Podcasts about arts integration

Send us a textOn this episode of Speaking of…College of Charleston, Edward Hart, professor of music, sits down with Jayme Host, Dean of the School of the Arts, to discuss her background, career and first impressions of the college and the city of Charleston. Host speaks of her passion for dance and education, highlighting her past roles and achievements which include working with various international dance companies and educational institutions. Host talks about the newly renovated Albert Simons Center for the Arts, emphasizing the state-of-the-art facilities that will support the arts programs. She expresses her excitement about the opportunities and her commitment to fostering a vibrant and successful environment for students and faculty.Featured on this Episode:Jayme Klinger Host, Dean, School of the ArtsHost has more than 25 years of student success and higher education experience. Her comprehensive knowledge of higher education has been developed through work at three different public and private institutions of higher education. Host has extensive experience directing complex departments and projects, and intentionally bringing people together across divides and generating a positive vision that is long term, expansive and solution driven. In her previous role as the director of East Carolina University's School of Theatre and Dance, within the College of Fine Arts and Communication, Host led the school's strategic plan while serving as its senior academic officer, and was responsible for curriculum, human resources and fiscal operations. Her extensive administrative, artistic and academic career is steeped in a tenacious advocacy for student success and support. She is intentional in cultivating artistry, inclusive practices and global citizenship.Originally from Central Pennsylvania, she is a professor, dancer, choreographer, STEAM educator and Arts Integration specialist with 28 years of experience of teaching dance in higher education. As a dancer, she performed with Tandy Beal Dance Company in Tokyo, with the Pennsylvania Dance Theatre in State College, PA and as an independent artist. She has created over 50 original works throughout her career.  Resources from this Episode:·      Renovated Simons Center·      School of the Arts·      2024-2025 Event Season 

How can art bring people together in a world divided by race and culture? In this episode of "Everyday Conversations on Race," we explore how creativity can break down walls and build genuine relationships across cultures. Meet two artists who use their craft to challenge boundaries and connect communities. Carlos “Kookie” Gonzalez, a Chicano artist and former gang member, shares his journey from the streets of San Francisco to becoming a renowned muralist. Carlos reveals how he turned his life around through art and now brings people together through community murals that tell the stories of struggle, pride, and resilience. Discover how he engages young people to see art as a path to a better future, rather than a life on the streets. Click here to DONATE and support our podcast Laurie Marshall, an artist and educator, joins Carlos to discuss her "Singing Tree" project, which has united over 24,000 people from 52 countries in creating murals that envision a world of peace and understanding. Laurie describes how this collaborative process invites people to create something bigger than themselves and reimagine what's possible when diverse voices come together. Together, Carlos and Laurie explain how art can do more than just decorate walls—it can change minds, shift perspectives, and unite people who might never have met otherwise. They share actionable ideas on how anyone, regardless of background or skill level, can use art to spark conversations, dismantle stereotypes, and create new stories that connect us all. Tune in to hear powerful stories of transformation and learn how you can use art to bridge divides and build a more connected world.   Guests Bio: Laurie Marshall For 3Laurie Marshall,5 years, Author, Innovator and Artist Laurie Marshall has empowered youth and adults through creative collaboration. She practices Peace Building through Art, inspired by Nature. A visionary educator, she has served mostly low-income children, families and their schools as an Arts Integration and Project Based Learning specialist. Her mission is to nurture creativity, a love of learning, and a collaborative spirit.  She is the founder of Unity Through Creativity Foundation  and the Singing Tree Project. Carlos “Kookie” Gonzalez was born in the San Francisco Mission District in 1959. He has been drawing and painting since childhood, and is a muralist, activist, visual artist, retired probation officer, and musician. As a young man, he was required to perform community service that involved working with muralists, and he quickly fell in love with the craft. Gonzalez attended San Francisco State University (SFSU) from 1983 to 1991, where he was a member of La Raza Student Organization. With La Raza, Gonzalez protested for multiple causes including solidarity in El Salvador and fighting for migrant farmworkers. He continues to work on private commissions and a mural project for affordable housing in the Mission District. Gonzalez's work reflects the street life, activism, music, and struggles of life as a Chicano/Latino in the Mission District.    Click here to DONATE and support our podcast Simma Lieberman, The Inclusionist helps leaders create inclusive cultures. She is a consultant, speaker, and facilitator. Simma is the creator and host of the podcast, “Everyday Conversations on Race for Everyday People.” Contact Simma@SimmaLieberman.com to get more information, book her as a speaker for your next event, help you become a more inclusive leader, or facilitate dialogues across differences. Go to www.simmalieberman.com and www.raceconvo.com for more information Simma is a member of and inspired by the global organization IAC (Inclusion Allies Coalition)    Connect with me: Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter LinkedIn Tiktok Website    Previous Episodes Growing Up Biracial in a White World: Desiree Chang's Journey of Identity and Race Will Music Transcend Racial Divides? Racial Disparities in Colorectal Cancer Diagnosis and Death Loved this episode?  Leave us a review and rating  

About the Guest: BARB HIGGINS is mother to Gracie, Molly, Jack, and Baby Gordy. In 2016, she lost Molly to a brain tumor. In 2021, aged 57, she gave birth to her little boy, Jack. To date, she is the oldest woman to have given birth in New Hampshire. An educator at heart, she also loves athletics, music, theater and the arts. Barb graduated from Boston University in 1986 with a Masters in Education. She also has a Certificate of AdvancedGraduate Studies (C.A.G.S.) from Plymouth State University in Education Leadership through Arts Integration. She has taught elementary, special, and physical education as well as health. She has coached cross-country and track and field for over 30 years. A Division One All American in Track and Field at BU in 1983, Barb was a competitive runner for many years competing for Nike before returning to her hometown in 1989. Barb coaches and participates in Crossfit and has a Podcast called A Thousand Tiny Steps. Creating The MollyB Foundation helps to keep the best parts of Molly alive and helps others to achieve their goals. Every day, Barb shares her thoughts of what it means to live in Motherland in the hope that it will help mothers everywhere feel comforted, seen and understood. She lives in New Hampshire with her Kenny and her two living children, Gracie and Jack. Connect with Barb Higgins Website https://athousandtinysteps.com/ Podcast https://athousandtinysteps.com/the-podcast/ Book-Motherland https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKTZNCBN?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_CP358BZAA3AA9D2C8X0M About the Host: Heidi Scherer loves to hear people's stories and is so happy to be a podcast host and to provide this platform for her guests.  She knows we are all connected and it is through telling our stories we can create more compassion and bring humanity back into the world!  Heidi Scherer is the founder of Present Moment Connections. PMC is a membership based community where connections are created through shared events and experiences. Heidi knows we are all connected and through love and community we can help each other thrive and live in our divine purpose. Through PMC Heidi creates monthly events for people in the Houston, TX area. She wants to spread the message that to live a fulfilled life, you must connect with yourself, connect with others, and connect with the world around you. Connect with Heidi Scherer  Heidi Scherer Facebook Page  All Things Connected Facebook Page Present Moment Connections on Facebook Present Moment Connections on Instagram Present Moment Connections Website Set up a Connection Call with Heidi Scherer Calendar Link for Connection Call

Art education can create a space for excitement and joy in learning according to Colleen's guest, Shannon Johnson, Arts Education Specialist at the Oregon Department of Education (ODE). Colleen, a visual artist herself, explains the crucial role that art plays in Transformational Social-Emotional Learning (TSEL) by playing to individual strengths, building confidence, and encouraging students to express themselves in their own unique ways.  Among the many resources discussed in this episode, Shannon highlights the Arts, Care & Connection Project for elementary grades in which teaching artists provide videos integrating the Core Art Standards in dance, music, theater, and visual arts with Oregon's TSEL standards. Educators, regardless of their own artistic experience, become co-learners with their students as they incorporate various ways of self-expression in their explorations. Integrating art into the curriculum involves finding connections between various art forms and subject content. Shannon points out multiple sources where educators will find ideas and support for adding an artistic aspect to their classroom. Resources -  Arts for Learning Northwest - connecting teaching artists with schools for educational arts programming, workshops, performances, and artist residencies   Arts, Care & Connection Program - arts integration lessons and professional learning for educators   Young Audiences Arts for Learning - the nation's oldest and largest arts-in-education learning network     Oregon Department of Education resources -  Arts Education Resources Oregon Open Learning Hub Chronicles of Oregon Open Learning - a monthly newsetter Arts Access Toolkit Arts Education Newsletter       OEA Grow is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network

Not an artist yourself? No budget for art supplies? Students who aren't aspiring artists of any kind? This week's episode explains how and why to integrate art into the classroom under any circumstance. Colleen's guest is Abigail Steichen of the Corbett Program with Spanish (CAPS), housed in the historic Springdale School in Corbett. CAPS is not an art academy, but the school encourages the infusion of art into the regular curriculum. Students may dance their understanding of cells or perform a skit about punctuation marks. The goal is not a finished performance or artwork to be displayed, but rather a joyful means for students to communicate their understanding of a subject in their own unique ways. The emphasis is on the process rather than the product.    Abigail urges educators in all school settings to incorporate art into their curriculum. She does not consider herself an artist, but she is convinced that students value learning more when it ceases to be merely passive and when they are encouraged to create. Tune into this episode for a treasure trove of suggestions that require neither expertise nor funding to keep the joy in learning.    Resources   Corbett Arts Program with Spanish   Arts Education Newsletter from the Oregon Department of Education    Encouraging a Growth Mindset Through Art  OEA Grow is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network

Welcome to the first episode of our new series, The Admin Chronicles. We will be interviewing admin who have left and those who are still in education. Ashley Moore is a Principal of an Elementary / Middle School in Maryland. Her journey to the Principalship began her teaching career in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, covering grades 3 through 12 serving as a General and Special Education teacher. After serving as a teacher, Moore entered the administrative realm as an Assistant Principal. Her experiences include general, special education, and specialized programming. As an administrator, she has implemented school-wide programs such as Accelerated Learning, Gifted and Talented, Arts Integration, and STEM. Moore's diverse experiences has also led to her national certification as a Principal mentor. Committed to her personal mission of "doing what's best for kids" and the belief that "all students can learn and achieve," she looks forward to utilizing her skills to assist others with their leadership journey.Principal Mo is a fantastic example of what our administrators should be like. You will enjoy her story. Principal MoStay Twisted!Twisted Teachers Podcast wants to hear from you!Leave us a voice message! https://www.speakpipe.com/TwistedTeachersWebsite-Twistedteacherspodcast.comLINKTREE :https://linktr.ee/twistedteacherContact us via email: Twistedteachers2@gmail.comInstagram: @twisted__teacher; @inked_educator68; @escaping_educationTik Tok: @inkededucator @escape_educationFacebook: @TwistedTeacherLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifersquireroberts

This week, we will explore the journey of Meagan Cascone. Meagan is the Director of the Professional Arts Integration Resource (PAIR) Program at the Springer Opera House in Columbus, Georgia. On this episode, we will discuss Meagan's current work and how she and her team spark joy and self-efficacy amongst practicing teachers as they seek to integrate the arts into their practices. Dr. Aaron R. Gierhart is an Assistant Professor of Elementary Education at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, and previously taught in the Illinois public schools for 11 years. Visit his ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkTree⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to connect with him. Podcast Socials: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @JourneysOfTeaching & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @JourneysTeach Thank you to Mitch Furr for the podcast theme music and Adam Gierhart for the logo artwork.

This edWeb podcast is sponsored by TeachRock.The webinar recording can be accessed here.This edWeb podcast highlights free lessons on TeachRock.org that teachers can use to introduce students to the possibilities of a career in the music industry. The featured TeachRock lessons give insight into the role and experience of audio engineers, music producers, tour managers, and working musicians. The lessons are designed to engage all learners through a multisensory approach. Students will view high-interest clips from the Emmy- and Grammy-nominated Soundbreaking series, read curated articles, and explore the concepts they are learning, firsthand, using TeachRock's TechTool.This session also features real-world experience and tips for getting started in the industry from seasoned music industry professional Joshua Zarbo. Joshua has played on numerous critically acclaimed recordings, performed on a variety of national and international media programs, and toured the world with Grammy- and Emmy-nominated artists.A career in music can seem out of reach for most students. However, this presentation gives teachers free and immediately implementable lessons and tools to help students explore the various, and attainable, opportunities in this exciting industry.This edWeb podcast was made possible by the generous support of the Les Paul Foundation.This edWeb podcast is of interest to middle and high school teachers, librarians, school and district leaders, and education technology leaders.TeachRock An arts integration curriculum that uses the history of pop music and culture to help engage studentDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Learn more about viewing live edWeb presentations and on-demand recordings, earning CE certificates, and using accessibility features.

