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Grant Proposal to AZDOE
Summary
Full Proposal
The Artist Teacher Institutes by the Arizona Commission on the
Arts provide strategies and tools for teaching with and about the arts.
The Institutes also help classroom teachers, arts specialists, teaching
artists and administrators value the arts by their personal experience as art
makers.
The Institute helps participants connect tools strategies to
their teaching practice, linking specific classroom arts discipline and academic
curriculum and the Arizona arts standards. The Institutes begin with a process of art making and address
theatre, dance and visual art standards for creating in the arts. The Institute
workshops provide an experiential introduction to the arts disciplines with a
primary focus on theatre and dance and a secondary focus on music and visual
arts. Creating in the arts nurtures
the relationship between reflection and perception. The Institutes include an emphasis on a discussion and
reflection process that leads teachers to connect and apply the arts experiences
to the Arizona Arts Standards and with their own teaching practice and
curriculum. The Institutes provide
educators with specific arts learning tools to use in their classroom programs,
addressing arts literacy and arts integration in the full curriculum.
Overview
Building on creative experiences, reflection, and discussion,
the Institutes guide participants in an exploration of activities and tools for
translating their experience as art makers into strategies for implementing an
arts curriculum in their individual classroom programs.
Participants in the Artist Teacher Institutes first learn
theater, dance (using text and music) and visual arts improvisational structures
and games that are authentically related to creating and understanding elements
of each of those disciplines. Next
they practice adapting those improvisational tools and games to address
understanding about specific content in other arts and academic areas.
The Artist Teacher Institutes address theater and dance as primary focus,
visual arts and music as secondary focus.
By providing educators with first-hand experience in creating
art and tools to teach students artistic processes, the Institutes ensure that
teachers will have enhanced skills, knowledge, and confidence to integrate the
Arizona Arts Standards into the daily curriculum.
An underlying belief that informs the design and presentation
on the Institutes is that when teachers tap into their own creativity and are
given valuable curriculum tools, they then elevate the quality of the work of
their students. This Institute
intends to help participants engage in active inquiry and to discover
possibilities of meaning within the disciplines and processes studied
Arts Integration
In a balanced curriculum, students should also have the
opportunity to use what is learned in one discipline to clarify or enhance an
idea, concept, or skill in another. As
a resource offering unique perceptual, cognitive, social and personal
development opportunities, the arts can be used to assist in learning other
content areas. The integration and
balancing of different discipline areas in the curriculum with arts tools offers
a larger repertoire of multi-modal teaching/learning opportunities in these
disciplines, and build skills in problem solving, communicating, and working
with others. By providing educators
with tools and methods for integrating the arts in academic content areas such
as language arts, math, science and social science, students will have greater
opportunity to achieve and demonstrate proficiency levels of achievement
relative to the Arizona Academic Standards for these disciplines.
The teaching process is rich in opportunities for perception,
production and reflection in the arts for both teacher and student.
Much of teaching is a blend of various arts talents.
The Artist Teacher Institute helps to find, finesse and celebrate those
talents and provide strategies to apply those talents (via the arts) to the full
curriculum in a practical, participatory and supportive environment.
The Teaching for Understanding framework (Project
Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education) is a research –based, classroom
tested approach for making understanding a more achievable goal in classrooms.
As a tool for designing, conducting and reflecting on classroom practices
that nourish student understanding the Teaching for Understanding Framework
informs and is central to the work of the Artist Teacher Institute.
The
Institutes also explore methods of ongoing assessment.
When understanding is the purpose of instruction, the process of
assessment is more than just one of evaluation, it is a substantive contribution
to learning. Assessment needs to inform students, teachers and teaching artists
about what students currently understand
and about how to proceed with subsequent teaching and learning.
In order to have arts teaching and learning play a central
role in establishing a significant impact on comprehensive school reform it is
important to have a critical mass of stakeholders from a school participate in
the technical assistance program. Previous
Institutes have been effective in building community among school faculty,
administrators and community teaching artists and in providing specific,
applicable professional development in teaching with, about and through the
arts. The work of the Artist
Teacher Institute, taught by a team of teaching artists with varied, specific
artistic expertise, relies on the energy a group provides and can be adjusted to
serve 25-38 participants. T
o download a copy of the full proposal submitted to the AZDOE as a word document
click here
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