Butte County Office of Education’s use of trauma-informed arts educators following the Camp Fire can be duplicated in local educational agencies across the state to support student well-being.
The program began in response to 2018’s Camp Fire — the deadliest wildfire in California’s history at the time, which burned more than 153,300 acres and destroyed nearly 14,000 residences leaving an estimated 30,000 people displaced.
Drawing inspiration from a similar Sonoma County-based initiative, the county office of education (COE) spent 2019 pursuing grants, drafting program guidelines, and recruiting and training local artists on social-emotional learning and K-12 arts standards before launching its first artist residency in a classroom in Paradise in early 2020. This was one component of the local educational agency’s work to address the mental health needs of young people in the wake of devastation.
Initially focused on the communities of Paradise, Magalia and Berry Creek, the program and its offerings have continued to expand to schools throughout the county, according to Butte COE Arts Education Coordinator Jennifer Spangler, who hopes to have a regional cohort of teaching artists in the future.
How it works
Educators can choose from a directory of teaching artists, that includes information like their discipline (visual arts or theatre) and sample lessons, to bring into their classroom.
The competencies in the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning’s (CASEL) social-emotional learning framework — self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills and social awareness — are integrated into the lessons. For example, students have created individual mosaic pieces while learning about Roman history and imagery. They were displayed together in the school library as a collective installation, strengthening relationship skills. Another group of students learned improv and did a performance for parents, building social awareness and relationship skills.
“Social-emotional learning can help you get over trauma and also make you resilient in the face of trauma,” Spangler explained.
Typically, a teaching artist will work with a class for an hour a week for 10 weeks. Some after-school programming has also been implemented.
Spangler said the COE consistently has 13 teaching artists available per year that all 14 local districts can use. The program has also been offered to students in Butte COE’s juvenile hall and alternative education schools.
While grants geared toward wildfire recovery and social-emotional learning were the initial funding streams and allowed for free services to schools, most districts now pay a fee to participate. Spangler noted that since Proposition 28 dollars became available, those funds have been utilized for teaching artists by some districts.
“We foresee that there will be more of that because a lot of our districts don’t have very large allocations to hire a teacher, so one of their strategies is to use teaching artists,” Spangler said, adding that arts education is required by California’s Education Code.
Benefits
In addition to social-emotional benefits, increased student engagement and parental involvement and reduced absenteeism are other positive outcomes associated with arts education. The programming provided by teaching artists, “helps students feel like they’ve got a place in their school, like it’s home and they belong,” Spangler said. “It’s about student voice and self-expression. Those are all hooks for keeping kids engaged in school.”
As multiple wildfires were ablaze in Southern California at the time of this writing, Spangler said that training existing teaching artists in affected areas on trauma-informed practices could help students and noted some possible strategies and resources.
“For our artists, they went through an orientation on social-emotional learning and trauma-informed practices to prepare them. So, I would think with just a little bit of gearing up that their groups of teaching artists could provide more targeted benefits that help the students in recovery and resiliency around the trauma of the fire,” Spangler said. National interest has grown in the concept, which was recently implemented in Maui following the 2023 fires.
Butte COE is a backbone organization for The Kennedy Center’s Ensuring the Arts for Any Given Child initiative and can provide select resources and connections to the national network, which aims to further access to and equity in K-8 arts education.
Spangler acknowledged that the road to recovery is long and that even in her county, a need for support persists. She added that more long-term funding opportunities would be invaluable.
Beyond wildfires, today’s young people contend with a multitude of traumatic experiences, such as school shootings and threats of violence, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters. “At any rate, I think that there’s a need for an ongoing program of artists who are equipped to work with students on this,” Spangler said.
