Education / Professional Development for Educators

Time at school should be rich and rewarding. When children's imaginations and humanity are engaged in learning, the classroom is where they want be. Arts integration training for teachers transforms how teachers teach as well as how students learn, what students remember and ultimately what they know.

Walton Arts Center is proud to strengthen our schools and support our teachers in making the classroom a dynamic place that can change a child's life. Please enjoy a brief description of our programs, below.


ARTeacher Fellowship

Arts integration training pilot project for high school English and Social Studies teachers. In partnership with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and supported by University of Arkansas Center for Children and Youth.

“I would have never associated dance as a means of arts integration for Language Arts, but our activities and discussions clearly showed its value.” 2012-13 ARTeacher Fellow

As a professional learning team, fellows explore a variety of arts-integration methods as well as document and share their evolving practice and results with other educators and stakeholders. Over the course of the school year fellows participate in more than 50 hours of training led by national arts integration leaders and museum educators, and receive field class support to bring their students to Walton Arts Center or Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The ARTeacher Fellowship is an incubator for arts integration research and the development of future Center for Children & Youth programming.

2012-2013 ARTeacher Fellows:

Brandon S. Flammang English and Social Studies Springdale A.L.E.
Bryant Davis Social Studies Bentonville High School
Elizabeth Spicer English Rogers High School
John O'Berski English Lincoln High School
Joshua Vest English Bentonville High School
Katy Buehrer English Hackett High School
Katy Moore English Har-Ber High School
Kenya I. Windel English Deer High School
Scott Lampkin Social Studies Fayetteville High School
Wayne Levering Social Studies Heritage High School

 

Arts With Education Institute
July 29 - August 2, 2013

An annual week-long summer institute designed to support teachers in integration of arts throughout the curriculum.

“I use [AWE] arts integrated strategies in all subject areas. Since all students do not learn in the same way, it allows my students to become involved using multiple learning modalities. This way all students are reached.”
Melody Moubarak, Elmdale Elementary, Springdale Public Schools
 

Arts With Education (AWE) Institute prepares teachers to use the arts to make teaching across the curriculum more engaging and effective (recent focus: literacy, social studies, math). AWE involves teachers in hands-on, interactive workshops presented by John F. Kennedy Center experts.
Learn more about the Kennedy Center approach to arts education

Each year Walton Arts Center trains approximately 40 teachers and teaching artists at AWE. For every year these teachers include arts integration instruction in their curriculum more than 1200 students will benefit each school year. To see teachers learning how to use arts integration visit our AWE gallery (coming soon). For more information, call Dr. Patricia Relph at 479-571-2773.

Download the registration form

Funding for AWE is provided in part by Crayola® with additional funding from Arkansas Arts Council and Walton Arts Center supporters and benefactors.

SmART Residency

A year-long professional development residency supporting teachers to include the arts across the curriculum and to help students achieve in literacy and their ability to collaborate.

“This training has opened my eyes to the world of arts integration in the classroom and how easy, vital, and engaging it will be for me and my students to learn.”
SmART Residency Teacher
 

With partners the Kennedy Center (Washington, DC) and Trike Theatre (Bentonville), the Walton Arts Center’s 2012 SmART Residency provided more than 60 contact hours of arts integration instruction; 75 contact hours arts integration role modeling in 15 residency classrooms; and gave nearly 400 children access to 2 Walton Arts Center live-performance experiences, Harold and the Purple Crayon and Bear State of Mind. Activities trained grade-level teaching teams to understand, value and use arts integration, increased the frequency of arts integration instruction and supported student achievement while creating a culture of arts integration.
Learn more in the independent evaluator’s report (link coming soon).

SmART Residency School Sonora Elementary (Springdale) will be one of ten US schools profiled in the October issue of Parenting Magazine for their work in arts integration. Walton Arts Center is proud to have our school partner nationally featured during National Arts and Humanities month.

Support for the SmART Residency is provided, in part, by the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Walton Arts Center arts education supporters and benefactors.

Colgate Classroom Series Performance Guides

Colgate Classroom Series Performance Guides

Online arts integration support for educators

"When creating arts integration content for the performance guides, I imagine hands-on activities to expand and deepen the young person's experience of the performance. My intention is to get them thinking, talking and making connections before, during and after they visit Walton Arts Center." Kassie Misiewicz, Executive Artistic Director Trike Theatre

Guides are an easy-to-implement teacher resource that identify links between Classroom Series performances and Common Core state standards. Content is developed in partnership with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, TheatreSquared and Trike Theatre for Youth. Each year more than 700 classes benefit from the pre and post-performance activities suggested in Walton Arts Center Performance Guides.

The 2012-13 Performance Guides have not been posted yet. Coming soon -archives of past seasons performance guides.
View a sample performance guide from 2011 (featuring the Martha Graham Dance Company)

Arts Integration Internet Resources

Online tools for educators to ensure that every teacher in Arkansas has access to arts integration resources

  • As a founding partner of the John F. Kennedy Center's Partners in Education program, Walton Arts Center refers teachers to their exemplary arts integration website, ArtsEdge.

  • Walton Arts Center's Digging Up Arkansas project includes teacher resources created by Northwest Arkansas Writing Project teacher consultants. Lesson plans to improve 3rd to 5th grade students' understanding of Arkansas history can be found on the Walton Arts Center website, here.

  • Working with their affiliated teaching artists and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Walton Arts Center has provided the arts integration component of the Total Instructional Alignment (TIA) Resource Project, a project of the Northwest Arkansas Education Services Cooperative. This state-wide resource is an electronic categorizing and cataloging of internet resources related to Arkansas learning objectives. The resource will provide all Arkansas educators instant access to free internet resources supporting Arkansas learning objectives. For more information, call the Northwest Arkansas Education Service Coop at 479.267.7450.

  • Arts integration lessons, created by Walton Arts Center professional development participants, are shared through Arkansas iTunes U, a library of educational content for educators and students, submitted by universities, state agencies, and not-for-profit institutions. These arts integration learning activities are accessible worldwide to any teacher or learner with an iTunes account. By sharing content on iTunes U, Walton Arts Center joins a growing community of institutions including MoMA, New York Public Library, Stanford, Yale, Oxford, and UC Berkeley. Students and teachers can use iTunes on their computer or through the iTunes U app on their iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to browse and download over 500,000 free resources on thousands of subjects, including arts integration practices at Walton Arts Center.  To access, open your iTunes account and search for "iTunes U Arkansas", or try this link.