Putting the Arts on a Pedestal : Creative Classes Are Cherished in Garden Grove School District

The girls in Jim Keltner’s class aren’t just learning to sing. They are becoming a choir. Only a few weeks into the year at Bolsa Grande High School, they are already producing admirable three-part harmonies.

But if you ask Keltner, his students are learning far more about life than about music.

Listening carefully, class members decide which voices stand out and which ones blend. By doing so, they fine-tune their musical ears. But they also learn cooperation. As they strive to attack and release notes at precisely the right moment, they also learn discipline.

Most importantly, Keltner says, they learn that the things that stratify students on campus are irrelevant in the choir.

“I’ve had all types in my classes,” says Keltner, a talkative, wiry man in wire-rim glasses. “I’ve had cheerleaders, football players, surfers, gangbangers, nerds, everybody. And I tell them all the same thing: What you might be around campus is one thing. But when you come in here to sing, that disappears. When we get up there (to perform) in our tuxedos and gowns, you’re all equal.”

Keltner’s belief that the arts can teach volumes about life reflects the philosophy of his school district, Garden Grove Unified. Here, the arts are considered as important as math, science, language and history. And in contrast with many other districts, which are cutting their fine arts programs as school funds dwindle, Garden Grove has firmly protected an unusually comprehensive arts program at all grade levels.

In order to keep the arts going, the district chooses to lower the knife elsewhere when budget cuts must be made. It spends less on administration than most districts in the state. Its teachers are no longer reimbursed for trips to conferences. Employees are being asked to pay more for health insurance. Paper clips are recycled, sheet music passed from one school to another and brown grocery bags used in art class when there is no money for fancier drawing paper.

“It’s amazing what you can do when you have to,” said Bernie Jones, who supervises the arts curriculum for the district’s 41,000 students. “We are totally committed to the fine arts. The philosophy of our Board of Education and our superintendent is that if these students are going to become well-rounded people, they need music and art along with the other academic subjects.”

Few districts offer as much opportunity for kids to learn painting, trombone-playing, acting or singing as does Garden Grove, and it does so for a diverse student body in which many might not otherwise have those experiences. Many are immigrants who speak little English, and many are from poor families.

The arts classes have particular value for disadvantaged or troubled children or for students who do not excel in traditional academics, said Garden Grove School Board President Joyce T. Johnson. Music or drama class can create friendships and make students feel successful and excited, things that might keep them from dropping out, she said.

James Walehwa, 18, found that out for himself. When his bad grades and insubordination landed him in a school for troubled kids, he worked hard to straighten himself out for only one reason: so he could return to Keltner’s choir class.

“Without choir, I don’t think I would have had anything to come back for,” said Walehwa. “The friends I made there were my family.”

Adam Gilbert, 17, said he used to be a bored-by-school jock with a 2.0 grade-point average. Singing with Keltner’s elite concert choir, in which Gilbert says students are “pushed to the limit,” taught him about the satisfaction that can come from working as hard as he can. Applying that to his other classes has raised his GPA to 3.5.

“I learn important stuff about life in there too,” Gilbert said. “Like when I play sports, I express the angry, violent side of myself. (Keltner) teaches us to sing the music from the heart, so now I express the more sensitive parts.”

At any one moment, students all over the district are learning lessons from art. In one room, they furrow their brows, training their eyes to understand the physics of how light and shadow fall on a cone-shaped object. In another, they try to be respectful by being quiet while their peers practice a tough arpeggio.

To lure children into the arts at an early age and ensure a steady bloodline of musicians, Garden Grove Unified sends “recruiters” into the grade-school classrooms. On a recent day at Ethel M. Evans Elementary, music teacher Michael Kennedy was doing the recruiting.

Standing before a rapt class of fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders, he held up a violin, a trumpet and a clarinet, giving a brief talk about each. Then, to assorted giggles and smiles, he played a range of tunes on each one, from “Frere Jacques” to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and a snippet of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” Then the kids were given a chance to sign up for lessons.

In the Garden Grove district, first-graders learn to play simple wind instruments and read music, banging out rhythms with special sticks. By fourth grade, they can study a stringed instrument like violin, and by fifth, they can sing in the choir.

On the intermediate and high-school levels, arts classes are taught by teachers certificated in those specialties, Jones said. Choir, instrumental music, studio art and drama are offered in each grade.

“Anyone who is maintaining a comprehensive program like that is to be commended,” said Bill Burke, executive director of the California Music Educators Assn., a nonprofit organization of music teachers and administrators.

Short on funds, many districts have cut back on elementary school music and art, and many high schools have eliminated seventh period, a time often used to take arts classes, Burke said. In addition, requirements for high school graduation and college entry have increased, making it harder for students to find room to take arts courses, he said.

Thomas Hatfield, executive director of the National Art Education Assn. in Reston, Va., said a lack of national emphasis on arts makes it easier for schools to pare them back. He noted that important reports outlining educational goals, such as the landmark 1983 “A Nation at Risk,” and “America 2000,” produced last year by the Bush Administration, virtually ignore the arts.

“It has to do with the values of the decision-makers,” Hatfield said. “Their knowledge about the arts and their commitment toward the arts is reflected in the decisions they make. It goes all the way up to the White House.”

In Garden Grove, the decision-makers have made their choices.

“The arts are as basic as any of our other subjects,” said school board member Dick Hain. “Times are tough, financially, but we’re going to keep right on with the arts.”