How to Use Theater to Teach At-Risk Students

Professors from American University and artists and educators from Imagination Stage, a children's theater and arts-education organization in nearby Bethesda, Maryland, have combined their intellectual and artistic strengths over the past 12 years to create an arts-integrated educational program for elementary and secondary schools throughout the region. "Imagination Quest" teaches schoolteachers how to use the visual arts, dance, drama, and music to help underachieving students, those most at risk for academic failure, become successful learners. The program has recently expanded to include students in the theater-education program at the University of New Hampshire, who are creating arts-integrated curricula in schools in that state. The program builds on the cognitive-learning theories and writings of Howard Gardner, Jerome Bruner, Lev Vygotsky, and Stanley Greenspan, among others, and is supported by research that posits that the brain is social and collaborative. While the learning process takes place in each student's mind, learning is enhanced when the teaching environment gives them opportunities to think out loud, exchange ideas with their peers, and produce collaborative work. Imagination Quest is an example of how colleges, arts organizations, donors, schools, and parents can work together to improve education.