During the last academic year, 73 Dartmouth students participated in START, teaching during Fall, Winter and Spring terms in several preschool, elementary school and middle school classrooms across the region. Participants, including interns, spent a total of 7,052 hours volunteering with the program, according to Gaetz.
"How it got started is kind of a legend," Gaetz said. "It's hard to nail down an exact beginning and it depends on who you talk to."
START began when a school district in the Upper Valley made major budget cuts, particularly to the arts education department, according to Gaetz. A group of Dartmouth students sensed a need in the community and began working with the outreach program at the Hopkins Center, implementing a program that augmented arts in the school district.
"The purpose is to bring Dartmouth students to a classroom," Gaetz said. "It's experiential learning at its finest. You have to think fast on your feet."
START intern Michael Gordon '12, however, said he believes the story of the program's origin might have been exaggerated over the years.
"It started as a need for communication and connection," Gordon said. "Teachers wanted more arts in their curriculum, but they didn't have the opportunity to integrate more arts and students and people working in at the Hopkins Center wanted to communicate with students in the Upper Valley."
Student teachers working with START are expected to integrate the arts in a variety of creative forms into the curriculum that a particular class of students is currently learning, according to Gaetz. For some classes, volunteers are expected to come up with individual lesson plans, while for others, the teachers have already set plans for the volunteers to execute, she said.
Judith Anderson, a retired third grade teacher at the Ray School in Hanover, had nothing but praise for the three Dartmouth students who taught in her classroom through START last Winter term.
"What was great was the genuine energy between the Dartmouth students and my students," Anderson said. "The children really looked forward to START days."
START students came in for one hour six times over the term, each time teaching a different activity or craft, such as making fish kites, prints and sculptures, according to Anderson.
"It would have been nice to have had the Dartmouth students stay for more than six hours," Anderson said. "I think it'd be wonderful to develop a continuing relationship."
Although Anderson contacted the START program through the Rye School's music teacher and assistant principal, her school did not have a long-term relationship with START. The program does, however, maintain relationships with some other schools such as Hartford Middle School, according to Gordon.
Inconsistency was a major challenge faced by START participants, and the program hopes to improve upon this when volunteers implement their new pilot system this spring, according to Gaetz. Depending on the teacher and the school, START will provide resources and lesson plans for a variety of different levels and concentrations, she said.
"In the fall, we took a step back," Gaetz said. "We didn't run the program in the fall so we could revamp the system."
Taking into account evaluations by Dartmouth students, classroom teachers and the various participating schools, START will incoprate improvements in the program this spring, according to Gaetz. This pilot system strives to better tap into the depth of talent Dartmouth students have in the arts, to better complement specific types of curricula and to begin to integrate arts into disciplines as varied as science and mapping, she said. As a pilot, Gaetz said the program will be smaller, using only three or four classrooms. One of the most striking changes to expect in the pilot program is a much more in-depth focus on teacher training and a larger time commitment on the part of Dartmouth students, she said.
The old system of START sent students into classrooms after the third week, but the new pilot will train and match students with classrooms one term prior to actual teaching, according to Gaetz. The goal is that students will be more confidently equipped with knowledge on how to create and implement projects, she said.
Gordon, who has been involved in START since his sophomore winter, notes that people involved in START are not necessarily studio art majors, but most do have an interest or background in the arts. Gordon remembered an engineering major, for example, who played several stringed instruments, and once taught a class of young kinds to make and play tambourines. Thus, START is accessible to volunteers with many different talents, Gordon said.
"START operates as result of need based on art," he said. "I think students want to participate because they love art, and there's nothing like being able to share your love of art."