Today our guest is Dr. Beth Ruff, School Counselor at Powder Springs Elementary School We talk to Dr. Ruff about Arts Integration in school counseling and how at Powder Springs they integrate art into all of the elementary classes. She shares how art integrates so well with the school counseling standards and framework, and gives examples of how they have used art to help students talk about topics such as grief and loss. Additionally, Dr. Ruff highlights the proactive use of art and music to address mental health issues and how this approach has effectively engaged students in a meaningful way.   Learn More:  Visit the CharacterStrong Website

During this episode of Why Change? co-hosts Madeleine and Jeff discuss their change of personal and professional seasons, including Madeleine's cross-sector work. Jeff shares his interview with Lisa Donovan which covers a broad array of topics from arts integration to community development, network building, and even professional learning. Madeleine and Jeff discuss the asset-based approaches of cross-sector work, the strength of practitioners at the intersections, and inherent knowledge of rural communities. In this episode you'll learn: The expansive role of the arts intersecting with numerous sectors of community life; How arts education and arts management practices lead the way in cross-sector dialogues; and The multitude of ways cultural practitioners can advance dialogues about social change through multi-sector advocacy. Check out some of the things mentioned during this podcast, including:  Voices from the field: Teachers' views on the relevance of arts integration Shell Education books on Arts Integration by Lisa Donovan Teacher as Curator: Formative Assessment and Arts-Based Strategies Leveraging Change—Increasing Access to Arts Education in Rural Areas The Berkshire County Blueprint for Arts Integration and Education Berkshire Regional Arts Integration Network (BRAINworks) Berkshire Cultural Asset Network (BCAN) Think Like A Region TED Talk ABOUT LISA DONOVAN: Lisa Donovan, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Fine and Performing Arts Department at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. A theater artist, educator, administrator and researcher. Before joining MCLA Lisa was  the Director of the Creative Arts in Learning Division at Lesley University. She has a broad range of experience in a variety of arts organizations including: Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the Berkshire Opera Company, Barrington Stage Company, University of Massachusetts Department of Theater, as well as Boston University's Theater, Visual Arts, and Tanglewood Institutes. She was formerly the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Alliance for Arts Education, has served as co-principal investigator of a research project funded by the Ford Foundation that focused on teachers' perspectives on the relevance of arts integration. Lisa has taught internationally in Japan and Israel, and throughout the United States. She is co-editor of a new book series on arts integration published by Shell Education including Integrating the Arts Across the Content Areas (2012), Strategies to Integrate the Arts in Mathematics (2013) and Strategies to Integrate the Arts in English Language Arts (2013) This episode was produced by Jeff M. Poulin. The artwork is by Bridget Woodbury. The audio is edited by Katie Rainey. This podcasts' theme music is by Distant Cousins. For more information on this episode and Creative Generation please visit the episode's webpage and follow us on social media @Campaign4GenC  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/whychange/support

During this episode of Why Change? co-hosts Rachael and Jeff discuss their recent work and draw connections to Jeff's interview. Jeff shares his conversation with Jean Hendrickson, a champion for arts integration in her community and around the world. They discuss the opportunities and challenge of scaling and the bravery needed to achieve it. Rachael and Jeff share their hopes and frustrations with adoption of permission practices in education reform. In this episode you'll learn: About a model of whole school arts integration and how it emerged; How the story of a champion of arts integration influenced the adoption of a practice; and  Why the arts should remain at the center of all we do as educators, leaders, and advocates. Check out some of the things mentioned during this podcast, including:  Sorgente research project Ireland's Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme Oklahoma A+ Schools Institute at the University of Central Oklahoma A+ Essentials framework S3 Ep14: Grasping The Aerosol Of Creativity With Michael Anderson Preparing Educators for Arts Integration: Placing Creativity at the Center of Learning book The A+ Schools Program: School, Community, Teacher, and Student Effects. (Report #6 in a series of seven Policy Reports Summarizing the Four-Year Pilot of A+ Schools in North Carolina) About Jean Hendrickson Director emeritus of Oklahoma A+ Schools at the University of Central Oklahoma, Jean is a speaker and writer who consults with those that share her belief that all children are entitled to a rich, full, educational experience that equips them to take their rightful place in the world. She works with groups such as the National A+ Schools Consortium (www.nationalaplusschools.org), the Americans for the Arts, Crystal Bridges, and other like-minded organizations working to put the arts in their rightful place in schools and communities. Executive director for OKA+ Schools from 2003-2014, Jean directed development across the state and fostered national and international partnerships. OKA+ Schools' model has been cited in such works as Sir Ken Robinson's books, Creative Schools and The Element, the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities' landmark report Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America's Future through Creative Schools, the latter of which launched the nationwide Turnaround Arts initiative for which she served as a member of the team that trained the schools' cadres for the first two years. Jean authored a chapter in the book Preparing Educators for Arts Integration, a project of the Arts Education Partnership's Higher Ed Task Force, and has contributed numerous articles and other works to such as Education Week, Americans for the Arts, and other educational organizations. Described by Sir Ken as “one of the most impressive people I know in education,” Jean was a principal in Oklahoma City for seventeen years and named National Distinguished Principal in 2001 as well as receiving many other recognitions throughout her career. Jean received her Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, and the “Outstanding Future Teacher” award from Oklahoma City University. She received her master's, also summa, from the University of Central Oklahoma. She has served on numerous boards, as a founding member of Creative Oklahoma, a trustee for the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence, Visionary Oklahoma Women and founding member of Harding Fine Arts Academy in Oklahoma City. She and her husband reside in Oklahoma City. This episode was produced by Jeff M. Poulin. The artwork is by Bridget Woodbury. The audio is edited by Katie Rainey. This podcasts' theme music is by Distant Cousins. For more information on this episode and Creative Generation please visit the episode's webpage and follow us on social media @Campaign4GenC --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/whychange/support

Amanda Koonlaba is a blogger and art teacher who has been running her blog “Party in the Art Room” for more than a decade. In this episode, Amanda and Cindy discuss One Woman Show by Celeste Rapone through our lenses as mothers, educators, and creatives. As former art teachers, we talk about the importance of arts integration and how art can help face uncertainty.  For links to all of the artworks featured as well as Amanda's contact links, head over to the shownotes at this link.  -- Want to connect? Join the Art Connection Circle Follow me on Facebook Follow me on Instagram Join my email list 

In this episode of Why Change? co-host Jeff M. Poulin chats with Dr. Camea Davis about poetry and education research. Through the dialogue, Camea shares her work developing an approach to critical poetic inquiry and the outcomes of using it to analyze Season 2 of this podcast! Her poetic work is embedded throughout the episode.  In this episode you'll learn: About poetic inquiry and how it can be used in education research; How poems can be used as data and artifact to expanding loved experiences; and  Through Camea's poetry about the common ideas shared in Season 2 of the Why Change? podcast.  Some things from the episode: Poetic Inquiry Blogs National Youth Poet Laureate Program First Wave Program Social Justice in Education Award (2015) Lecture: Gloria J. Ladson-Billings Dear Womb- a Love Letter book Camea's Spoken Word Album Camea's website What is poetic inquiry? ABER at AERA Tricia Hersey Linda Krakauers' “Arts Integration and the Success of Disadvantaged Students: A Research Evaluation” About Camea Davis Dr. Camea L. Davis (she/her) serves as the Director of Knowledge with a focus on impact evaluation. In this role, she guides the collective work of producing new and honoring existing forms of knowledge and ways of knowing, while dismantling systemic barriers to sharing and learning. Davis is a poet, educator, and educational researcher with a heart for urban youth and communities. Her research focuses on youth activism, racial justice in teacher education, critical collaborative ethnography, and critical poetic inquiry. Davis has published in Qualitative Inquiry; Equity & Excellence in Education; The Journal of Middle School Education; Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal; Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts; The Journal of Hip Hop Studies; and The Journal of School and Society. Davis has authored conference papers for the American Educational Research Association, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, The National Council on Teachers of English, The National Association of Multicultural Educators, The National Performance Network, The Kennedy Center, The International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, and presented a Tedx Talk through performance poetry on the topic of  language diversity in schools. Davis earned her Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction, Multicultural Education, and Educational Technology from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, a Masters in Arts of Teaching from Marian University in Indianapolis, Indiana, and a Bachelor's of Arts Degree in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin Madison. She currently works from Atlanta, Georgia and enjoys reading for leisure, writing poetry, and watching stand up comedy. This episode was produced by Jeff M. Poulin. The artwork is by Bridget Woodbury. The audio is edited by Katie Rainey. This podcasts' theme music is by Distant Cousins. For more information on this episode, episode transcripts, and Creative Generation please visit the episode's web page and follow us on social media @Campaign4GenC. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/whychange/support

On today's episode, my special guest talks about creativity and the role that it plays in gifted education.  This episode is full of practical ideas and innovative solutions that you can implement in your classroom tomorrow.  Show notes can be found at andimcnair.com/episode69.  

This week, we will explore the journey of Mrs. Sally Baker. Sally is a STEM/STEAM Specialist for the Georgia Department of Education and previously served as the Education Director for the Springer Opera House in Columbus, Georgia, and the Director of Springer's Professional Arts Integration Resource (PAIR) Program. You can connect with Sally on LinkedIn and learn more about PAIR on the Springer Opera House website. On this episode, we will hear Sally's stories about how she founded the PAIR program and the impacts it has made on students, including traditionally low-achieving schools. Dr. Aaron R. Gierhart is an Assistant Professor of Elementary Education at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, and previously taught in the Illinois public schools for 11 years. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @aaronrgierhart Email: gierhart_aaron@columbusstate.edu Podcast Socials: Facebook & Instagram @JourneysOfTeaching & Twitter @JourneysTeach Thank you to Mitch Furr for the podcast theme music and Adam Gierhart for the logo artwork.

Welcome to "Ask the Tech Coach," a podcast for Instructional Coaches and Technology Integration Specialists. In this episode of “Ask the Tech Coach,” Jeff welcomes ISTE Certification Trainer Rick Ballew on to the podcast to discuss the ISTE Certification program. If you would like to be a part of future podcasts and share your thoughts, please contact the podcast.  We would love to have you join the show. Question of the Week Our favorite part of recording a live podcast each week is participating in the great conversations that happen on our live chat, on social media, and in our comments section. This week's question is: Question Topic: How do you become ISTE Certified? The ISTE Certified Educator program. What is the program? How do you become ISTE Certified? Cost / Time Commitment The three phases of the ISTE Certification Program The ISTE Certification Portfolio Building your PLN through ISTE What can you learn through the ISTE Certification program? Links of Interest ISTE Certification Website About our Guest: Rick Ballew Frederick (goes by Rick) is an ISTE Certified Educator and Trainer, Google for Education Certified Innovator (#NYC19 cohort), Trainer, Coach, the founder and leader of GEG Minnesota Metro Area, a GEG Mentor for US - Midwest, a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert from 2020-2023, a Microsoft Innovative Educator Fellow, and an Adobe Education Leader that is passionate about leveraging technology to make the daily work of educators more efficient, their teaching more engaging, and their lives more fulfilling. He earned his BA in music education from the University of Minnesota at Morris with majors in trombone and voice, a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction focused on Arts Integration from Lesley University, and a Master of Science degree in Educational Technology from Mankato State University including Graduate Certificates for Digital Educator, Technologist, Educational Technology in the Classroom and Computer, Keyboard, and Related Technology. Rick has been an educator in ISD #271, Bloomington Public Schools since 1998. Links of Interest Website: https://www.ballewedtech.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ballewedtech Join the TeacherCast Instructional Coaches Network! Are you a Tech Coach or looking to become one this year? Are you searching for support in your position? The TeacherCast Tech Coaches Network, is a dynamic Professional Learning Network designed specifically for Tech Coaches and designed to provide weekly support for all Instructional Coaches. 3 Distinct Professional Learning Networks designed to help you grow for network other Coaches and Digital Learning Leaders Free Downloadable Templates and Coaching Resources that can be used in your district ... tomorrow! Direct access to Jeff Bradbury and all off his "offline" content that he creates during the school year. Exclusive TeacherCast and "Ask the Tech Coach" podcast episodes directly relating to the questions that YOU ASK in our PLN groups. Weekly email check-ins to stay connected and discuss your Instructional Coaching program! Monthly invitations to TeacherCast Instructional Coaching Meetings and Webinars ... and...

Are you afraid that bringing the ARTs into your classroom will just make more work for you? Elizabeth Peterson loves helping caring, creative teachers connect the arts with social-emotional learning strategies that are practical and meaningful. Elizabeth, a teacher herself, is the creator of SEAL, Social-Emotional Artistic Learning: a unique and holistic method of integrating the arts with SEL.

Episode 13: Leslie Appleget - C4 Initiative by Skylah Zayas This episode was recorded in the spring of 2022. Some information may be dated. Episode host Skylah Zayas is a sophomore at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. In this episode of Thinking Like a Region, Zayas interviews Leslie Appleget, District Arts Integration Specialist for North Adams Public Schools, the former project coordinator of BRAINworks and the C4 Initiative, and the producer of this podcast. The two discuss Appleget's arts-based education and how it led to the creation of Thinking Like A Region and the initiative as a whole. Along with this, Appleget tells how her experiences with the arts, such as dance, have taught her project management and collaboration skills. This episode focuses on the creative capacities of verbal and nonverbal communication, time management, collaboration, and awareness of both self and others. Listen in to hear Appleget's passion for arts education. You can find the transcript for this episode here: https://tinyurl.com/TLAR-LAA Thinking Like A Region is a production of the C4 Initiative, Berkshire County's Creative Compact for Collaborative and Collective Impact, based at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, MA, and grant-funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. This podcast is produced by Lisa Donovan and Leslie Appleget. Additional technical podcast support by Audrey Perdue. For more information about the show or the C4 Initiative, visit brainworks.mcla.edu/c4. THIS EPISODE'S VOICES: Leslie Appleget is the former project coordinator for both the Berkshire Regional Arts Integration Network (BRAINworks) as well as the C4 Initiative, and the producer of this podcast. Her current role as the District Arts Integration Specialist at North Adams Public Schools allows her to continue to drive the goals of the Berkshire Blueprint for Arts Integration and Arts Education forward in the region. Leslie holds an MA in Arts Management from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, and a BA in Communications & Government from American University. Leslie is the daughter of a public school educator of 40 years and the direct result of a vibrant arts education program. Skylah Zayas is a student at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts currently pursuing art and elementary education.

