Arts in Education

Integrating Arts with Professional Development Workshops

“I thought the planning of the institute was fabulous. You gave us so many ideas that we could then take and implement with our ideas to teach other teachers.” —Judi Morrison, Music teacher with the Bangor School Department.

	Professional development institute participants brainstorm ideas for arts integration workshops (left to right): Maxine Marquis, Marta Robbins, Rick Osann, Diane Noble. Photo by Argy Nestor.

In August of 2005, the Maine Arts Commission convened 22 participants to take part in a first of its kind professional development institute held for four days on the Colby College campus in Waterville. The institute’s purpose was to help these individuals hone the skills necessary to present workshops on integrating the arts for teachers in their own regions across the state. During the 2005–2006 school year, these institute-trained artist-educators went out to spread the word and show their peers the why’s and how’s of teaching the arts through the curriculum. Using a proven model of teacher to teacher training, these advocates for the arts demonstrated new ways for other teachers to develop standards-based teaching in and throughout the arts by linking one or more of the visual and performing arts disciplines with the study of language, math, science, social studies and history.

Amy Odom and Rick Osann teamed up to present four workshops one in Gorham, two in South Portland and one in MSAD #55. As they delivered their workshop presentations they lead their fellow teachers through the advantages to students of integrating subjects, providing examples of integrated units done in Maine schools, the steps of designing an integrated unit and assisting participants to develop a sample unit on Native American culture. “Things went really well.” Amy said, “We received very positive feedback that we made it seem easy to incorporate an art project or drama into a unit. Also, this experience totally prepared me for my new masters program in Arts Integration that I am taking from Lesley University, and now I’m doing the drama piece in my group project for my masters course.”

Rick echoed Amy’s enthusiasm, “I am a research nut,” he said. “So when I start a subject with which I am unfamiliar I want to know everything there is to know about it before putting together any kind of report. This proved to be the best part of the process for me, as I learned a great deal about Native American culture and discovered the inherent connection with arts integration; the tales of the Native Americans are wonderful integrated lessons of their own. That fact pulled together the concept of our workshop, at least from my perspective, and made the rest of the planning simple. I really enjoyed the learning process about Native American culture and will be able to put that to use in my classes.”

In all, this group of trainers presented 35 regional workshops to more than 250 attendees at conferences, colleges, school systems, arts organizations and other locations in ten counties across the state. The program reached a broad spectrum of teaching professionals from the early childhood teaching community through all the grade levels and into post secondary institutions where education majors took advantage of workshops presented at classes in their college or university. The overwhelming evidence from evaluating the results of these workshops is that this program was a success and that it should continue. One of the most significant factors in this program’s success is in the influence the training has had on the way that participants think about their teaching.

	Workshop presenters Marsha Emery, Arden Thompson and Tracy Quimby integrate physical theater in a workshop demonstration. Photo by Argy Nestor.

Jude Valentine, another institute graduate, put it this way, “I think the Institute provided wonderful connections with peers and the follow-up workshop was a great opportunity to share the work with others in my community. The follow-up workshop I presented at the Early Childhood Education Center at the University of Maine at Machias was well received and of value to the participants and our region in general. Feedback I received from the presentation was positive and gave participants new confidence in presenting visual art experiences and arts integration lesson planning for young children. A follow up project that the center director and I designed (and received an Early StARTS grant to implement), expanded upon the initial Institute workshop to include the cultural resources of the local university campus and visual art making opportunities for parents, children and staff. This project reached 58 participants over 3 months. As a result, the director of the early education program is very interested in continuing to develop more arts in education and arts integration planning to include other media such as music.”

A remaining question is how these teacher development workshops should carry on and where this program may fit in with the plans of the Maine Department of Education (MDOE). Argy Nestor, the new visual and performing arts specialist at MDOE who will work specifically on helping teachers create a curriculum that incorporates the arts has said, “This program should continue and there should be a website where teachers may go to find handouts from the workshops and examples of lesson plans. The strong relationship between the Maine Arts Commission and MDOE represents a natural partnership that should ensure the continuation of these workshops.”

Continuation of this component of the professional development program will be contingent on several factors. Current plans include ongoing advocacy with teachers for integrating the arts in their curriculum, maintaining an on-line discussion group on integrating the arts, expanding the network of regional sites for workshop presentations, publicizing the availability of these workshops for teachers and working closely with MDOE to make a statewide network of professional development workshops in the arts for teachers a reality.

The Maine Arts Commission encourages all school administrators to make professional development in the arts more accessible to classroom teachers in their regions by supporting and participating in this regional workshop series. Widely recognized research from sources such as the Presidents Committee on the Arts and Humanities indicates that interdisciplinary instruction which includes the visual and performing arts, improves learning in all content areas.

	Arts in Education

Another of the Maine Arts Commission’s Arts in Education program’s primary strategic planning goals is to provide high quality professional development opportunities for teaching artists. The agency cosponsored two professional development events for artists that took place in the summer of 2006. The first event, Artists and Youth: Working Together to Discover Something New presented by the New England Consortium of Artist – Educator Professionals (NECAP), was at the Widening the Circle annual conference which took place at Wheelock College in Boston, MA. This one day conference provided artists an opportunity to gather with fellow artist-educators and youth workers in a day devoted to the field of arts-based youth development. Then in August, 2006, Teaching Artist Institute at Leslie University, also cosponsored by NECAP, presented a two day intensive course of study exploring strategies for successful teaching, creating dynamic school-artist partnerships, improving arts integration and more. The Maine Arts Commission sponsors these events as a consortium partner and publicizes several of these opportunities throughout the year in the press, through the Arts in Education listserv and on MaineArts.com.

To find out more about the Maine Arts Commission’s Arts in Education Professional Development program or the Professional Development Regional Workshops series contact: contact Paul Faria, 207/287-2790, paul.faria@maine.gov or TTY/NexTalk 877/887-3878 User ID: paul.faria.

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