Unifying the Curriculum with an Art Exhibition: In the American Grain

by Terry Barrett

This is an account of a whole-school faculty designing and teaching a five-month whole-school curriculum based on an exhibit of modern American art, In the American Grain, in a public school in the Pacific Northwest, grades 6–12. This account is a case-study of a successful attempt of teachers, students, and administrators at one school, in one time and place, unifying the whole curriculum by having an art exhibit at the center of learning. The account is given through many voices, especially those of the students in the school who participated in the curriculum, and the teachers who invented it. I served the school as a faculty advisor and thus the telling is in the voice of a participant-observer but I rely heavily on the experiences of the participants and their ways of telling. The students and teachers are unabashedly enthused about what they were able to accomplish in teaching and learning, and are eager to share their experiences with other learning communities. This account begins with a short history of the recently founded school and an overview of its curricular mission. It proceeds with students telling about projects they did and their experiences of the curriculum, which evolved around In the American Grain; teachers talking about their experiences with the curriculum; and the founding principal°s responses to the curriculum. It ends with my observations and conclusions. I hope that this account might encourage other educators to initiate their own attempts at school reform by placing the arts at the center of the curriculum.