Integrating Art into the Contemporary Classroom

So art helps us learn, right? And we need to learn things to make art. They go hand-in-hand. So how do we go about intentionally structuring the classroom to integrate art into the other disciplines?
In her article, "Five Ways to Integrate: Using Strategies from Contemporary Art," Julia Marshall lists a few methods:

1. DEPICT
• Render/sculpt from observation. Study something and recreate what you see.
• Can help further art making AND help study something in relation to a subject. Ex: Drawing the bones of a skeleton would help me know how to draw people more proportionately and be able to understand the bumps and dips in the human form as I draw them in the future. Also, it would help me understand how my own body works and is made up, and I can use that knowledge for more practical purposes in the future.
2. EXTEND/PROJECT
• Envision possible outcomes (What could be or what could happen?) and make artwork about that.
• This is an inquiry about what might happen based on what we already know. It combines fact and fiction. It is similar to the process of storytelling.
• Want an example of this? Check out the 2013 ArtPrize entry "The Future of Genetic Manipulation on an Ecosystem," by Rob Vander Zee 



Source: http://adventuremomblog.com

3. REFORMAT
• Recontextualize an object or idea.
• Taking an idea from an area of study or an object associated with one thing and giving it a new context, purpose, or look allows us to see different meanings or purposes it may have.
• Through art inquiry, Marshall explains this might look like making "postcards from a trip around [our] brains or minds" or "portraying cells or organs as characters in a photo album, comic book, or formal portrait."
4. MIMIC
• "Play out" methods used in other disciplines. Ie: "mimic botanists by collecting and studying plants from the local market" or "mimic anthropologists in studying notions of "cool"…" by interviews and photographing other students
• To me, this is the least "artsy" form of integration. It is more of a performance than an art practice. Marshall admits this herself, saying "mimicking as an art strategy stretches the conventional notions of art". It would be more of a learning through studying an action rather than an object or idea.
5. MAKE METAPHORS
• Probably my favorite form of integration. This takes two different things and fuses them together. It's a juxtaposition. It describes one thing in the terms of another. I love this because it raises curiosity (How do these 2 different things relate?) and allows us to describe things otherwise hard to describe.
• This might include symbols, such the ritual masks of animals used in Native American culture depicting ideas such as power, wisdom, or the ability to reach other realms.
• David Wojnarowicz's "Something From Sleep III" creates the silhouette of a man filled with planets and galaxies, creating a metaphor that explains the human consciousness in the terms of the cosmos. From it we might deduct the expansiveness of the human mind or imagination, or how knowledge is gained by looking at the universe.