You know that moment during the day when everything seems to click and things just seem to work? Your lesson falls into place, your kids are engaged, and you feel like a total rockstar teacher. That's what I'm talking about. Sure, there are days when things don't go as planned – but those days shouldn't overshadow the great ones. And let me tell you, integrating arts into your teaching can take your lessons from good to great in an instant. Seriously – it's that powerful. Here's how you can get started. Join Kathryn Patricia and myself as we have an inspiring conversation that will leave you motivated and ready to take action. Kathryn Patricia is a performing artist, composer, and educator from Canada's capital.  Kathryn is a Loop pedal violist, who brings interactive concerts, and workshops to schools, community centers, and concert halls both virtually and in-person.Links Mentioned in the Show:OTT 170: What's Really Wrong With the School System From the Eyes of a MillennialKathryn Patricia Workshops and PerformancesButton Join Mastering Makerspace: From Zero to AmazingSubscribe and Review: Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you're not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don't want you to miss an episode. I'm adding a bunch of bonus episodes to the mix and if you're not subscribed there's a good chance you'll miss out on those. Click here for iTunes. Now if you're feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they're also fun for me to go in and read. Click here to leave a review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you! 

The drive to do what you're good at is instinct. It is what you were created to do. Human instinct in action is pure joy. It's like a work of art in motion. Your instinct will draw you to the unique expression of your gifts. You can only be fruitful out of your own understanding of and connection with what is in your core.  It is the urging inside you that tells you to make your move now, to reach out now, to hold back until later, or to never give up. Instinct must merge with a purpose to give you a life that fulfills your destiny. And all gifts must be given a place of expression in order for Destiny to unfold. And no matter how gifted you are, you need a place of expression. That place is Destiny. Hatched many moons ago, Caroline Zarinelli was soon given the name “Carrie Canary with the Red Red Shoes” for her zestful love of singing, dancing, and signature red Keds. As time passed, the little whippersnapper began writing and directing neighborhood musicals (in the back lot behind her house) which led directly to her do-not-pass-go-or-collect-$200-drumroll-please...degree in Theatre! After decades in the school house and studying what is now called "Arts Integration" at Harvard's Project Zero, Boston Arts Academy, Opening Minds Through the Arts, and Arts Integration Solutions, Mrs. Z has returned to her cottage to create, coach, host Cottage Kids, and produce Blanket Theatre shows. This evening, you are invited to sample a few of the creative gifts that are embodied in Caroline's destiny. Take a listen and let me know what you think.

Links Mentioned In This Episode: Elementary Lenses of Integration & Visual ArtsSEEd Science Standards One-page Summary Elementary Lenses of Integration MusicElementary Lenses of Integration DramaElementary Lenses of Integration DanceElementary Lenses of Integration ALL FINE ARTSDraw the Name of Your Favorite Animal Lesson PlanBob Smith, Alpine School District Elementary Arts CoachThe last episode featured Mr. Dance, Provo City School District's Arts Coach. This time, we highlight the Alpine School District. Bob Smith works with all the district's arts educators in all 62 elementary schools. Arts coaches support these teachers in their development and growth and coach classroom teachers who are new to the arts. Coaches like Bob help teachers understand meaningful ways that they can connect to their students through the arts.From Teacher & After-School Drama Director to District Arts Instructional CoachLike Mr. Dance, Bob stumbled into the arts. His teammate said, “Hey, the principal signed me up for this weird program. It's got a lot of art stuff, I don't really understand it. Would you take it for me?” Bob came to the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts Academy and “found [his] people.” “We were drawing, we were dancing and singing and playing drums, and connecting to a really awesome curriculum. At the same time, we were diving into books, looking deeply into science, exploring different social studies topics, all in day one at the Arts Academy, and I was hooked.” Bob finished the Arts Integration Endorsement and continues his work with the BYU ARTS Partnership. The arts enlivened Bob as a teacher and after-school musical theater program director. He has always used the arts in his teaching: turning on music for writing, drawing every day—discovering a whole group of people who were teaching in an arts-integrated way, helped him become a better teacher and then a coach.Artful Tip for Classroom Teachers: Draw Everyday With Your KidsOnly half of Alpine schools are privileged to have the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Progra, grant. In order to increase access to the arts, Bob creates simple resources that teachers can easily see, connect with, understand and apply to  transform their classroom.Bob creates lesson plans, sends them through the arts teachers, and sends an invitation to classroom teachers to co-teach with Bob in their classrooms. For example, recently he sent out a lesson called “Draw the name of your favorite animal” with an invitation: “If you would like me to come and demonstrate this for you in your classroom, send me an email.” Since then, and after visiting five or six schools, similar projects in other classrooms are popping up. Other teachers are emailing, “We decided to take it on.” “We decided to give it a try.” Find the lesson plan here.Arts Integration is the LearningBob describes the magic that happens in these art rooms and these dance and music and drama rooms. Someone who is trained in art forms—like dance, music, drama, and visual arts—can make magic almost effortlessly. The Arts Integration Endorsement offers teachers just enough to know it's important to know that it can be magic, but when they get back to the classroom by themselves, it feels… “Oh, what did they say?” “What did they do?”  “What was that exactly? I don't know that I'm super skilled yet.” Making bite-size chunks means that integrating the arts feels easy to use: draw every day! Turn on a video tutorial—teachers don't have to be an artist or the teaching artist for this skill—students can work on developing hand-eye coordination, creating visual connections to a topic, and from there teachers can move right into writing. Instead of only drawing on Fun Friday, begin each week with a meaningful drawing project centered on a learning topic for the week, and add details to it every day. Then, when the class gets to Friday, students can write a paper about the week's topic. Because they will have drawn out connections already, students will have so much more to write about. Bringing Creativity, Problem Solving, and Collaboration into STEM Through Arts STEM means that teachers demonstrate the inherent overlap between multiple content areas: students really understand the application of math, they can visualize effects of science on evolving societies, they can comprehend a cause and effect visually and environmentally. By adding the arts to those content areas, connections light up. Teachers can give students an arts tool and a topic to discuss or explore or create. For example: when studying measurement, teachers can help students incorporate math through musical rhythms or visual patterns; incorporate science as students define words and sing vocabulary. The arts enliven STEM.  STEM subjects are inherently creative: adding the arts creates added value to understanding STEM. Building arts skills helps students think about questions like, “How can I represent this idea?” “How can I show my thinking?” “What tools can I use to communicate my ideas to others?” These are 21st century skills: successful adults are able to represent their ideas and communicate them with others. One-Page List of SEEd and Arts Standards to Facilitate Arts Integration Bob shares an important example about his experience coordinating with his science team about the new SEEd standards in Utah: “Many of the arts integrators who are doing amazing arts integrated projects were curious about the alignment. ‘Can I still do landforms with fourth grade?' So I asked our science educator, “Break these down for me.” And she started breaking them down. I still kept thinking, Oh, this is like 100 pages of standards. So I kept working, breaking it down until I just had a one page summary of each grade's science curriculum. I put the science standards side-by-side with that grade's arts standards, so now teachers can see a clear summary of the big objectives of the SEEd and arts standards alignment.”Bob offers a single takeaway for teachers regarding SEEd standards: choose a specific phenomenon and use the arts to explore it. For example, look at animals that change color and ask a question.“What's the science behind it?”“What meaning is there behind it?”“How can we capture that and represent different aspects of that in the art form?”Once students find their passion, curiosity, and excitement and after they have “embraced it in their body through movement or through drama, through visual art, or singing about this interesting thing,” teachers can add in the teaching elements.Collaboration between Arts Educators and Classroom Teachers is Key for Arts Integration in STEMBob explains, “Share those big rocks and those big essential standards that you are trying to really hit home in your classroom with your arts educator. The job of your arts teacher is to build skills in your students. In your collaboration with them, the arts teacher will make visible what your students are capable of in that art form. Then you are going to see some natural connections.”He continues, “It's so amazing to see principals giving time to the arts educators to collaborate with the classroom teachers. If you're a classroom teacher who wants the support of an arts teacher, or an arts teacher who wants to connect more deeply in the classroom, make a plan together. Talk to your principal and say, “Can we set up a regular time to meet so I can check in regularly to see how my kids are evolving in this art form in the art room.” When the arts educator and classroom teacher have that opportunity for side-by-side time, they can really make it purposeful with these big rocks—the essential standards—to really make connections and nail inquiry-based learning for the students.Bob shares an example of what this arts collaboration looks like using the SEEd phenomena of rocks. For example, a classroom teacher wants to use watercolor for different types of rock like sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. This teacher thinks, “Watercolor would be a great way to explore a type of rock. But I don't have time to teach them how to watercolor. That will take extra time.” The arts educator can (or already has) built those skills in the visual arts classroom, then the classroom teacher can get right to the integration part because those art skills are already the foundation for the exploration. A Story of How the Arts in the Classroom Allow Teachers to Truly See a Student's Point of View The arts are fun, plain and simple. For example, put a box of scarves in the middle of the classroom: colorful, beautiful scarves. Teachers can say, “Kids! Explore these for just a minute.”  Students fiddle with it for just a second. Pretty soon, they're tossing it high in the air and catching it, and laughing and giggling.Then teachers can say, “Now, I want you to show me the water cycle through these scarves.” Or, “I want you to show me the plant life cycle through these scarves.”Bob shares what might happen: “Students look at this play thing. They have to reimagine it as a seed, a sprout, a leaf, a flower; or they have to somehow turn it into clouds, precipitation, rivers and oceans. That critical thinking is huge. But it's fun! It's so amazing to see teachers light up when their kids get it when they are smiling and having fun and creating and coloring and they're having a blast.”The arts are good for the soul. In Bob's words: “I was sharing drawing skills and telling teachers to ‘Draw with your kids all the time!' One teacher did a typical Valentine's activity. Each student had a paper heart. Inside the heart, the teacher wanted them to draw meaningful things: what the students loved, what they cared about. The teacher drew her dog, she drew her kids, she drew her family, she drew her favorite place to go. She told her first-grade kids to ‘Go ahead!' A boy started scribbling black and brown.He was always the kid who was told,  ‘Be quiet.' ‘Stop touching other things.' ‘Stop touching your neighbor.' ‘Sit back down in your seat.'The teacher was really close to telling him to stop, get a new paper, you're doing it wrong. But! She had learned from watching her school's art teacher to ask the kids to give a description. For example, ‘So, tell me about your work.'And she said to this student using black and brown inside his Valentine's heart, ‘Okay, talk to me about how you're coloring yours.'And he said, “I'm coloring like this because that's what's in my heart. Everybody hates me and everybody thinks I'm doing a bad job.”Her heart broke. She realized, ‘Yeah, I have been doing that.'That boy's permission to express himself with just a few crayons and a drawing allowed his teacher to see into her student, looking beyond the walls that sometimes show up as rambunctious energy and misbehavior. She saw a kid who just wants to connect with people. The arts are a tool for social emotional learning, good for our emotional well-being, and are a safe space to express ourselves.”Accelerated Learning Happens When Arts Are in the ClassroomThese stories illuminate the way that the arts play a role in teachers' authentic assessment of students' personal needs and their academic journey. Through student drawings, tableaus, movement, written words, and the songs that they create and sing, students show how they're doing, what they need socially, and how they grasp the standards. This relational, observational data that really helps teachers capitalize on student needs.The arts give teachers permission to let children be children and explore. Teachers guide explorative learning by introducing a purpose. Students can work on interpretation and the expression of learning. Arts-Integrated Classrooms Save TimeOften teachers say, ”Oh, we don't have enough time to do art.” Bob tells them, “You don't have enough time not to do art.” Here's why: the accelerated learning that happens when teachers bring the arts in—and the connection that sticks with kids—is going to stay with them so much longer than mere regurgitation. Reminding teachers that the arts are not one more thing, but a different, beautiful way to teach that gets students excited, allows for play, and allows for creating and learning in a meaningful way.Bob concludes: “We look at programs that need our attention: literacy, math skills. But if we really look at the heart of where students are actively engaged, really paying attention, and excited about what they're learning, it's in the arts rooms. When we find that beautiful balance of building students' skills in the arts room, helping the classroom teachers see those arts skills that their students now have and giving teachers a few tips on how to employ that skill—then, classroom learning happens on a deeper level. That's a win.Share this podcast with colleagues! Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with you.Follow Us for More Arts Resources: BYU ARTS Partnership NewsletterAdvancingArtsLeadership.comSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifyInstagramFacebook

