Boulder Community School of Integrated Studies

The Weaving of the BCSIS Curriculum

The Boulder Community School of Integrated Studies (BCSIS) provides a rich aesthetic environment in which artistic expression, active involvement, and academic excellence provide a foundation for the learning experience. A holistic approach addresses the head, heart, and hand of each child. Rhythm and sensitivity to unique developmental ages assure that students are held in a secure place where, through exposure to multicultural activities and creative projects, they emerge as self-defined, competent, and compassionate individuals.

Teachers strive to present a view in which the world is introduced through imagination and authentic experiences. Rather than superimposing artistic activity over curriculum content, the innate beauty and artistic elements of each subject are honored through each encounter with the materials. Our intention is to present the world as a beautiful and wonder-filled place where anything is possible. Math IS music, science IS art, and the totality of the way the world works IS poetry.

The educational process is like a superb weaving. The threads of content areas pass each other, blend and spiral back again to create a unified whole. The teacher winds the warp--carefully laying in the colors. She/he allows the children to ride through the stands on the shuttle bringing the well-planned elements together into a cohesive finished product. With careful watch the teacher makes sure that no thread is dropped, that only luminous colors are selected for use and that the finished cloth contains all the elements necessary to make it functional and beautiful. This is a cloth held together by the very weaving process and is a product that is useful, beautiful and constructed with care and joy.

Educational Roots of BCSIS Curriculum

Waldorf Practices

We strive to teach to the whole child with reverence--Thinking, Feeling, and Willing. There is a reverence for all alike. Examples of modified Waldorf practices in the classrooms include: the use of main lesson books, knitting, recorder playing, chalkboard drawings, nature walks, gardening, play -based kindergarten, form drawing, beeswax, and watercolor painting. Like Waldorf, our Festivals mark the seasons with reverence and song. We teach math from whole to part with instruction based on authentic inquiry. The school attends to beauty and environment through the use of natural materials, wooden desks, and nature tables.

Multiple Intelligences

The founder of Harvard University's Project Zero, Howard Gardener, illuminates the belief that each child has their own individual intelligence map. This approach allows for knowledge acquisition through a variety of modalities: linguistic, musical, logical/mathematical, spatial, and kinesthetic, to name a few. Translated into the classroom, this may look like a second grader having to dance a poem before he is able to access it in words to put on paper, or a fourth grader who creates her own method for solving a complex math problem. We strive to both acknowledge strengths in student learning as well as support children in developing less adept areas.

Arts Integration is the use of arts in a manner that supports and enhances learning of subject matter in any given discipline. Arts integration takes on many forms at BCSIS. In math, a second grade teacher might use puppetry to explore the concept of borrowing, while in fourth grade, students might explore artistic multiple design patterns in order to learn about divisibility. In literacy, students use Readers' Theater to develop fluency in reading, exploring a color study by Matisse to learn about inferring, and use a sand tray to create a scene before writing. Using the arts in this way allows more students to access the material successfully and creatively, increases their motivations, helps their memory and exposes them to multiple sign-systems.

Integrated curriculum looks at a variety of ways subjects can interlink and work together--a blend across the subject areas. Examples include a third grade study of Ancient Incan Culture where place value becomes a series of notes tied in a "quipu"--each knot signifying a different number and used in the culture to transmit information across long distances. The children weave Incan weavings to decorate the cover of a lesson book while journal entries are written in response to a historical novel on human sacrifice. In addition, teams of students work together in cooperation building suspension bridges. Working with curriculum in this way creates a holistic experience for the child, rather than learning skills in isolation.

The Arts at Boulder Community School of Integrated Studies

Enhancing student learning and classroom environments through the am is a connecting theme that is drawn from the major educational philosophies.

Educational Practices

The arts are used to develop student's academic growth in all areas of the curriculum. For example, teachers might use tableaux to have students determine what is important in a piece of text or create flag designs to demonstrate their understanding of fractions.

Rhythm and Structure

For example, singing, music and poetry are often cornerstones of the classrooms. Teachers begin their day playing recorder. They use music to help students focus during work time, and may transition to a new activity with a song.

Developing Aesthetics

The arts are used to develop warm aesthetically rich environments and to teach students to notice the beauty of the world in which they live. This can be seen by the care taken to create the classroom. We use natural materials whenever possible in order to help keep students connected to the outside world.

Support Developmental Growth

The am support student's support developmental growth and connection to their body, head and heart. For example, learning how to knit in first grade increases fine motor development wide instilling the joy of creation.

Connect to the World

Learning about world cultures through art exposes students to different WAYS of thinking. It is also a way for them to connect to the greater community through projects such as creating the field guide for Sombrero Marsh and regular shows at the Wild Arts Gallery.

Teachers as Learners

When a teacher steps back from the front of the class and plays the recorder with students as they learn notes and phrases together, children see education as an ongoing process and the teacher as a learner.

Develop Artistic Practices

In our art and music program, students develop sequential skill and artist practices, such as helping an art journal and reading music.

Responding to World Events

During times of crisis in the world we use art experiences to help students respond to a given event. The anti-bias mural by the water fountain, for example, was a project the fourth graders created in response to the death of Mathew Shepard.