, we put it to all our teachers to consider. They gave it 100 percent backing.”

“I think the visual and performing arts focus that we are working on is an affirmation of what we have already been doing,” band teacher Myron Whisman said. “In the music area, we already have at least 80 percent of our students involved in some type of music program, and we may be up to 90 percent when you add the students who are enrolled in our music exploration and Stomp classes.”

Sunset Middle School seventh grader Megan Majors, 13, plays "Sweet Caroline" on her saxiphone during Jazz Band practice held on Wednesday, February 10, 2010. The band consists of about 30 students who meet daily for 45 minutes. Kira Horvath photo

However, having a visual and performing arts focus doesn’t mean the school is turning itself into a “Fame”-like performance middle school. The Sunset staff is looking to integrate an arts focus throughout the curriculum, while also maintaining its emphasis on high academic achievement, Macy said.

“This is a middle school, and we have core academics that must be taught and mastered by our students,” Macy said. “We will continue to keep our academic achievement at the highest level. Our core teachers are exploring ways to integrate the arts into their classes as a teaching tool to use with their students, and we want them to be comfortable with integrating the arts throughout the curriculum.”

Macy said teachers are currently considering ways to allow sixth-grade students to explore all facets of the visual and performing arts, while seventh graders might be able to identify an area they would like to further explore. Eighth-grade students should be able to move more deeply into their interest area, Macy said.

In the current school year, Sunset Middle School teachers are exploring what the visual and performing arts focus might look like in the curriculum. The school is allocating its monthly staff professional development time to discussing the proposed focus addition. Art teacher Donna Goodwin, who recently received a training opportunity from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to explore ways to find grant funding for integrating the arts into the curriculum, has stepped up as the lead teacher for establishing the focus.

Over the summer, a team of teachers, along with Goodwin, Macy and assistant principal Brian Young, will “tighten a five-year plan and develop goals for the new focus,” Macy said. Those teachers also will learn how to serve as facilitators and resources for the rest of Sunset’s faculty. “We want to find ways to weave the arts teaching techniques into the repertoire of skills teachers use when they teach,” Goodwin said.

The staff also is discussing the nuts and bolts of adding the arts focus.

“We need to figure out what class offerings will look like,” said Young. “And there could be shifts in how we schedule classes. We need to take a close look at a lot of areas.”

Sunset plans to create a visual and performing arts council of community members, educators, artists, performers and parents to help guide the school’s focus.

Partnering with the local arts community is “very important” to the success of the focus, Goodwin said.

Currently artist-in-residence Takanori Sugishita, a professional violinist, is working with orchestra students to help them prepare for the SVVSD Middle School Solo and Ensemble Festival to be held Feb. 20. Sugishita has played professionally in the area with orchestras such as the Colorado Symphony, Boulder Philharmonic, Fort Collins Symphony, Opera Colorado, Colorado Ballet and the Central City Opera. His time with the school, which began Jan. 11, is sponsored by the Longmont Council for the Arts in conjunction with the school district.

Sugishita also will “speak to students in other academic disciplines such as history and mathematics around the relationship music has to these studies,” orchestra teacher Kenneth Stotts said.

Goodwin plans to bring in a Batik artist this spring to teach in her art classes, and children’s book author Ben Mikaelsen recently visited the school to talk about writing and his work.

“We have to bring in local artists and performers to make this work,” Goodwin said.

Email: kcglasscock@comcast.net