Links mentioned in this episode:Rocky Mountain Arts and STEM Think TankSupporting Teachers with STEM and Arts Integration in the Classroom**Listeners, take note: this is not a STEAM podcast series, but a series of episodes focused on STEM and the arts.Today's host Heather Francis, with co-host Tina McCulloch, introduces a series on STEM and the Arts. This podcast is important because teachers need practical, applicable examples of what STEM plus the arts or the arts plus STEM look like in the classroom. The experts and teachers in this and future episodes offer insight and experience to our listeners.Dr. Heather Leary is today's guest and is a professor in the Instructional Psychology and Technology department at Brigham Young University. This episode explores the distinctions of STEM and the arts, and discusses Dr. Leary's collaborative STEM and arts project.Tina is an elementary school teacher with 13 years of experience who integrates the arts into her classroom because the arts create connection, are part of her teaching persona, and help students “recognize the interconnectedness of our learning.” Dr. Leary has a bachelor's degree in fine arts and began her career as a photographer. Over time, her STEM-focused personal and professional lives overlapped (doing research, working with classroom teachers, and doing professional development). STEM offers a powerful, systemic way to consider content, think about critical thinking and problem solving: STEM is a holistic and simultaneously fun, creative, and engaging approach to learning.Definition of STEM + Arts — Reaching for TransdisciplinarityIntegrating STEM with the arts helps teachers move towards transdisciplinarity, or emphasizing the natural connections and overlap from arts into science, arts into math, and arts into technology. Arts + STEM ←→ STEM + ArtsThe relationship between STEM and the arts is symbiotic: the relationship goes both ways. Classroom teachers can integrate the arts into STEM-based content, and arts teachers can include science, math, engineering and technology into their lessons. Arts educators do just as much as STEM in art classrooms, and not in a superficial way, but in a powerful way—these connections show up in very deep, problem-solving ways, compelling teachers and students to think critically. The arts aren't limited to just visual arts, but include all the art forms—theatre, music, dance, visual—and choosing an appropriate artform can support students as they work through problems.As a dance math teacher, Heather Francis describes an example of a classroom application for using dance as a way to teach mathematical patterning to build the skill of mathematical visualization. In practical terms, students' math problem might be: given the length of a flagpole's shadow, calculate the length of a flagpole. Students likely have difficulty understanding that a flagpole has a shadow. Teachers can choose the artforms of visual art and/or dance: students can draw a flagpole and include its shadow, and/or perform shadow dances. This practice of artform-based patterning translates into larger applications, when students have their own interesting problem due to their experience with an art process informing their mathematical learning and the math informing their creative expression. Supporting Utah Elementary Teachers' Implementation of SEEd The SEEd standards are the new science standards for Utah elementary schools. The greatest influence in the classroom is the teacher, so effective professional development for teachers really spreads to the students. Dr. Leary describes how her research-practice collaboration with Provo teachers is influenced by the district's emphasis on STEM education. STEM + the arts are mutually inclusive. Together with Dr. Leary, the arts and classroom teachers are exploring and defining what SEEd-focused teaching looks like using STEM and the arts. They have identified the following needsTeachers need to understand the SEEd standards.Teachers need collaboration to create arts adaptations to SEEd-focused lesson plans.Teachers need continued support as they work to implement the STEM and arts lesson plans.Teachers ask questions like these:How can I integrate this using _____art form?What are the standards I am responsible for?When do the SEEd standards overlap with the arts standards?In order to build capacity for teachers and develop students' skills and knowledge, Dr. Leary and the classroom and arts teachers collaborate to design and implement lesson plans, and collect data from these classrooms. This research-practice partnership is unique because it brings together teachers from different schools and different grade levels. Tina McCulloch works with Dr. Leary both as a classroom teacher and as a graduate student project manager, experiencing the project from both lenses.Their project is a design-based research project. In design-based research, the practitioner and the researcher work together. The practitioner's experience changes over time, and is used as a foundational place for theory development, resource creation, future research questions, and necessary shifts for application and practice. Considering the needs of classroom teachers is essential for a participant like Tina, who participates in this research as a practitioner (teacher) and researcher.Lessons Learned from the STEM + Arts Research Practice PartnershipThis research collaboration began in 2019, with Dr. Leary initiating conversations with three classroom teachers and one art teacher. These simple but powerful conversations, which offered these educators time and space to think deeply about the intersection of STEM and art, and what they could do, created an impetus for more collaboration.Teacher & Arts Educator Collaboration is Key to Create Meaningful STEM + Arts Student Learning Experiences Dr. Leary describes how teachers are really hungry to learn how they can do more transdisciplinary work. Teachers want to be able to teach in a very authentic, real-world, holistic way: when students walk out into their communities, they hear things, see things, and interact with things, and can start to form a larger, comprehensive perspective and picture of the world: “The world isn't just math, or just science, or just engineering, or just art or just technology, right? All of the disciplines are necessary for something to happen.”This STEM + arts research work is designed to help teachers create that learning environment, that curiosity, that transdisciplinary approach to seeking information. STEM + the arts is a way to do that; it's an iterative way to teach: learning by doing, making mistakes, creating a growth mindset with curious thinking and skills development.Cross Grade-Level Communication About Arts and Science MattersElementary SEEd standards are designed so that third grade aligns with fifth grade; fourth grade aligns with sixth grade. Teachers from these aligned grades talk to each other with these questions in mind:As a sixth-grade teacher, what do fourth graders learn that I can expect to build on?What should students know by fifth grade?As a fifth-grade teacher, how can I support your work with third-grade students?Cross grade-level communication is essential for building teacher collaboration and laying a foundation for efficient teaching and supporting student success in their inquiries.District support also means that teachers who have never talked with their arts coach, or art educator, or the science educators, are now having productive and meaningful conversations and input about long-term planning and overall learning goals. The Arts Help Create Meaning in Inquiry-Based LearningA teacher in Provo District has a master's degree in STEM. At first, her approach to the new SEEd standards looked like this: “I know all about how to do the engineering process and how to have this phenomenon in my classroom.” Soon, she realized, “they [my students] need something more.” As a member of the STEM + arts research partnership, she understood that the ‘something more' was the arts, but she had no idea how to implement the shift toward the arts. As she continued learning about arts integration, and because of the arts skills she learned because of her involvement with the partnership, she said, ““Now I can do a little bit more.” When Tina came into her classroom, she said, “Look what my kids did!”They had done some watercolor painting of clouds. She said, “Because you were willing to show me what wet-on-wet looks like, and how to put some dry brush in there, and then how to sponge some parts off, we have this wall where the kids can talk about their cloud formations and they refer to it all the time.” The best part? The students want more. They are asking when the class will be doing the next arts-integrated activity. Because of this small success, this teacher has an intrinsically-motivated drive to learn more and invest more fully in deep learning through STEM + arts.Together, Teachers Create Grassroots Momentum for Artful LearningMore on this idea of reciprocal symbiosis: Teachers are creating momentum by gaining new dispositions and realizing opportunities to access the full capacity of their school's arts educator through artful conversations, opening the door to an arts-integrated curriculum: when classroom teachers get support from the art educator in their school, they work together to build a strong foundation of positive momentum for both other teachers and the art educator. These relationships and conversations are effective because they create multi-lateral momentum and movement: not just change from the top-down, but also—and more importantly—a bottom-up and multidirectional ribbon of change that creates sustainable longevity. Just like STEM + Arts ←→Arts + STEM, teachers + arts educator ←→ arts educator + teachers. District Support is Essential for Sustainability and Building Teacher CapacityIn order to create longevity, support for the teachers, and grassroots change in pedagogical practice, Provo City School District had to be included: the district needed more effective ways of teaching STEM content (because of the updated SEEd standards), and teachers were starved for holistic ways to effectively teach to students' curiosity. These related needs created an ideal environment for research and conversations among administrators and teachers about the how.The district provides essential backbone support by assisting with dissemination—reaching a much broader audience than just three classroom teachers and one art teacher—which creates an added element of sustainability: a  district-supported partnership system that facilitates teacher growth and student achievement. Because district resources and personnel are built into the infrastructure of the research project,teachers are more likely to collaborate with each other;teachers are getting support from peers and administrators; andteachers are more willing to try new strategies, practices, and take risks and get better and better at new arts + STEM skillsA few years into this process, progress is evident because teachers have tried new approaches and lesson plans, they are learning and growing, and ready to share their experiences with other teachers, creating change at a district level.Benefits of STEM + Arts Research This research partnership's structure is unique because it covers both sides of the design-based research experience: the practitioner (teacher) side—what works in the classroom? How can we improve student learning and teacher practice by integrating STEM+Arts?; and, the research side—how is what teachers are experiencing useful for future design-based research projects?  What can we change about the structure of these conversations to improve efficacy for teachers?Tina emphasizes how an informal learning setting—like this podcast—is an opportunity for a teacher to listen to it in the car on the way to school and maybe become inspired; maybe hear something; maybe go to the show notes and think, “I am going to dip my toe in. I am going to be brave, and I'm going to try something new.” Our hope and passion is that STEM + Arts ←→Arts + STEM series allows teachers a little bit of freedom to innovate, because the intersections of STEM + Arts really  build critical-thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration skills. These are 21st century skills. We encourage other teachers to walk alongside us as we work to support students to be producers and creators. Join the Rocky Mountain Arts + STEM Think Tank: Our STEM + Arts Learning CommunityThe collaboration between Dr. Leary and the teachers in Provo district is an open space: join the conversation now! The Rocky Mountain Arts + STEM Think Tank meets monthly, and is hoping to expand to include any teacher.Goals for monthly conversations include:Tried-and-true classroom lesson plans/teaching techniques presented by teachersQuestion time/collaboration timePlanning time/collaboration timeReport back on trying something new in the classroom: refine, revisit, revise.Reach out to Dr. Heather Leary (Heather.Leary@byu.edu) or Tina McCulloch (tinamc@provo.edu) if you're interested in joining the think tank!Future episodes Look forward to hearing from:Mr. Dance offers his experiences helping teachers integrate dance into science and mathematics.A classroom-teacher-turned-art-teacher integrates STEM into art and helps classroom teachers improve their art knowledge.A district arts coach shares ways he supports art educators to understand how classroom teachers are using SEEd standardsParticipants from the research partnership share how feelings and stories about this year's STEM + Arts ←→ Arts + STEM journey.Stay tuned for next time, and follow us on social media @everychildeveryart.Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with youFollow us and find more arts integration resources:Native American Curriculum Initiative Mailing ListBYU ARTS Partnership NewsletterAdvancingArtsLeadership.comSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifySubscribe on Amazon Music InstagramFacebookPinterest Don't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

