Using the arts to teach goals and objectives across the curriculum

The mission of the Southeast Center for Arts Integration is to foster the creation, dissemination, evaluation and improvement of arts integration programs. We provide information and experiences to teachers and teaching artists that will empower them to engage their students in learning curricular content for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Marth Burdette leading a Communities In Schools residency

What We Offer

• Professional Development Institutes: Comprehensive two-day, three-day, or five-day arts-integration training that teaches faculty and staff how to reach curricular goals with the arts
• Workshops: One-day, half-day, or three-hour introductions that teach faculty and staff how to use arts integration to help students master Common Core and Essential Standards and build 21st Century Skills like communication, collaboration, and creative thinking to deepen understanding
• Demonstration Teaching: Teaching artists work in your classroom with your students so teachers can see arts integration in action.
• Arts-Integration Residency: Teaching artists, in partnership with teachers, plan and team-teach arts- integrated units of a week or longer.

“How can I bottle all of this and give away to all of the Durham Public Schools to use at least 40 minutes daily for all students?” — Seasoned Kindergarten Teacher

How We Work

Working in partnership with principals, school planning teams, and arts administrators, we:

• focus each institute on specific goals
  

  Teachers concentrate on holding their rhythm in Beverly Botsford's poetry and percussion workshop. Photo by Alan Cradick.

• design learning experiences which relate to each other
• scaffold instruction appropriately so it adds up and makes sense at the end of the institute
• deliver a coherent, holistic experience that provides a solid foundation for arts integration theory and practice
• incorporate brain research, revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, and multiple intelligences theory in our sessions
• encourage reflection that leads to new ways to think about and practice teaching
• empower teachers and artists with the confidence to use tools and methods that will enliven and strengthen their teaching
• work with entire school faculty and staff to build trust and create a safe environment for collaboration and creative teaching.

You guys made my brain grow. Thanks. — Middle School Science and Art teacher with many years experience

Beverly Botsford teaches teachers contrasting percussion riffs. They brainstorm words that describe the riffs and write poems using the words. Here they act out the poems. Photo by Alan Cradick.

We practice and model what we teach.

• Participants actively engage in arts experiences that lead them to new knowledge.
• Participants reflect on what they are learning and how it fits into their current teaching.
• Participants move from reflection to action by collaborating with arts teachers and other specialists to design curriculum-based lesson plans and build thematic units that teach complex concepts holistically.
• Participants share their planning with specialists and other grade-level teachers to begin multi-disciplinary and vertical integration.

“We had lots of great ideas and were able to begin creating a whole unit on butterfly life cycles.” — New 2nd Grade Teacher