State-of-the-art education

Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Laurie DeWitt⁄The Gazette Violinist Victoria Boyajian, a student at A. Mario Loiederman Middle School, plays with a string ensemble Thursday morning at the Wheaton school.

Some stared in the mirror, examining their form. Others cringed and smiled at one another as they stretched their legs.

All the ballet dancing bars and wall mirrors are yet to be installed at A. Mario Loiederman Middle School, the new creative and performing arts school in Wheaton, but students and staff have not skipped a beat since the middle school reopened in the fall. Its theater class put on a show last weekend and its orchestra is preparing for an upcoming performance.

Loiederman, the first county middle school with a focus on culture, arts and communicative studies, takes a new approach toward developing critical thinking skills. As traditional schools are cutting back on arts in their classrooms to focus on standardized testing, Loiederman is taking a more colorful and rhythmic route to education.

But Loiederman classes involve more than dancing to fun beats and painting in pretty colors, said Brian Betts, Loiederman’s vice principal, ruling out any ideas that students spend the day simply making a decoration to post on the refrigerator door.

‘‘It’s more than a form of expression. ... We are walking them down the road of critical thinking,” Betts said.

The school, which is part of Montgomery County Public Schools’ recently launched Middle School Magnet Consortium, provides performing and visual arts classes that allow students to develop strong artistic skills. In a traditional school, middle school students take courses that briefly expose them to one of the fine arts. At Loiederman, students take the next step to develop proficient art skills because they have an entire school year to focus on the subjects, Betts said.

Classes at Loiederman gave sixth-grader Juan Jose Medina a new perspective on fine arts. He danced in his ballet class last week, illustrating varied emotions with different movements. Those same feelings, he said, could be demonstrated in his drawing class with the use of certain lines and colors.

‘‘It’s about the elements of all the principles of art,” said Medina, 12, of Silver Spring.

The whole school experience makes classes –– even the standard reading and math classes –– more enjoyable, said Medina, who mixed kung fu-inspired dance moves to music from the movie ‘‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

The new Loiederman

MCPS closed Loiederman, then known as Belt Middle School, in 1983 due to declining enrollment. In recent years, the school system decided to open the school to alleviate overcrowding at Parkland Middle School.

The magnet program started in the fall at Loiederman and at Parkland and Argyle middle schools. At Loiederman, the magnet began with the school’s first set of sixth-graders who have eight periods throughout the school year. Students attend four a day that include a mix of art and standard curriculum classes. The 800 seventh– and eighth-graders at Loiederman have a standard curriculum but may take some magnet classes.

Students who live within the middle school magnet program’s boundaries got first pick at one of the three schools. Out-of-consortium students tested their luck with a lottery system for the limited spaces available at a magnet school.

Of the more than 300 sixth-graders at Loiederman, about 90 are not part of the magnet consortium.

When MCPS reopened Loiederman, it had to make accommodations for the school’s new curriculum. The school features two art and theater classrooms, a dance studio and a soon-to-open digital music lab. Bright-blue carpet in the offices, hardwood floors in the dance studio and a re-creation of Vincent van Gogh’s ‘‘Starry Night” in the hallway help play up the school’s art theme.

A staff of 58 teachers, many with diverse resumes focused in visual and performing arts, also adds an important element to the school, Betts said. Loiederman’s unique program, for example, attracted a trained musician who spent time in Uzbekistan and another who has a degree in French and music.

It takes a person with a broad art background to take on the multidimensional jobs at Loiederman, Betts said. Staff must work with a new program and manage students who vary in artistic skills.

The school’s diverse student population has its benefits and challenges.

Loiederman, like the other schools in the consortium, draws some students from areas where high poverty rates — nearly double the county’s middle school average — have posed academic challenges. MCPS initiated the pilot magnet program with expectations that the traditionally lower-achieving schools would excel.

Parents hope that all students receive the appropriate attention and quality education they need, said George Gadbois, a Loiederman PTA member.

A school’s success can sometimes be masked by the achievement of a few, Gadbois said. In this case, students from outside of the consortium may draw attention away from the group of students the program MCPS initially intended to help, he said.

‘‘The general concern is that we don’t lose sight of [in-consortium] kids and their needs and development,” Gadbois said.

Ideally, students with different educational and arts backgrounds could learn from each other and feed off one another’s interests, said dance teacher Allyson Hawkes, noting that novices and the experienced can both benefit.

‘‘It hooks children into being excited about their educational experience,” she added, regarding the entire program at Loiederman.

Some students are so thrilled about the classes that they are already planning for next year, said Principal Alison Serino. For example, sixth-graders who took the ballet-based dance course get to choose between other classes in the coming years, including tap, folk, and social and modern. Many students can’t wait to get to eighth grade, when hip-hop is an option, Serino said.

Students have already taken advantage of the opportunities Silver Spring-based Round House Theatre and Strathmore in Bethesda have brought to the school, including free tickets. Also, theater students benefit from Round House Theatre’s 12-week residency program that brings theater experts into the classroom, Serino said.

Pyramid Atlantic, a nonprofit arts center, helps support the school’s professional development by training teachers in skills like printmaking. Students will have access to high-tech digital music equipment thanks to generous donations, Serino said.

‘‘The beauty of the arts is that you have the opportunity to go so many directions to appeal to so many kids. Part of the challenge is just deciding which way we go,” Serino said.

Hopefully, in time, Loiederman will develop even more options for students, Gadbois said. His son, Greg, plays drums and is interested in instrumental music, but Gadbois said he’d like his son to have a range of instruments to choose from. He suggested that the faculty survey parents and students about what options they would like to see at the school.

For example, Loiederman does not offer guitar or piano classes, and a survey might indicate whether such classes would be worthwhile. A school that specializes in the arts should boast a diverse curriculum to demonstrate that it is distinctive, Gadbois said.

The road ahead

The changes and new opportunities are exciting, but Loiederman’s art-focused approach does raise questions about students’ academic readiness for standardized testing and educational standards.

Parents like Gadbois made it a point to examine curriculum before choosing Loiederman. His son is taking investigative math and a mix of honors classes in English, social studies and Spanish.

‘‘We wanted to be sure that they were going to get the same [education] there,” Gadbois said. ‘‘Is there anything that they are going to miss with this magnet program?”

Loiederman staff members tried to assure parents that that was not the case, Serino said.

‘‘My perspective is that when you strip the arts [from classes], we assume that the immediate reaction is that students are going to do well in the other subjects,” she said.

That shouldn’t be the assumption, said Serino, noting that Loiederman is providing an alternative way to engage and educate students. The staff at Loiederman, which is committed to the school for a minimum of three years, will work to prove it can provide the right balance.

‘‘We are building renaissance kids. We want to have brilliant scientists and artists,” Serino said.

The school will start by relying on the notion that classes will stimulate students’ interest in school, provide a creative outlet and broaden students’ approach to critical thinking, Serino said. ‘‘Time will tell.”

The school

A. Mario Loiederman Middle School, the first county middle school with a focus on culture, arts and communicative studies, takes a new approach toward developing critical thinking skills while other schools strip their arts programs. The school, which opened this fall, is one of three that launched with Montgomery County Public Schools’ new Magnet Middle School Consortium.