Links Mentioned In This Episode:The Brain Dance by Anne Green GilbertUtah Teaching Artist RosterBuilding an Arts-Rich SchoolPerformances & ExhibitionsFirst Steps in Teaching Creative Dance to Children by Mary JoyceDance Integration—36 Dance Lesson Plans for Science and Mathematics by Kaufmann & DehlineJana Shumway Dance Lesson Plan - Utah AnimalsCreative Dance Integration Movement ResourceTricks for Using Picture Books for DanceWater Dance by Thomas Locker (Bookshop.org)Art Should Be a Habit, Not a Luxury by Arthur C. BrooksWho is Mr. Dance? Meet Provo City School District's Arts Coach, Chris RobertsHeather Francis and Tina McCulloch have been working with Mr. Dance for over 10 years. Chris gave Heather her first teaching job out of college at Rees Elementary. Chris taught Tina the Brain Dance, which created a big change in her third-grade students. Now retired, Chris was the Beverley Taylor Sorenson (BTS) arts integration coach for Provo City School District for over 20 years. He worked to facilitate the BTS grant through collaborating with principals and supporting BTS arts educators. As the Provo City School District arts coordinator, Chris supported arts-integrated classroom activities and professional development for Pre-K–12th-grade drama, music, visual art, and dance teachers. Mr. Dance Supports the Arts in Schools by Teaching Students in Classrooms and Teachers in Professional Development Beginning with no job description, Chris made a flier of skills and activities he could offer to teachers as a district arts coach. He went to all 13 elementary schools, and hand-delivered a flier in every teacher's box. He “had a few bites.” Those few initial interactions rapidly snowballed: now, Chris is a high-demand educator, packing as much Pre-K-6th grade dance integration as he can into his limited 30-hour workweek. Learn and share informationHighlight BTS educators across the district to promote the artsSupport educators in creating and publicizing school arts nights, performances, and exhibitions.For example, Chris recently assisted in planning a district-wide dance concert involving all the students in all Provo's secondary schools and two elementary schools. Ballroom, creative, and modern dance were included. It was an incredible experience for the elementary students—“just amazing that they got to go to Provo High School and dance in front of a full house of families and friends.” This was a magnetic performance bursting with positive energy that was felt by each participant and audience member. Tina recounts, “Chris planted in the hearts of these little elementary students that this is a lifestyle. This is a way I can carry the arts throughout my life, and the positive energy feeds on the arts and makes a positive cycle for artful living.”“Chris is amazing. He has a way of working with students and teachers to help them become more aware of their bodies and minds. And to integrate core content into his kinesthetic dance activities. He didn't come from a dance background originally, which makes his story even cooler. And I think it's helpful because he knows how to approach students who also don't come from a dance background.”Mr. Dance Wasn't a Dancer: Dance Integration is for EveryoneChris was the carpool dad for his daughter, who joined BYU's Children's Creative Dance Program beginning at age 3. Chris' wife supported his hobby of teaching by  working in the business world. Instead of sitting in the car, Chris observed his daughter's dance class and corrected papers. He listened and watched Miriam Bowen teach the class for three years and witnessed his daughter develop creativity, communication, and problem-solving skills. Finally, it clicked: “Well, that's exactly what I want for my students.”Chris wrote a grant. Doris Trujillo, who is a teaching artist, visited his school for 10 days. As a parting gift, Doris gave Chris First Steps in Teaching Creative Dance to Children by Mary Joyce. The following week, Chris went to class holding that book—with ZERO experience teaching dance. He explains: “I read what Mary Joyce wrote in the book to tell the students. I read it, and they did it. Then I read the next thing, and then they did it, and  then I read the next thing, and they did it. It was amazing!” Chris' positive momentum kept on dancing: he attended dance integration workshops sponsored by the State; traveled to Seattle to learn from Anne Green Gilbert's two-week dance workshop; began teaching dance workshops to teachers. The “powerful women” who taught Chris to dance have been a momentous source for growth and influence for his development from a carpool-dad-turned-novice-dancer to ‘Mr. Dance.'What Happens When Teachers “Let the ego go.”Chris's advice to teachers out there: “Do not be afraid of being the fool. You have to let your ego go. It's so important to bring dance to these kids.” Letting the ego go helps create an atmosphere of “Yes! I can do this!” for every student, no matter their dance experience or level of self-confidence, even the reluctant students who cling to the classroom walls. Chris's lived experience learning to integrate dance—his journey of transforming from a ‘regular' classroom teacher to ‘Mr. Dance'—models this very “Yes, I can. I can do it!” attitude. Additionally, listeners, the way Chris held his posture as he described the way he used Mary Joyce's book—holding his hand out in front of him as if reading aloud from a book—was full of energy and purpose. For the teachers who believe, “I am not a dancer. I am not comfortable in my body or expressing things using my body,” Chris's example as a teacher who began as a complete novice serves as a totally attainable inroad toward dance for teachers who are uncomfortable with this art form. Dance is for everyone. Unexpected joy can happen when teachers set aside their ego and move their bodies. Chris relates an example of the unique experiences teachers have when they first dance with their students—a second-grade teacher wrote him a lengthy message explaining the feelings and emotions she embodied when she danced. She “felt freer than she's ever felt in a long, long time.” Collaboration Tips for Arts Educators and Classroom TeachersBTS educators in Provo District reach out to every teacher and ask: “What's the best way that I can communicate with you? How often? And how can I best serve you?” This way, classroom teachers decide what fits their teaching needs best: face-to-face meeting, email communications, or collaboration during Friday PLC time. The point is that arts educators honor the needs of the classroom teacher, and vice-versa.Research shows the most effective learning happens in co-teaching environments between classroom and BTS teachers. Chris encourages principals—especially those with first-year BTS arts educators—to create this specific type of collaboration: put the classroom teacher together with the arts educator, to co-teach. Typically, BTS educators initiate conversations with classroom teachers. For those educators not in a BTS school, teachers can reach out to a visual art planning time technician—or other arts educator— and say, “Hey, I'm studying the water cycle in a couple of weeks. Is there anything you can do to help me with that?”The research is clear: the more arts are integrated into the classroom—regardless of the art form—student retention and engagement are much higher. For example, let's say a school has a visual arts BTS educator, and a non-visual arts/generalist teacher needs support with integration. That generalist teacher can reach out  to that BTS educator and collaborate on what is happening in each others' classrooms to support learning in both classrooms. “Mr. Roberts has been working with my class since 2016. Eight years now, wow. He is amazing. He finds books about all different subjects, such as science, literacy, or social skills. He is so creative in designing ways for the students to dance to the books and learn something at the same time, from how plants grow to the rain coming down, rhyme scheme, and being kind, he finds ways to incorporate movement into these lessons.”How to Plan Dance-Integrated Lesson Plans  Find a Children's BookChris spends lots of time reading children's books because they offer a rich starting place for integrating science, math, social studies, and language arts. Chris describes his process: “As I read a children's book, I may exclaim, “Wow, this says all kinds of verbs in it! Just look at these images. We could dance to these verbs and images! So, when I see a children's book that has a lot of movement potential I buy it and I use it. Consider Content StandardsConsider the grade; what is developmentally appropriate for the grade; consider what they're studying in their science, and in their math, and in their language arts and in their social studies. So I use books like that, that way, picture books mainly. Use Available Lesson PlansUse the lesson plans on advancingartsleadership.comJana Shumway's (Jordan School District) lesson plans Dance Integration 36 Dance Lesson Plans for Science and Mathematics by Karen Kaufman and Jordan Dehline. This book contains incredible lesson plans. Innovate: Make It Up Chris walks in nature—listening, observing, paying close attention to that environment. His mind quiets and ideas come to him. Enlivening STEM Subjects by Integrating Dance in SchoolsNotice that most scientists, mathematicians, neuroscientists, Nobel Prize winners—they all have hobbies in the arts: violin playing, or watercolor painting, or dance. This illustrates why arts integration into STEM subjects is critical: the arts bring those subjects to life. It's hard to imagine doing science without adding a visual, musical, literary, and/or physical movement component. Handing students a math or science book to read doesn't enliven these content areas: inviting students to express learning through paint, creating a mind map, or getting out of their seats and moving with the idea. For example, look at a math class on angles: teaching the language acute angle and equal angle and obtuse angle. Show students how to make those angles with their bodies, using their arms: Make a 90-degree angle. Use your arms to show me an obtuse angle. This makes learning more fun and creates muscle memory, so that when students need to recall, it looks like this “Oh, yeah, I did this way. I can close my eyes and remember that time in class.” They can recall the hands-on, arts-integrated experiences—a painting they did, a song they sang, a dance they created. The arts make learning come alive. Listeners, please note: as he speaks, Chris is moving his arms in different angular sizes and shapes. He is replicating what he has seen students do while taking tests and trying to remember information. This is evidence that movement matters: students are using the proprioception senses of their bodies to remember a space that they held or a shape that taught them the knowledge they need in that moment.Arts Teaching Contributes to Deep Learning for Students and Vital Living for TeachersTina shares a teachers' experience witnessing changes in her students after implementing more dance into her classroom. The students embody a key outcome of arts-integrated teaching that the arts make learning come alive: “As she watched her students, she noticed that dance strengthened students' abilities to listen and follow complex directions. In all areas of instruction, it is crucial for students to be able to follow multi-step instructions. This ability saves time, and builds working memory. In dance students are able to easily self-evaluate their ability to follow these complex instructions. And the feedback is always immediate.”Chris shares an article by Arthur Brooks titled Art Should be a Habit, Not a Luxury. Just like exercise and sleep, engaging with the arts is critical for a full and happy life. Coupled with routines for self-care, the arts in teaching add vitality to teachers and classrooms: teachers feel more refreshed at the end of the day; teachers feel joyful. “Teachers need to gauge for themselves by asking, ‘What am I doing for myself to keep me vital and running on my 100% for my students?'”When students witness a teacher feeling that aliveness and vibrancy—a teacher who is feeding themself physically, intellectually, soulfully, and socially—students grow too: students are happier and leave school in a different mindset. Arts-integrated learning helps school shifts away from drudgery toward joyful and artful learning.For Teachers: 5 Essential Practices for Self-Care & Artful Living Chris shares five aspects of self-care that can help teachers live wholly and teach artfully:Physical Care: Teaching is a highly demanding job. Being physically present, eating nutritiously, getting rest, and making time for exercise are important ways teachers can rejuvenate and live sustainably. unless they're completely there and putting the right fuel into their body, getting the right exercise, and just taking care of their physical self.Emotional Care: Teachers need a friend, someone important, close, and safe that they can lean on during a down day. Healthy emotional expressions—like turning on some music in the kitchen while they're making dinner and dancing—helps teachers tune into their emotional self.Social Care: There's also the social part that they need to take care of. It is important to keep key people in their lives that support them, that offer them the help they need or the listening ear.Mental Care: There's also the mental part of them. The intellectual part of them that they need to keep abreast to have good science such as good neuroscience and solid educational philosophy.Spiritual Care: Last, I think it's okay to talk about a spiritual self . So like I described before to you already I take long walks in nature. Right now, my wife and I are empty-nesters so we just do it on our own, but I know a lot of classroom teachers have kids, so I encourage them to take walks  with their kids. Take a family nature walk, because walking in nature has a more powerful effect than walking in the mall.Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with you.Follow Us for More Arts Resources:BYU ARTS Partnership NewsletterAdvancingArtsLeadership.comSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifyInstagramFacebookDon't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade-level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

