“Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems” is a webinar by Mo Willems, Kennedy Center Artist in Residence and author of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. With students suddenly and unexpectedly home from school due to the COVID-19 epidemic Mo Willems began his lunchtime doodle session with a suggestion: “Let’s find a way to be isolated and together at the same time,” he said.

As we, globally, transition to school shutdowns as part of social distancing, arts continue to be a vital tool for engaging diverse students in learning remotely and at home.

Many simple strategies can be incorporated into arts learning in home settings to promote accessibility. In “UDL in Action: Three Teaching Artists Share Their Strategies” teaching artists in visual art, music and drama offer inclusive strategies they use in classrooms that can translate to home settings as well. Some of those strategies involve using diverse materials: Styrofoam, puffy paint, wax yarn sticks and quick dry paper can all add interesting tactile elements for learners who benefit from feeling the marks they’re making. Teachers and caregivers can create simple adaptive grips for pencils, paintbrushes and crayons by enlarging the grip area with tape or elastic adhesive bandages or using materials such as balls or pool noodles. Art can happen anywhere-offer seating options so learners can create art in spaces where they’re physically comfortable.

Singing songs and creating dances are excellent ways, too, to stay engaged in the learning process. Teach songs by previewing elements of the song with visual cues-like picture cards, toys, puppets and/or everyday objects. Caregivers and teachers can support learners by teaching fun, easy-to-learn parts of the song first and can engage learners by incorporating simple dance moves and freezes into the song.

Story dramatization is a great tool for infusing drama into literacy. Story dramatization can be as simple as acting out a story with your learner or acting out the story using puppets or toys.  Teaching artist Fran Sillau suggests that scarves are an excellent tool for fostering creativity in drama activities-they can be anything from hay for building a house, to a blanket for Grandmother’s bed to the Big Bad Wolf’s long nose.

Arts and education organizations are offering digital resources to support teachers, caregivers and learners during this coronavirus crisis. The Kennedy Center, for example, offers free access to hundreds of digital arts learning resources that can be used in classrooms or at home. Chicago Arts Partnership in Education compiled this list of “Arts Resources for Families Stuck at Home” that includes digital art activities, interactive tools, digital art collections and live streams of cultural events. Americans for the Arts also offers suggestions for at home and online family activities to get the whole family engaged in the arts. This website details resources related to books, including book readings by authors, publishers and celebrities; author and illustrator videos; online e-book resources; and book related virtual field trips. Listings of book readings and story times by authors and other groups are included in this Google document as well.   

Arts Education New Jersey has also compiled this list of Arts Education Distance Learning Resources. They’ve included resources for arts education that are discipline specific for Music, Visual Art, Theater, and Dance.

As the COVID-19 pandemic crisis continues, educators across the globe are working hard to find ways to continue teaching their students remotely. Many resources have been created in a short amount of time to support educators in fostering accessibility and inclusion as they transition to online teaching and learning.

The Center on Online Learning and Students with Disabilities has research and resources on supporting diverse learners engaged in remote learning, Common Sense Education provides this list of special education apps and websites, and the State Educational Technology Directors Association provides this guide for creating accessible materials for online learning.

Dr. Daphnie Sicre, Assistant Professor at Theater Arts at Loyola Marymount University suggests, in Teaching Theater Online: A Shift in Pedagogy Amidst Coronavirus Outbreak, inviting students to be part of conversations about accessibility throughout the process, beginning, simply, by ascertaining if each student has access to what they need to participate in remote learning such as a computer or tablet, Wi-Fi, video and audio.    

Aimi Hamraie, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University and Director of Mapping Access , suggests teachers and professors build accessibility into the process at every step of the move to remote learning formats. In Accessible Teaching in the Time of Covid-19, their recommendations include using image descriptions and alt text for images and videos, captions or transcriptions for all videos and PDFs with Optical Character Recognition. Students may need software to translate written text into audio or Braille, live transcription, apps like Otter.ai or Thisten for creating transcripts from audio, or other strategies. Remote learning strategies may bring other accessibility issues to the forefront. For example, students who have migraines may need to limit or reduce screen time.

Hamraie asserts, too, that remote learning may also provide new opportunities. They suggest inviting students to create projects in digital formats such as podcasts, interactive timelines and maps. They suggest making accessibility part of the student’s learning as well by encouraging students to embed access into their own presentations and projects. 

As social distancing continues, we, at the Office of VSA and Accessibility, will continue to support teachers, teaching artists and diverse learners in the arts. The Kennedy Center Education department is currently compiling a curated list of digital resources for educators, caregivers and students with disabilities. If you are developing resources or would like to recommend a resource please e-mail Stephanie Litvak at [email protected] to be considered for inclusion.