Have you ever thought about the ways that writing and drawing are connected? Many artists, educators, and historians argue that drawing is the ancestor of writing — and that writing is a highly stylized, abstracted form of drawing that represents language. But literacy doesn’t end at learning to draw shapes, or even at knowing how to read them. It extends across all human experiences tied to knowledge, from spoken language to visual literacy, numeracy, and beyond. These concepts are often referred to as “disciplinary literacy.” Disciplinary literacy boils down to skills that are required for anyone to think, act, create, communicate, or navigate knowledge within a specific subject area (science, history, math, sports, etc).
When we are learning to write the letters of the alphabet, we start out (or used to, before iPads, etc.) tracing lines on a drawing sheet. Inherited from European-American educational traditions, the way educators taught people how to read and write was concerned less with understanding the concepts represented on a page, and more concerned with mechanical regurgitation and repetition (often with an added bonus of harsh discipline, which does very little to build positive associations with education in general). We’ve come a long way since then, with evidence-based approaches and advances in research on how our brains develop and learn. Nevertheless, since 2020, we’ve seen a rapid increase in Utah’s youth who fail to meet literacy proficiency standards. COVID isn’t the only player in the post-pandemic educational experience — deterioration of attention spans from social media and rapid technological advances in artificial intelligence have introduced a too-convenient crutch that handily completes many thinking processes on behalf of the user. Remember when your math teacher scolded you to memorize multiplication tables because you’d never have a calculator in your pocket? This is kind of like that (sorry, Mr. Grable). How can we ensure we don’t let literacy atrophy when future learning experiences are muddled with tools designed for user convenience and productivity, rather than with supporting learning? We don’t have all the answers, but we do have a few strategies.
To support Utah’s literacy initiatives, the Arts Education Program at the Utah Division of Arts & Museums works to enhance the foundations laid down by our institutional partners and create positive experiences for learners through excellence in arts education. We connect and support educators, teaching artists, and students with interdisciplinary arts programming targeting core competencies, producing positive learning experiences across K-12 education.
In March (which happens to be Youth Art Month — read Governor Cox’s declaration here):
- We collaborated with partners to support youth literacy through professional development training that focused on visual literacy through comics and film (led by Utah State Board of Education and THE Scott McCloud, with contributions from the Utah Film Center)
- We polished off this year’s Poetry Out Loud contest, in which high school students embody and interpret great works of American poetry (with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and America250) through reading and recitation. The state champion gets a chance to compete at nationals in Washington, D.C. and a shot at the $20,000 grand prize. James Ware of Olympus High School was the winner, and the runner-up was Ivy Jensen of Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy
- We completed this year’s Poetry Ourselves Original Writing Competition, where 9-12th-grade students shared more than 105 of their original works of poetry and winners received opportunities for improvement and recognition. Students are supported by workshops taught by Utah-based poets, including Utah Poet Laureate Lisa Bickmore. First place for English Language Poetry went to Elli Douglas of Liberty University Online Academy, and first place for Spanish Language Poetry went to Nicole Guzman of Olympus High School
- We will be supporting rural learners’ literacy efforts through an original Playwriting for Youth residency led by Utah teaching artists for middle grades
Arts education has many tools to help students access these processes and helps them build positive associations with learning. Their experiences lead to long-term impacts, such as reduced absenteeism in Utah classrooms, higher academic success, and higher likelihood to curiously engage in community as a lifelong learner and supporter of the arts. As Utahns, we know that the next generations of learners need to be able to identify, understand, interpret, create, and communicate their ideas. Successful students will learn to do this through visual, auditory, and digital modalities. The best part about working in education is that through these partnerships, our agency also gets to learn about what is important for our communities and help create new opportunities for the future.
As technology like AI mimics human cognition, and as we understand more about our own brains, our educational strategies must adapt to support learning that is assessed through process and experienced across interconnected disciplines.
Image: March 2026 Poetry Out Loud and Poetry Ourselves state finalists
