# Teaching the arts in elementary school **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 24, 2018, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040 "2018-04-24T13:05:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2018, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040/21 "2018-04-25T12:02:18Z")
My elementary school art training was done by the same teacher who taught everything else; we didn’t start having separate teachers until 4th grade (PhysEd and English), then in 6th grade moved to having one teacher per subject. The music teacher taught music 6th-8th (15 groups, times 2h/wk) plus History of Music in 9th grade (another 5 groups and another 2h/wk for each), which actually brought her to 40h/wk just with class hours. ---
**Author:** ![The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2018, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040/22 "2018-04-25T13:19:53Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > A friend has a daughter who is a certified special education teacher. It was easy for her to find a job, because she is also certified as a math teacher. She was hired by a small town school district, where she works with special education kids in both the elementary and the middle school, and is also the special education teacher for an even smaller nearby school district’s K-8 school. (She does a lot of driving in her jobs.) > > Her workload varies depending on the number of special education kids in the various schools. I know that one year that was lower, so she also taught an advanced math class in the middle school. > > (She is a full-time employee of the larger school district. Somehow, they ‘lease’ her services to the smaller district. Sometimes ‘bartered’ for other special teachers (art, PE, etc.)) Interesting, I didn’t realize special education could be a part-time gig as well, at least at the lower levels. I figured the teacher had the kids all day (aside from lunch, recess, and the arts classes). Was she an assistant teacher or something? > [@nelliebly](#): > > And also bathroom time, frankly. My doc told me teachers often don’t drink enough fluids because they can’t run to the bathroom very often. I could sometimes dash to the loo between classes if I didn’t have students who needed me. Elementary teachers have no “between classes.” Oh my gosh this never occurred to me! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2018, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040/23 "2018-04-25T13:32:49Z")
“Special ed” covers a lot of ground. The kids with the most extreme special needs will be with a special ed teacher (or multiple special ed teachers) all day, but you might not have any of those in any given school, or even district (if it’s a small rural district), or there might be few enough that it’s not worth it to the district to have a class just for them, and instead make a deal with a neighboring district with more resources to send the kids there. Mostly, what you have is kids who take most of the same classes with all of the other students, but who might have one additional class for life skills or the like, and might have an aide or co-teacher in the regular classroom with them. ---
**Author:** ![The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2018, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040/24 "2018-04-25T16:28:51Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > “Special ed” covers a lot of ground. The kids with the most extreme special needs will be with a special ed teacher (or multiple special ed teachers) all day, but you might not have any of those in any given school, or even district (if it’s a small rural district), or there might be few enough that it’s not worth it to the district to have a class just for them, and instead make a deal with a neighboring district with more resources to send the kids there. Mostly, what you have is kids who take most of the same classes with all of the other students, but who might have one additional class for life skills or the like, and might have an aide or co-teacher in the regular classroom with them. Man, you’re really illuminating for me how much I don’t know! I don’t have kids of my own, so the only first-hand knowledge of the education system I have is when I went through it myself. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040/25 "2018-04-26T09:58:07Z")
Back in the dark ages, my high school had a class that was “special” in that it was made up of those students who were just waiting to be of legal age to get jobs and drop out plus those the teachers thought wouldn’t get their level of learning affected by the prior group. Both that school and the associated elementary school have expanded that so students who are known to need special help (permanently, temporarily or TBD) get sent to those teachers who are known to be best; the same groups also get those good students who are considered least environment-sensitive. This involved changing the way groups were cut up: it used to be by alphabetical order; since pulling specific students out of order would signal “something funny with this guy” and that was considered evidently undesirable, the student groups now look random to a casual observer. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2018, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040/26 "2018-04-29T01:44:46Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > And also bathroom time, frankly. My doc told me teachers often don’t drink enough fluids because they can’t run to the bathroom very often. I could sometimes dash to the loo between classes if I didn’t have students who needed me. Elementary teachers have no “between classes.” When I was in elementary school, the teachers each had a sink in the room. Which they could use to put a glass of water on their desk. Now, all the kids in my sons class have water bottles on their tables. As does the teacher if she wants to. So if for some reason you can’t maintain your fluid level for a couple of hours without topping up (!), around here it doesn’t require a break, even for the kids. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2018, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040/27 "2018-04-29T01:47:33Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > When I was in elementary school, the teachers each had a sink in the room. Which they could use to put a glass of water on their desk. Now, all the kids in my sons class have water bottles on their tables. As does the teacher if she wants to. > > So if for some reason you can’t maintain your fluid level for a couple of hours without topping up (!), around here it doesn’t require a break, even for the kids. The point is that teachers WOULDN’T drink because otherwise they’d have to go to the bathroom more often and potentially leave the class unattended. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2018, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040/28 "2018-04-29T22:57:49Z")
I went to a Montessori school for the entirety of my elementary school existence, so it’s interesting for me to read how traditional schools handled things like this, and the ways in which things were similar and the ways in which things were different. We certainly had about the same amount of time for art, PE, and music instruction, and it was known that the instructors would go to the various different affiliated schools in the area, though I don’t know how much of a workload they had. The structure of the classroom was certainly much, much different, but we had pretty much the same sort of rotation for those out-of-classroom specialized activities. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teaching-the-arts-in-elementary-school/813040.md?page=1)