Art-based program helps to improve student-learning

A Royal Conservatory of Music program that has dramatically increased academic engagement and success of First Nation, Métis and Inuit students is being expanded.

For the past six years Learning Through the Arts Youth Empowerment Program has been operating in numerous Fort McMurray schools. Developed by The Royal Conservatory in 1994, it uses arts-based activities to help engage students as they learn key subjects in their curriculum.

“The gains the students achieved were pretty spectacular,” said Shaun Elder, the executive director of the Royal Conservatory’s program. “All of a sudden the kids were engaged. They didn’t have that before.”

Recently released test results, showing Provincial Achievement Test scores in math, science and social studies, demonstrate just how successful the program has been, especially among Aboriginal students.

The 2013 PAT score for science shows that 74.2 per cent of Aboriginal students achieved the provincial standard, a significant increase from the 54.2 per cent from the 2010-12 results.

During this same period, 66.1 per cent of Grade 9 Aboriginal students met the acceptable provincial standard, up from an average of just 44.7 per cent.

All parties are thrilled with the results.

“We can’t say our program was 100 per cent responsible for it,” Elder said. “But (officials from) the school district told us ours was really the only new initiative in the curriculum.”

The program brought in Conservatory-trained dramatic and visual artists, musicians, dancers and writers to work creatively with teachers and students, in the hopes of engaging the latter to take more of an interest in their studies.

Bringing in a local Elder to help teach also generated more engagement from Aboriginal students.

“I knew the test results would be better because I saw the student engagement in the classroom,” said Program leader Shelley MacDonald, who is Métis.

The program operated in 15 Catholic schools and seven public schools in Fort McMurray.

MacDonald had a sense the program would be successful, even before it was implemented as some Aboriginal students had a say in how it would operate.

“We had visioning sessions before the program was launched,” she said. “We really felt it was important for the students to be involved with that as well. And they were very much a part of the visioning.”

When the program first started it was working only with Grade 6 students.

But grant dollars from the Alberta government has allowed the program to expand the past three years.

“What that (grant money) allowed us to do was to work with students who were in Grades 7-9 as well,” Elder said.

A total of 3,000 students have benefitted from the program. MacDonald said some of the Fort McMurray schools feature enrolments of about 50 per cent Aboriginal students.

And now the program will be expanded to other northern Alberta communities thanks to a $1.1 million investment from the Suncor Energy Foundation.

Photo caption: 

Students engage in visual arts, one of the many areas of creative learning that is part of the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Learning Through the Arts Youth Empowerment Program.