Links Mentioned in this Episode:University of Utah's Marriott Library Book Arts Program for TeachersPeter and the WolfFlight of the BumblebeeWilliam Tell OvertureArts Express Summer ConferenceThree STEM + Arts Research Participants Share Their Educational Experience and BackgroundsToday's guests are arts integrators in the research practice partnership through BYU and the Provo City School District: a visual art teacher, a teacher from a Title 1 school, and a teacher in a dual language immersion program (DLI). Welcome to Elicia Gray, Lisa Galindo, and Jennifer Hildebrand. To learn more about this research partnership, please listen to episode 28. (Elicia Gray) I'm Elicia Gray, and I teach K-12. I mostly spend my time at elementary school teaching art integrated with other subjects, but visual art is my primary subject. I was interested in this research project because I seek collaboration with other teachers who know more about science than I do. I wanted to understand authentic science connections that I could make with visual art projects in the classroom.(Lisa Galindo) I'm Lisa Galindo. I teach third grade at Provo Peaks Elementary. I just finished my masters of STEM education. I have always loved the arts, was invited to the group, and want to learn how to integrate arts with STEM.(Jennifer Heldenbrand) I'm Jennifer Heldenbrand and I teach sixth grade at Canyon Crest Elementary. I have been teaching for several years and have always enjoyed doing art projects with my kids, but wanted to have a better understanding of how to pull art and science topics together.  (Tina McCulloch) Okay, well,  what a nice diversity of backgrounds. . All of us together really do have some interesting backgrounds. But also that idea of I can take my STEM core and add some arts or as Elicia says I can take my arts and add some STEM  into it. It's all for the betterment of our teaching and to engage our students. So I would just like you to share a story of an experience that you've had in your classroom where you engaged your students in an arts integration and what extra outcomes happened. Whether it was you got to know your students a little bit differently or the content really came alive.Engaging Students in Arts Integration Creates Deeper LearningMoon Phases Cyclical Bookmaking(Jennifer Hildenbrand) Our class looked at the phases of the moon. One of the things that I did was show a picture of the moon, probably a vintage 1930's or 1920's picture of the moon, maybe with a scarf around its head as if it were not feeling very well and looking a little pensive. That visual opened the door to a lot of discussion. One student in particular said, “I think I'm seeing a crescent moon. I think it's a waxing crescent moon.” The class stopped and thought: “Where does this come from? What's giving you this idea?” There was a shadow around the edge of that picture that was able to help the student think through tha ideat. From there, we learned the moon phases; we talked about why they occur; and students' questions became quite intricate. The students wanted to know more—they were practicing inquiry-based learning. From there, we created some lovely, cyclical books that allowed them to create their own version of the moon phases.Create your own  Bioluminescent Fish to Adapt to the Deep Sea Environs(Elicia Gray) I think people forget that artists and scientists have a lot in common. When I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my students, I tried to approach these scientific principles the same way as I would approach art principles. For example: “Let's discover something new. Let's notice something new. Let's try to solve a problem.” Both artists and scientists are problem solvers. During the unit on ecosystems, my students studied deep sea fish. We started with this question: “What would keep an organism alive in the deep sea?” I was really fascinated by the idea of bioluminescence. That's one of the fun things that I get to do as an art teacher: I get to just really explore something that I want to know about and then share what I find fascinating with the students. I wanted to learn about  bioluminescent fish: Why do they light up in the dark? What artistic principles would be similar to or evident in that process? We watched a lot of videos about what deep sea organisms did. We found out why they glow in the dark. Sometimes it was to attract food or to attract mates or to defend themselves. The fish had all these really interesting, different reasons why they would light up. I had the students design their own bioluminescent fish that reflected one or more of those survival adaptations. The students got to decide what parts of the fish would light up. Other considerations were the size of the fish, the environment it lived in, and how it survived.After considering these factors and making these decisions, the students designed and painted their own fish. We painted with fluorescent things, fluorescent tempera paints, and anything that was fluorescent. We put them in a dark room and lit it with a black light, and it was bioluminescent! Just like it is in the deep sea. That was fascinating.I loved seeing the kids' reaction to that moment when the lights went out: “Whoa!” That “A-ha!” moment of creative ownership is priceless as a teacher—”We made that! We did that!” More importantly, each artwork was completely different, because it was something that they invented. Each fish was based on scientific principles that help them understand how something would survive in an environment that the students are totally unfamiliar with. This project was a way to really just explore a different medium, try out something new, and students had a blast. Those peer-to-peer conversations were very rich, because the students had all that science evidence for the artwork they were seeing.Students' Showcase Substantial Scientific Learning in Art Class(Elicia Gray) We displayed their bioluminescent fish as part of an art show. Ironically, my art classroom is completely devoid of windows. It's black, it's a deep hole. It was perfect. I put a little label outside the classroom door and we called it “The Deep Sea.” The rest of the art show was in the hallway, the gym, and other open areas at the school, and we had arrows going to the deep sea. All the overhead lights were off, and we turned on the black lights to allow the kids and their families to enter the deep sea. It was a riot, they loved it, and so did I.Parents were genuinely surprised their kids were learning something substantial in the art classroom. We research ideas, and we talk about really important things and students  are given an opportunity to solve real-world problems in a format that they design. It's a really creative space if we make room for it.Using Music in the Classroom to Identify Animal Traits(Lisa Galindo)  As a generalist classroom teacher, I mostly focus on reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. My experience with integrating the arts  is typically a culminating activity at the end of a unit to show what we have learned. After reviewing the third-grade arts standards, I found a musical standard about composers and how they paint a picture with music and sound. I thought, “How could that tie into what we're learning in science or math?”I remembered, “We're learning about animals.” I remembered listening to Peter and the Wolf as a child. The composer used music to show certain traits about the animals, a topic that fits in with our science exploration of animals: we are learning how these traits help animals survive, etc. A lot of kids aren't exposed to classical music, so I turned it on. The students were so excited. They were so engaged. They exclaimed, “This is fun!” The video I played had orchestra members dressed up as the animal character their musical instrument was being represented by. I was surprised how excited they were to listen to it. We cut it into two days, because it was too long. The next day at the door they asked, “Are we gonna finish Peter in the Wolf?” “Yeah!” They were really excited.  I said, “We will stop every once in a while and analyze what animal we hear.” “Well, that's the duck.” “What's happening?”“He's swimming.”“What makes you say that?”“Because of the sounds, they were really fluid and flowing.” “What is the bird doing?”“Oh, he's chirping?”“What makes you say that? How does the composer get us to think that the bird is chirping? What sounds do you hear? Or with the wolf? How do you know that's the wolf?”“Well, it has kind of scary low sounds, and it sounds really scary, right?”After that, I gave them two pieces of music and had them draw a picture of what they were hearing, using visualization skills. The first one we did was the Flight of the Bumblebee. I didn't give away the title of the musical work. Next, we did the William Tell Overture. I wanted students to think of an animal that those pieces of music reminded them of. I was really surprised that only two students drew a bumblebee for the Flight of the Bumblebee. Others drew a rabbit, or a mouse, or a squirrel, or a bird. One student said, “I couldn't think of anything, any animal, but I thought of the wind. That music made me think of a wind storm.”I said, “Why did you think of a wind storm?” He said,  “Because it was really fast and strong.” I said,  “I can see where you're coming from. I really like your windstorm.”I told the students, “Nobody's ideas are wrong.” Then, we listened again. This time I told them, “The name of this piece is Flight of the Bumblebee.” They responded with, “Oh my gosh, I can hear it. I can hear the wings flapping and buzzing.” We repeated the experience with the William Tell Overture. Several kids drew a picture of a horse. Several other kids drew pictures of other animals. I said, “You know, it's all your interpretation of what the artist is painting in your mind. Nobody's wrong.”Seeing their engagement, excitement, and their artwork felt exciting. I thought, “Oh my goodness, there is a whole movie that deals with this! Fantasia.” Now they're really excited to see Fantasia. Maybe we'll turn off the video, just listen to the music, and students can practice more visualization through drawing pictures.The Arts Provide Every Student Access to LearningDuring these hands-on experiences in class, every student was engaged in the arts. During normal, non-integrated lessons, there are students who are not engaged. The arts allow each student an access point—there isn't a wrong answer. Students are discovering in these learning inquiries that their opinions are valid, especially when they can point to evidence justifying their conclusions.Arts Express Summer Conference: Educators' Favorite Professional DevelopmentAll three educators agree that Arts Express Summer Conference, an arts-integration professional development conference through the BYU ARTS Partnership, is the best way to get immersed in arts-integrated pedagogy. A two-day conference focused on building arts skills, collaboration, valuable keynotes, and renowned presenters make this conference the best value for summer professional development in the state. It takes place at the beginning of June. Tina explains, “As the school year winds down and you are completely out of “teacher energy,” this conference is such a good way to start off the summer and start planning excitedly for the following school year.” (Jennifer Heldenbrand)  Arts Express helps combat end-of-year rundown and gives me that kickstart to enjoy my summer.(Elicia Gray) I feel like they pamper you. They treat you like you're a professional and they help you as an artist to really enjoy rich, professional experiences. The message and the atmosphere of the conference focuses on teachers nurturing their personal well-being through the arts as well. The conference teaches you how to teach arts integration to students and simultaneously offers teachers a really beautiful experience. It's a personal and professional symbiosis.Book Arts: A Tangible Keepsake to Demonstrate Learning(Jennifer Heldenbrand) I'll give you one more that I really enjoy. One of my passions is doing book arts, and the University of Utah's Marriott library has a book arts program with a summer intensive for teachers. Recently the structure has changed to support shorter intensives throughout the school year. Learning how to put books together is a great skill as a teacher. My experiences with my students shows when we make books, that artifact is something they're going to keep and enjoy.How to Get Started with Arts Integration? Jump InJust do it: Jumping in is a great way to get started. If teachers feel daunted, ask for help. There are so many wonderful resources—arts educators are delighted to help teachers get going. But even if there isn't an arts educator at your school, just jump in.Start with your interests. Whatever you're fascinated by, that energy is going to infect your students. Find something that you really want to learn about and start there.Keep practicing: through the years you'll get better and better.If something doesn't work, revise! Change it! Try something else.Jump in, and go for it. It's normal to feel embarrassed or afraid about trying something new and not nailing it the first time. Modeling new skills is a great tool for teaching students to step outside their comfort zones and pass along our joy in learning to them. When our students succeed, we succeed. Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with you!Follow Us for More Arts Resources:BYU ARTS Partnership NewsletterAdvancingArtsLeadership.comSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifyInstagramFacebookDon't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade-level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

Links Mentioned In This Episode:The Arts Educate the Whole ChildAn Unusual Route to Becoming a Visual Arts Educator“Being in the arts endorsement course saved my life.”Marie Mattinson, visual arts educator at Edgemont Elementary School, is this week's guest. Marie graduated with a bachelor's in psychology. She worked as a PE teacher and loved working as an aide for an autistic student. She completed the requirements for a teaching license while teaching part time (including special ed math, third-grade, and after-school programs). After teaching third-grade full-time for 12 years, Marie hit burnout because of testing and expectations. ColleaguesLisa Gardner and Diane Ames convinced her to enroll in the BYU ARTS Partnership's Arts Integration Endorsement program. “Being in the arts endorsement course  saved my life, really. I was happy again. I was happy to be with the kids and as I was happier, and we were creating things together in all art forms the kids were happy, and it created a cycle of everybody being better and happier.”After being hired as a visual art teacher, Marie earned her master's in Art Education. She works to integrate science and math into the visual arts curriculum in all kinds of ways. Marie is a recent recipient of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson's Legacy Award for Excellence in arts education for elementary visual arts instruction in the state of Utah.An Arts-Integrative Pedagogy Actively Engages Struggling StudentsMarie shares how the arts deeply impacted the learning of her own child: “My son was struggling with long-term memory, retrieval, processing and comprehension. His comprehension is really low. He has ADHD and I just watched him crumble as a first grader. As a second grader, he struggled to write and stay engaged; he hated school, he cried every day. PJ day was the best day because it was the one day we didn't have to have a tantrum about clothes. We had tantrums about everything else.When he learned his vowels, he was in Miss Gardner's class. They learned through songs, so he can decode and read so well because of music. Then in third grade, our music teacher taught him multiplication through songs, and he can do multiplication because of songs. His French third-grade teacher used movement and dance, (she was also in the Arts Integration Endorsement class) and he learned French that way, because he's in the French immersion program. Then, I realized that I needed to be more patient and engage all the kids because if my kid was struggling, I needed to be a better teacher and be more patient. I watched him do so many things that he couldn't control. Instead of, ‘Why won't you just sit and listen?' ‘Why won't you just do this?' He can't. Before my lived experience with my son, I didn't realize that kids who struggle with ADHD and other things, they can't. They don't mean to be like that. Yet, the pedagogy that creates confidence in learning, connections, and success are the arts.”Educate the Whole Child: Teach Social-Emotional SkillsMarie is passionate about educating the whole child. Students need to learn the skill of knowing how to care for other people, be empathetic and good listeners. Marie believes these skills are just as important as any academic curriculum you could ever put in front of them. Many lessons in her third-grade classroom focus on people: “Let's look at cultures, let's look at who is in our class. How can we learn more about them? How can we represent their beliefs and their interests in an authentic, empathetic way that celebrates them?” For example, including this social-emotional learning during math class: students can practice empathy and listening skills, collaboration skills. When students start breaking down or showing frustration because the math concept isn't landing, teachers can help support that student's emotions first, then work together on the math concept: “It all matters.”Using Art to Celebrate Diversity and Create Culturally-Responsive Classrooms: Puzzling Out Students' Ancestral CountriesMarie's school is extremely diverse: the French dual-immersion teachers hail from Rwanda, Spain, Austria, Ukraine, Switzerland, Morocco, and two are from France; students are comprised of all different socio-economic backgrounds and neighborhoods, and include a lot of second-language learners, and students from Columbia, Brazil, Uruguay, Congo, and Haiti. Second graders are given a puzzle piece made from paper. They find out which country their ancestors came from. Students learn about their ancestors, where they came from: students find a picture of a monument or landmark from that country. Marie helps each of her 650 students—some of whom are first-generation immigrants—make a contour line of the monument on their puzzle piece, paint a value-scale, and fit all the puzzle pieces together. A discussion is next: “students talk about how different and diverse we all are, and yet! We all fit together, and we live together. We can share these great things with each other.”Arts Educator Collaborates with Classroom TeachersBecause Marie was first a classroom teacher before becoming a visual art educator, her collaboration with classroom teachers carries weight: “When I say, ‘I promise, trust me, this is going to work and it's going to engage your kids and you will be happier,' teachers believe me. I do a lot of the work for them in the beginning. In fact, I dragged them. I've dragged a lot of people along. I'm happy to do it, because it takes a few years. I think one of the fifth-grade teachers, she took over one of the integrated projects that we'd been doing and did it on her own in her classroom. I mean, how great is that? She's doing it herself now.”Successful STEM Arts-Integration Collaborations: The Importance of Planning AheadAs the arts educator who chooses projects and curriculum and teaches visual art skills Monday-Thursday, sometimes teachers ask Marie, “Hey, we're learning this in science, do you think you could do that in your classroom? and I'll respond, “I'll see if I can fit it in, or no, we've got to do that on a Friday.” Fridays are for integrated projects—sometimes students spend two hours in the art room making clay ocarinas as part of an integrated project to complement the classroom curriculum.Co-teaching is an effective way to integrate the arts with STEM: the classroom teacher reminds the students what was talked about in science or math and asks, “Why is that working?” Marie asks questions to relate the science or math topic to a visual art theme, so that the kids find the connections between the art and the science, or the art and the math.  Marie explains the value of co-teaching, planning, and arts integration with STEM: “Why are we doing this? We could make a pretty picture if we wanted to, but that's not our goal. Our goal is to help students understand science. What is art doing to help you understand science or social studies? As other teachers see the artwork go up around the school, they talk and they're like, ‘How do we get in there? How do we get scheduled?' And I say, ‘Well, we have to sit and plan because if we don't sit and plan, it ends up being me doing a whole bunch of extra artwork.'”Strengthen Student Learning by Inviting Various Art-Form Educators to Co-Create with Classroom TeachersProfessional development with arts integration strengthens student learning by cultivating arts skills and offering resources to teachers. The BYU ARTS Partnership sends a music educator, a drama educator, a dance educator, or a different visual art educator, to Marie's school. The school's teachers decide which units are not as strong or lacking some sort of integration with any art form. We send those ideas to those arts educators and they come with prepared lessons and ideas on how to integrate those. The arts educators work with each and talk them through the lesson and help create the unit's lessons. The educators practice the lessons so that the classroom teachers feel more confident. Ideas start flowing from the teachers: “Oh, maybe I could do this!” “This gives me a little bit of a start.” The best part about this process is that the classroom teachers didn't have to come up with it all on their own, since classroom teachers are always short on time. The synergy among the classroom teachers, whole grade-level teams, and the arts educators creates a beautiful synergy of ideas and a product that is greater than the sum of its parts.Amy Rosenvall is the district science educator who is part of this research. Amy says, “Well, the science piece actually means this. So how can we really make it authentic science and art?” So integration isn't, “Here's this art project that represents the science, but the art is actually doing the science.”Research Shows 100% Engagement in Science + Arts LessonsFor Marie's master degree, she created a capstone study focusing on the ecosystems unit from the sixth-grade curriculum. She integrated every art form into that entire unit. Marie explains: “The data showed 100% engagement, every single time, whenever we integrated with an art form. This is a class that had 70% low economic status, seven IEPs out of 18 students, three students with autism. I think maybe three were gifted, which has their own needs to be challenged. So very, it was a really challenging class with 100% engagement. One particular student struggled with depression—his head was down on the desk all the time. Yet, he danced with Mr. Roberts, he painted with me, he did music with Mrs. Lee, and he did drama with Mr. Roberts. Even if the effort had been to engage this one depressed student, it is totally worth it.” Classroom Teachers Do Not Have to Be Arts ExpertsMarie shares a story about her experience with an art form she isn't strong in: “In the Arts Integration Endorsement, I loved the singing—I struggle with singing, I'm not confident. I remember one time when I was teaching third grade, I was trying to teach my students a song. They said, “Mrs. M, can you just go get the music teacher?” I was like, “No, thanks a lot.” I remember Jen Purdy saying “You don't have to sing to do music.” That gave me confidence. Likewise, dance and drama don't have to be a production. The integration endorsement was eye-opening: I learned to engage people in all the art forms without having expertise in all the art forms. When my students learned about ecosystems with the music, they didn't sing, they followed the flow of energy while Mrs. Lee ate a piece of cheese, drank some water, started playing her cello, and began walking around. It was incredible. Then students played the cups and did rhythms. Arts integration is much more than just being an expert in one form of art.Because arts integration can create 100% engagement in the classroom, students deserve the arts. They deserve engaged learning—not the non-interactional learning that happens when reading a book and answering questions on a Chromebook—but the kind that happens when the class reads together and has a discussion, the kind that happens when Marie's daughter sits in the backseat of the car and says,  “Mom, did you know this about molecules?” And I was like, “How did you know that?” Because Mr. Robertson taught us and we were bumping around and we were doing that.” This is the kind of learning that fills students' cups, reduces isolation, increases engagement, and creates shared learning. The arts are socially interacting, collaborating, letting us see our humaneness.  Artful Teaching is Vital for Teachers' Sanity + ResilienceMarie tells a story of collaborating with a former middle-school math teacher who came to elementary school because of licensing issues. This teacher had taught only math for years and years. Marie explains: “She was terrified of literacy and I said, ‘No, no, literacy can be fun. I also struggled in the beginning. But teaching can be fun. We just need to integrate.' She said, ‘I don't know…What about Disney shorts? Those are empathetic. They always have a lesson and they're engaging. They're colorful, you can teach all of the art forms, and you can get so much out of literacy.'  After watching the shorts, I came in and I taught and the class did a mind map of three different Disney shorts. Then she just said, ‘I didn't know literacy could be fun for me. This is the first time this entire year I've been excited to come to school. Because I can't wait to share this with the kids. And it's fun. It's a fun way to do literacy.'How to mind-map:Mind Mapping with Tony Buzan (video)Mind Maps for Kids: An Introduction (book)The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Unlock Your Brain's Untapped Potential (book)Disney short films for mind-mapping:Lou (requires fee to watch)For the BirdsDisney is good at making social issues feel applicable and personal—students can empathize with topics like a lost sweater in “Lou.” Incorporating media arts into literacy and social-emotional learning becomes easy when difficult topics become humanized and real. Marie recounts that the teacher struggling with literacy felt surprised that sixth-graders could discuss topics like these, and Marie reminds listeners that third-graders are capable of meaningful conversations about difficult social topics, because it helps them become better people. Tina recalls that a professor of hers “never calls them children, instead she says they're ‘little humans.' They are little and we're all having this experience together. What a beautiful way to think about that.”Please subscribe to the Artful Teaching podcast on your favorite platform: Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora. We would love to have you as a subscriber. You can also subscribe to our blog or our newsletter or updates on our Native American Curriculum Initiative. We love sharing our tips and tricks for arts integration in the classroom with you.Follow Us for More Arts Resources:BYU ARTS Partnership NewsletterAdvancingArtsLeadership.comSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifyInstagramFacebookDon't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade-level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

