As discussed in a previous post, accessibility does not just account for students with disabilities. Classrooms within the US need to be accessible to non-English speaking students and English-learning students. This poses a challenge to many educators since most lessons, textbooks, curriculum, and traditional methods of teaching are written strictly with English speaking students in mind.

The Institute for Arts Intergration and STEAM, a professional development organization focused on providing teachers with the means to integrate the Arts into accessible lessons for their students, finds that using the Arts to teach common core makes all students able to engage with the lesson regardless of personal educational needs. In their article on Arts and English learners, they state that English-learning students learn STEM based lessons better when they’re taught with the Arts. The inclusion of the Arts helps expand English-learning students vocabulary by connecting words to images in a way that’s simple to comprehend.

Pairing visual, musical, and preforming Arts with STEM also helps non-English and English-learning students grasp abstract concepts without needing to rely on proficiency in English for lessons to make sense, according to the Spanish-American Institute. They found in their study done on Art as a tool that English-learning students are able to connect more personally to lessons through Art.

By intergrating Art into lessons in classrooms, English-learning students are able to egage with lessons on the same level as their English speaking peers.