The Southeast Center for Arts Integration

Using the arts to teach goals and objectives across the curriculum

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

Burdette CIS residency“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

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: Our teaching artists work with your students so teachers can witness the effectiveness of arts integration.
  • Arts-Integration Residency: Partnering with teachers, our teaching artists help plan and team-teach arts-integrated units of a week or longer.

How We Work

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

  • work with entire school faculty and staff to build trust and create a safe environment for collaboration and creative teaching;
  • empower teachers and artists with the confidence to use tools and methods that will enliven and strengthen their teaching;
  • focus each institute on specific goals;

    Photo by Alan Cradick

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

  • scaffold instruction so it adds up and makes sense at the end of the institute;
  • 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.

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

Closing the Gap in Literacy through Arts Integration at the Cameron Art Museum

Teachers, examining literary text through drama, show how Fern (in Charlotte’s Web) reacted when she saw the baby pig. Photo by Alan Cradick.

 

We practice and model what we teach. In our workshops:

  • 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 at their school 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 also 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

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