This week, we will explore the journey of Dr. Suzanne Katz. Suzanne is a Drama Lead Teacher at Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., and Resarch Consultant with the Education Research Division of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Suzanne holds a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from UNLV. You can follow Suzanne on Twitter @skatzedu On this episode, we will hear Suzanne's stories about the beginning of her teaching career and transition into teaching theatre and helping start a middle grades theatre education program in Las Vegas. Dr. Aaron R. Gierhart is an Assistant Professor of Elementary Education at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, and previously taught in the Illinois public schools for 11 years. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @aaronrgierhart Email: gierhart_aaron@columbusstate.edu Podcast Socials: Facebook & Instagram @JourneysOfTeaching & Twitter @JourneysTeach Thank you to Mitch Furr for the podcast theme music and Adam Gierhart for the logo artwork.

Elissa Cedarleaf Dahl is a Visual Arts, Mural Arts and Arts Integration teacher at Justice Page Middle School in Minneapolis, and she recently received a Fulbright Distinguished in Teaching Research Program award to carry out educational research in Colombia. Manny Hill spoke with Elissa about the kind of research she will be doing, and what this opportunity means to her.

Elissa of Justice Page Middle School has received a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Research Program award to carry out educational research in Colombia.

Kim Eberlein, Co-Chair of The Visionary Awards, and Hassie Davis, Teacher and Educator in the Theater Arts, as well as being a performer, and a recipient this year of a Visionary Award, stopped by to talk about this years award event. About the Visionary Awards: In 2015, the Saint Louis Visionary Awards were relaunched by an independent committee of women to celebrate the numerous contributions and achievements of women who work in or support the arts inSt. Louis. From established working arts professionals and arts educators to emerging artists and community impact artists, each year's honorees are truly "visionary".  The 2022 recipients are... HASSIE DAVIS, ANDREA HUGHES, DIANNE ISBELL, MEE JEY, EMILY RAUH PULITZER, PAM TRAPP Hassie Davis, this year's recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Artist is a locally and nationally known performing and teaching artist based in the St. Louis Metro area. As a performer, she has worked with various theater companies around the country, most notably with TheaterWorks/USA performing at the Kennedy Center. As an arts educator, she has utilized her skills in Arts Integration with many arts education programs such as Muny 1st Stage, Gitana Theater, The Canvas Project, and is a member of the Wolf Trap International Arts Integration program. In addition, she is a 2016 Fellow of the Regional Arts Commission Community Arts Training Program. She helped to create and has served for the last  21 years as Program Coordinator for CLUB CHIPS. CHIPS Health and  Wellness Center's innovative teen leadership program utilizes the arts to guide teens in acquiring valuable knowledge about their mental and physical health in order to educate and empower themselves and their peers.  

This episode contains two interviews. Shanda Stenger the Fine Arts Supervisor discusses the benefits of arts integration in all classrooms. She discusses her tips on how to make it happen. Jared and Kate also sit down with Jessica Payne, a 3rd grade teacher at Windridge Elementary, to discuss how she integrates the arts in her Elementary classroom. 

EPISODE 004 HIGHLIGHTS:“The arts are the key to change. Arts are not fluff; arts are the fuel.”The arts help create whole human beings.Highlight the best of each student through arts integration and the five SEL competenciesUse art and illustrations as a form of self-expression, developing student self-confidence and self-efficacy, exploring identity, exploring social issues, and challenging stereotypes and biases.EPISODE 004 RESOURCES:Connect with Amanda: Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM, Curriculum Vitae, Party in the Art Room website, Blog, Courses, Lesson CollectionsThe Art of Norman RockwellVincent Van Gogh ArtResearch from the Arts Commission on how integrating SEL and the arts have influenced Mississippi schools (coming soon!)

This edWeb podcast is sponsored by TeachRock.The webinar recording can be accessed here.Launched by Stevie Van Zandt and the Founders Board of Bono, Jackson Browne, Martin Scorsese, and Bruce Springsteen, TeachRock.org provides free, standards-aligned resources that use music to help K-12 students succeed in disciplines like science, math, social studies, language arts, and more.This edWeb podcast provides an overview of the free TeachRock curriculum, highlighting resources and strategies for elementary school, middle school math, and high school social studies. The TeachRock curriculum embraces music integration as means to foster student engagement and buy-in, and a culturally supportive approach to education that enables all students to see themselves reflected in their studies. Two examples of newly released resources that are featured are:Segregation and Integration in Asbury Park, a three-part lesson collection that accompanies the film Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock & Roll. Students discover the impact the city of Asbury Park has had upon the history of American popular music, and explore the local conditions that led to the emergence of Stevie Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen, and other artists and musicians.Math and the Music Industry, a five-part lesson collection for students to practice math skills within the context of the music industry. Utilizing important artists as case studies, students gain a valuable understanding of how fundamental math is to the industry's functionality, as well as discovering the many components that comprise the music industry. Whether calculating touring costs, analyzing industry data, or determining fan engagement on social media, math is central to numerous aspects of the music industry.Listeners hear how teachers have used the free TeachRock materials in their own classrooms, and learn more about all of the resources from the TeachRock team.Educators receive an overview of music-integration strategies that work with a wide range of students. By the end of the session, viewers are able to:Apply music-integration strategies to their classrooms.Navigate the free TeachRock resources to support further music and arts integration.This edWeb podcast is of interest to teachers, librarians, administrators, and educators at any level from elementary through high school.TeachRock An arts integration curriculum that uses the history of pop music and culture to help engage student

Randy Weiner has worked in education, ed tech and consulting throughout his career. In 2012, He co- founded and served as the first Chairman of the Board at Urban Montessori Charter School (UMCS) in Oakland, CA—the nation's first public Montessori, Arts Integration and Design Thinking school. Randy is also a co-founder and the CEO at BrainQuake, a three- time U.S. Department of Education Small Business Innovation Award winner.   Along with his Brass Tacks Innovations consulting firm partner, Dr. James Bailey, Randy co-authored “The Daily SEL Leader: A Guided Journal“, published in March 2021 by Corwin Press. A Teach for America alum and father to two daughters, Randy taught for five years in Oakland and Madagascar, and holds two BAs from Middlebury College and an MA in Education from Stanford. James' career has encompassed teacher, principal, school turnaround, principal consultant, and superintendent roles spanning Texas, Colorado, and Wyoming. As Superintendent in Wyoming,  his district was the first member in the state to join the League of Innovative Schools after reform efforts around personalized learning and social-emotional development. In San Antonio, he led the turnaround efforts for the Carpe Diem Schools. His deep-seated commitment to equity and supporting school leaders led to him training as an executive coach and co-founding Brass Tacks Innovations focused on adult SEL development, school redesign, and the use of improvement and implementation science to help all schools and learners meet the demands of our emerging society.  He is also an advocate for helping leaders and young people become more self-aware of their social and emotional needs and develop the skills to work with others on a more human level. James has a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Innovation, is a prolific publisher and presenter and serves as a core faculty member at Walden University in the areas of educational leadership. He recently had a book published called The Daily SEL Leader: A Guided Journal. Show Highlights SEL is not  warm, fuzzy or extra. Unpack the misunderstandings of SEL The “Holy grail of leadership”  with 5 minute transformational feedback.  The book you need for being a leader of action. Identify the “Knowing - Doing Gap.” Avoid feedback being a “freud experience” for everyone.  Safe spaces are not the goal, intentional, tailored feedback is.  Five minutes to see “everyone is an ocean and not a surface.” Learn a deliberate daily practice plan to build a leadership playground.  People who are better at leading with social-emotional skills tend to get a lot more impact and influence in their leadership. -James  James Bailey and Randy Weiner's Resources & Contact Info: The Daily SEL Leader: A Guided Journal  Randy Weiner -Twitter Brass Tacks Innovations Linkedin-James James Bailey - Twitter Brass Tacks Innovations -Facebook   Looking for more? Read The Better Leaders Better Schools Roadmap Join “The Mastermind” Read the latest on the blog   SHOW SPONSORS: HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION Transform how you lead to become a resilient and empowered change agent with Harvard's online Certificate in School Management and Leadership. Grow your professional network with a global cohort of fellow school leaders as you collaborate in case studies bridging the fields of education and business. Apply today at http://hgse.me/leader. TEACHFX School leaders know that productive student talk drives student learning, but the average teacher talks 75% of class time! TeachFX is changing that with a “Fitbit for teachers” that automatically measures student engagement and gives teachers feedback about what they could do differently.  Learn more about the TeachFX app and get a special 20% discount for your school or district by visiting teachfx.com/blbs. ORGANIZED BINDER Organized Binder is the missing piece in many classrooms. Many teachers are great with the main content of the lesson. Organized Binder helps with powerful introductions, savvy transitions, and memorable lesson closings. Your students will grow their executive functioning skills (and as a bonus), your teachers will become more organized too. Help your students and staff level up with Organized Binder.   Copyright © 2022 Twelve Practices LLC

Carrie and Nick chat with Tamara Mills, a Coordinator of Instruction for Worcester County Public Schools (MD). Tamara oversees many content areas, but the arts are near and dear to her heart, so today's discussion is all about how integrating the arts into everyday instruction enriches the educational experience for both students and educators. Follow Tamara Mills on Twitter at @TJMillsWCPS Resources from Today's Episode: MD State Fine and Performing Arts Standards Kennedy Center Arts Integration Materials Crayola's CreatED Professional Learning Community Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM Project Zero by Harvard University's Graduate School of Education ________________ Visit https://www.futurereadyedcast.com for more information, send us a voice message, review the show, and much more. And be sure to follow us on Twitter:  Podcast & EdChats: @FutureReadyCast  Hosts: Carrie Sterrs - @CNSterrs, Nick Genovesi - @MrGenovesi

On today's episode we are talking with Susan Riley and Typhani Harris of the Institute for Arts Integration & STEAM. This is an organization focused on integrating the arts into all aspect of education in hopes of reaching ALL students and allowing them to succeed in all courses. They provide arts integration & STEAM lessons, teacher created resources, and accredited trainings in one convenient platform. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aroundtowncc/support

Get the book, The Daily SEL Leader Visit the Brass Tacks Innovations website, www.brasstacksinnovations.com About the Authors James Bailey's career has encompassed teacher, principal, assistant superintendent, school turnaround leader, consultant and superintendent roles spanning Texas, Colorado and Wyoming. As Superintendent in Wyoming, his district was the first member in the state to join the League of Innovative Schools after reform efforts around personalized learning and social-emotional development. In San Antonio, he led the turnaround efforts for the Carpe Diem Schools. His deep-seated commitment to equity and supporting school leaders led to his training as an executive coach and co-founding Brass Tacks Innovations with a focus on supporting educational leaders to develop their SEL skills to support adults and students. He is also an advocate for helping schools and districts create better learning capacity to adapt to the future and in helping leaders and young people become more self-aware of their social and emotional needs to develop the skills to work with others on a more human level. He has a PhD in Educational Leadership and Innovation from the University of Colorado-Denver, is a prolific publisher and presenter, and currently serves as a core faculty member at Walden University in the area of educational leadership. Randy Weiner has worked in education and education technology and consulting throughout his career. He co- founded and served as the first Chairman of the Board at Urban Montessori Charter School (UMCS) in Oakland, CA—the nation's first public Montessori, Arts Integration and Design Thinking school. Randy is also a co-founder and the CEO at BrainQuake, a two- time U.S. Department of Education Small Business Innovation Award winner. A Teach for America alum and father to two daughters, Randy taught for 5 years in Oakland and Madagascar, and holds two BAs from Middlebury College and an MA in Education from Stanford.

