the students would decide to work on the problem of how to create and attach movable arms. A second grader circles the room a time or two before settling on finger paint, choosing glossy paper and a selection of paints and carefully squeezing out globs of paint, while exclaiming over the bright hues and squishy feel of the paint. A fourth grader reaches for her cardboard-and-duct-tape construction and continues to grapple with how she will make a sturdy and meaningful object. Another child walks about the room eyeing paints, boxes of collage materials, and the construction corner stacked with cardboard and other repurposed objects. This child selects a five-gallon plastic jug, mixes tempera paint, and covers the jug with a turquoise and green under-the-seascape. Filling the jug with water makes it hard to handle, so a handful of glass pebbles serves as seawater. A sixth child works carefully on a valentine collage for a sibling. “Where’s the music?” one child shouts. Oops—the counselor forgot to turn it on, and she hits the start button for the jazz CD the group has become accustomed to. The children work steadily for half an hour, talking among themselves and occasionally offering announcements to the group. The counselor moves around the room, supporting problem solving by offering tools, assistance with hole punching, towels when water spills, and a basket of new string and yarn. She occasionally pauses to make notes about what the children are doing and saying. The children try to eke out a few more minutes past the allotted half hour of work time and then help with a whirlwind cleanup. Art is stacked on a rack to dry, and the counselor takes five minutes to write down notes about the group’s process and reminders about materials or room rearrangements needed. Morning ArtBreak ends; the counselor gets the room ready for the rest of the day that will include an afternoon session with a different group.
Researchers have sought to find a causal relationship between students’ participation in the arts and school achievement as measured by grades and test scores since at least the 1980s. After decades of trying to document the claim that arts education transfers to academic (math and reading) learning, some of the leading scholars engaged in this work have concluded that the best way for students to develop math skills, for example, is to study math. Instead, research on arts experiences in schools has refocused on the kinds of outcomes that school-based arts experiences do have. For this reason it is an exciting time to be working with and researching art making in schools. Ellen Winner and her colleagues, for example, have documented eight studio “habits of mind,” or thinking dispositions, taught by visual-arts educators, such as development of craft, engagement and persistence, and ability to reflect, observe, envision and express.
As the ArtBreak groups progressed, we undertook practitioner-based action research to try to fine-tune operations and inform improvements. We also wanted to understand the contribution of the program toward child well-being. Specifically we sought to understand whether the groups mitigated child stress, and whether the groups seemed to support the developmental goals derived from the expressive therapies continuum framework that we incorporated into our referral procedures.
We learned that children relax in ArtBreak. This is apparent when you observe them in the studio, and it is supported by our ArtBreak studio research involving the biological measure of fingertip temperature, a reliable biomarker of stress levels. As a person relaxes, blood vessels in the extremities dilate (vasodilation), blood flows more freely to the hands, and fingertip temperature rises. For two years we measured changes in fingertip temperature among thirty-nine ArtBreak students as they entered the studio and then about two-thirds of the way through the session (before they began to wash their hands and clean up). We found an average increase of +4.6 degrees F while children were engaged in making art during a group session; nearly all students in the program experienced some level of relaxation. Further statistical analysis (t-tests) showed an overall significant increase in temperature. We discussed, but elected not to pursue, an experimental design with a control group, because of the logistical considerations required as well as ethical concerns about diverting children who had been referred to ArtBreak to another intervention. With this in mind, the research, although suggestive, supports the idea that the program reduces child stress.
Mitigation of child stress is important. Traumatic events as well as cumulative chronic stressors from factors like poverty, racism, difficult family circumstances, and school itself take their toll on a child’s psychological and physical health. Schools have the potential to create opportunities for islands of stress reduction throughout the school day, and researchers have noted three kinds of such “stress-buffers.” ArtBreak has the potential to offer all three. Breathers are positive events in the midst of stress that allow a child to take a break and recover. Sustainers are enjoyable challenges that sustain coping and allow a child to notice that positive feelings like optimism can be experienced in the face of stressors like the challenge of problem solving that can occur while making art. Finally, restorers are recuperative healing experiences that follow a stressful event.
Materials developed and collected at various times throughout the program included the facilitator’s reflective notes and journals, the children’s reflective journals, photographs of student work, the children’s verbal responses to questions and prompts about their experience and learning, written teacher assessments, and data created from referral forms.
In terms of our process and perception data, about half of our participants were referred to help them develop pro-social behaviors and understand their own strengths; about a quarter were referred for an opportunity to relax and express their feelings; and a quarter were referred to work on strengthening their problem-solving abilities. About two-thirds of the participants were boys. When we asked teachers about their perceptions of student progress on their individual reasons for referral, about 70 percent of the students were thought to have made gains and 30 percent were thought to have remained the same. This process informed adjustments like extending the session length from thirty to forty minutes, confirmed that the expressive therapies continuum is useful for structuring individual referral goals, helped gain funding for a summer program, and gave us an understanding of how ArtBreak supports children. For practical purposes, documenting provides reflective time and space for a facilitator to attend to group process as well as to create an archive of photographs and notes to use for ArtBreak “progress reports” for families, teachers, and students. Throughout the book you’ll see examples and case accounts that illustrate the ways children progressed.
This child’s expression reflects the words of a fourth-grade boy: “We make things for the joy of it!” Photo by Josh Birnbaum
What follows here are summaries of what we learned about categories of student gains.
JOY AND FUN
Most often children talked about having fun in ArtBreak. Along these lines they also mentioned joy.
“We have fun!”
“We make things for the joy of it!”
EMOTIONAL REGULATION AND SENSORY EXPRESSION
ArtBreak allows children to express their feelings and enjoy a sensory experience. When asked what they have learned, some children talk about feelings and that ArtBreak helps them enter a state of calmness.
“Finger painting feels good; it is awesome and smooth.”
“I learn I have to work calmly in here.”
“If you’re mad, you calm down.”
“It helps me control my anger, because you sit down with me and paint.”
Teachers noted gains in emotional regulation:
“(He) seems very happy and content, not upset if things aren’t ‘just right.’ He has come mega-miles.”
“(He) is