Show Notes:Heather Francis, co-host, and Heidi Dimmick, a 3rd-grade teacher discuss the value of action research for teachers improving their practice of arts integration in the classroom. This episode is for any teacher interested in systemic inquiry and reflective practice as a method of professional learning and advocacy within the field of education and arts education.This episode demystifies the term "research" and describes how practicing teachers can and already do fit action research into their professional practice and how tweaking a few of the intentional data collection and analysis strategies can lead to large dividends in professional learning. Heather is definitely team research, but she's paid to do research, Heidi, the guest on this episode is a practicing teacher who understands the effort involved and also the value and benefit of that effort. If you're interested in improving your practice as a teacher and bringing the arts into your classroom, consider a self study or action research project to help uncover the best practices for you and your students. Find a critical friend, someone who has high expectations of your performance, who believes in you and will encourage you along your path of improvement. A critical friend is a colleague throughout the action research process who can help you find your blindspots, reflect from a new perspective, and try new ideas or strategies you may not have discovered on your own.Teachers are doing action research all the time, or at least parts of it, as they collect and analyze data in an effort to improve their practice and student learning in the classroom. There are certain things already for the state of Utah that are required like Dibels tests at the beginning of the year for reading. We take a mid year assessment and look at the score, and then and end of year assessment, and then we see how what we are doing for fluency is working. Or what needs to change to improve fluency. This naturally happens. Sometimes teachers are doing action research without actual realizing they are doing action research. Links Mentioned:BYU ARTS Partnership Arts Integration Endorsement ProgramAction Research: Three approachesFollow Us:BYU ARTS Partnership NewsletterAdvancingArtsLeadership.comSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifyInstagramFacebookDon't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts. Search by grade-level, art form or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

 When it comes to action research you have a lot of choices, you can study a behavior, an intervention, an attitude, an instructional tool, your environment or you can study yourself. When you are studying yourself as the main subject of your action research you are conducting a self-study project. If you're studying anything else, it's action research from another vantage point, and not self-study. Self-study might sound like a selfish form of research but it is far from it. Yes, it is self-centered, but is not for wholly selfish purposes. The purpose of self-study is to uncover your teaching practice so you can be a better teacher for your students in the future. It's the unveiling of your teaching attitudes, choices, practices and behaviors that helps you to advocate for what you are doing well and realize where improvement can still be made. Whether you are doing action research on an intervention or environment or self-study research where you, the teacher, are the subject of inquiry, you can use a critical friend to help you along your journey. A critical friend is a friend who works in tandem with you as you thinking critically and constructively on the evidence of your teaching practice and student responses or student work. A critical friend helps us see elements of our experience we cannot see because of our own goals or tunnel vision. They can also encourage us and support us when we feel discouraged or disappointed in the results we see from ourselves or our students performance in the classroom. Critical friendships are based on trust and understanding, they can take time to develop but they are certainly worth it.This episode doesn't state that action research or self-study is better than the other, although Heather is certainly biased towards self-study research. But knowing the differences between the two can help teachers determine the best course of action for their personal research experiences.Follow Us:BYU ARTS Partnership NewsletterAdvancingArtsLeadership.comSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifyInstagramFacebookDon't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts. Search by grade-level, art form or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

Heather Francis provides three examples of action research related to arts education and arts integration in the classroom. First, an example of a teacher studying their own practice of self-care. A seasoned teacher at the end of her career is discovering burnout. She turns to self-study to determine how a practice of self-care can help her handle the stress of life and a teaching career with greater resilience. She worked with a critical friend to attempt leaving work at school, reconnect with friends, and spend quality time with family on the weekends. She journaled and reflected and discovered that she definitely needs more time to take care of herself, but she also needs to balance that with a need to be prepared each day. Preparation also reduces stress at school. In our second story Heather describes a teacher who tested out mind-mapping and visual art strategies in their classroom during their action research project. The teacher in this example felt they had spent so many professional development hours on literacy that they had completely neglected social studies, science, and the arts in their classroom. They hypothesized that they could touch on all these subject through mind-mapping and that this strategy might even cut down on planning and preparation required too. This research led him to validating and encouraging results.The third part of this episode is a recording of a teacher describing their self-study research that they conducted as their master's thesis in graduate school. Tina McCulloch, graduate of the Arts Integration Endorsement program, was recorded presenting her story to a classroom of teachers during the program in 2019. She describes the context of her classroom, the problems she was facing and how she found solutions in arts education  to address those problems. Her description of her study is a great example of how to use critical friends and utilize self-reflection for greater understanding of your practice. Follow Us:BYU ARTS Partnership NewsletterAdvancingArtsLeadership.comSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifyInstagramFacebookDon't forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership Arts in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts. Search by grade-level, art form or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

Art supplies can be broken down into two categories: Consumable and non-consumable. Non-consumable art supplies are things like scissors, paper punches, staplers, etc. Consumable art supplies or materials are items such as crayons, markers, pencils, etc. In today's episode, we're walking through our favorite consumable essential arts integration supplies, as well as how you can gather and organize them without a lot of upfront cost. Find all the show notes, links to recommended supplies, and more at artsintegration.com/sparkchasers 

Cristina Dell'Acqua"Il nodo magico"Ulisse, Circe e i legami che rendono liberiMondadori Editorehttps://www.librimondadori.it/Possono i legami renderci liberi? Sì, se sono fatti di nodi magici, direbbe Omero.Per pochi istanti, in pochi versi dell'Odissea, Omero ci presenta un vero nodo ed è quando Arete, madre di Nausicaa e regina dei Feaci, dona a Ulisse, prima del suo ultimo viaggio verso Itaca, uno scrigno pieno di tesori e lo prega di legarlo saldamente con un nodo. Quello che Ulisse esegue è un nodo che gli ha insegnato molti anni prima la maga Circe. C'è quindi da scommettere che si tratti di un nodo magico.Il nodo di Circe non è un nodo qualsiasi, è femminile, perché si scioglierà grazie alle donne incontrate, è desmòs, dal verbo deo che significa legare, poikilos, complesso, come è la vita, colorato, variopinto, come sa renderlo la maga. Il nodo è l'essenza dei legami profondi. È una saldatura, invisibile. Ci tiene stretti all'altro, ma non è prigione. I legami veri non possono che essere un dono di libertà, di cura, di attenzione, di ascolto dell'altro.Questo libro parla dunque di Ulisse e dei suoi legami. Nel suo lungo viaggio di ritorno da Troia, è uomo vittorioso, ma solo. Non più un eroe ma un naufrago. Il senso e la direzione non sa più dove siano. Saranno alcuni incontri speciali ad aiutarlo a ritrovare una forza che non è scritta in nessuna guerra. Nausicaa, Circe, Calipso, Penelope, Anticlea, Atena sono le figure che lo guidano in un percorso che non è solo un ritorno a casa, ma una sorta di mappa della sua educazione sentimentale. Il ritorno di Ulisse è costruito sui nodi dell'amore, dell'amicizia e dell'ospitalità ma anche del dolore e della nostalgia, fondamenta indispensabili per la ricostruzione della memoria di chi è stato e di chi diventerà. Al pari di Ulisse, tutti noi siamo le nostre relazioni.Cristina Dell'Acqua torna a sondare il mondo classico a caccia di domande e risposte che illuminino anche il nostro presente. «In questo nuovo viaggio» scrive «ci guideranno la fantasia di Omero, le donne, gli amici, le anime che Ulisse incontrerà e il nodo intricato e magico, che scopriremo legato a doppio filo a noi. Per ricordare, oggi e sempre, che nei legami è riposta la nostra libertà.»Cristina Dell'Acqua, laureata in Lettere Classiche all'Università degli Studi di Milano, insegna latino e greco ed è vicepreside al Collegio San Carlo di Milano. Da sempre appassionata di sperimentazione didattica, si è specializzata in Arts Integration ad Annapolis, USA. È coautrice di Il futuro è antico. L'uso del teatro classico nell'educazione e nella formazione (2011) e autrice di Una Spa per l'anima. Come prendersi cura della vita con i classici greci e latini (Mondadori 2018). Da diversi anni è organizzatrice di incontri di lingua e cultura greca per adulti appassionati.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

Welcome to Episode 13 of The Darlington Podcast! In this episode, Stefan Eady, assistant head of school for academic affairs, talks with Fine Arts Director Kim Tunnell and learning specialists Molly Jordan and Jennifer Luitwieler. They take a closer look into how the arts are integrated into Darlington's curriculum and what that looks like for students of all ages.  https://www.darlingtonschool.org/ExploreDarlington (Explore Darlington )and see how the arts, technology, community involvement, and athletics are woven into the student experience.  https://www.darlingtonschool.org/Today/Details/5591502 (Click here) for complete show notes.

On this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast Rebecca Midles is talking with Randy Weiner and James Bailey about their new book The Daily SEL Leader: A Guided Journal.  Aside from being an author, Randy Weiner co-founded and served as the first Chairman of the Board at Urban Montessori Charter School (UMCS) in Oakland, CA—the nation's first public Montessori, Arts Integration and Design Thinking school. He is also a co-founder and the CEO at BrainQuake, a two-time U.S. Department of Education Small Business Innovation Award winner.  James Bailey's career has encompassed teacher, principal, school turnaround, principal consultant, and superintendent roles spanning Texas, Colorado, and Wyoming. As Superintendent in Wyoming,  his district was the first member in the state to join the League of Innovative Schools after reform efforts around personalized learning and social-emotional development. Let's listen in as they discuss the impetus for a daily SEL practice and the importance of educator self-care and self-efficacy.  Links:  Corwin The Daily SEL Leader: A Guided Journal Twitter: Corwin PressTwitter: James BaileyTwitter: Randy WeinerDebbie Silver on Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8Mark White and Dwight Carter on Leading Schools in Disruptive Times

Professional theater director and Ithaca college professor Gavin Mayer discusses the High School Arts Integration program he and his colleagues founded and how the arts make our students better, smarter and kinder human beings.    Resources: Connect with The Art Docent Program Find Gavin Mayer Learn about the Pomona Arts and Humanities Program

Cally Flox and Heather Francis discuss what they've learned about resilience and share their experiences of living through a global pandemic. This episode is a recap of the six episodes in Series 2 of the Artful Teaching Podcast.

We can discover our voice as artists and individuals by knowing when we want to say yes and when we want to say no. Join us to practice four different, grounded ways to say "no". This episode is a recap of the workshop Cally facilitated in the "Learning to Thrive Not Just Survive" series she held for classroom teachers in the Fall of 2020.

To subscribe to the BYU ARTS Partnership blog: http://byuartspartnershipblog.org/subscribe-to-our-blog/To read about/book Cally's workshops: http://callyflox.com/workshops/

You can watch highlights of the Skype Laughter Chain here: 

Episode 087 | Mindfulness, Education, and Conscious Parenting with Lucretia Anderson, Founder, CEO Joyful Muse Co, LLC Instagram: @joyfulmuseocoaching Website: www.joyfulmusecoaching.com Lucretia's life's journey has been guided by the undeniable spirit of empowering others with a sense of joy and wonder. They are a former arts administrator with the Smithsonian Institution and Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, trained arts integration workshop facilitator, performing artist, and English educator, mindfulness coach, writer, mental health advocate, and a mother of two with almost ten years of experience with guiding young women in personal development at Orchard House School for Girls in Richmond, Va. Their writing has been featured in Richmond City Mom's Blog, Arts Integration in Schools: Teachers and Teaching Artists as Agents of Change (Intellect Books 2017) and will be featured in an upcoming book of essays entitled Raising the Global Mindset, slated for publication through Raising World Children Publishing this year. Joyful Muse Coaching was launched this year in response to the growing (or perhaps way overdue) call for restorative healing practices within the creative community and for women, adolescents, and educators. They offer one to one transformational life coaching, motivational speaking on mindset and mental health issues for parents of adolescents and within the Black Community, as well Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction workshops for parents and educators. For more information: go to: shawnjmoore.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/themindfulrebel/support

Today we welcome arts integration teacher Hannah Keefer. Hannah is an arts integration instructor at numerous elementary schools in California. In this episode, we talk about how acting and theatre can change the way kids learn and feel and the benefits that arts integration can have on the younger generation. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/themoreyouknowpod/support