The Maine DOE is inviting arts educators to participate in a professional development program that will deepen student learning and appreciation for the arts while energizing engagement and motivation.
The Maine Arts Integration Collaborative (MAIC) will focus on arts integration across the curriculum and be comprised of Maine arts teachers and an expert advisory team including Dr. Louise Pascale, of Lesley University, and Dr. Lisa Donovan, of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
The program includes four sessions: Introduction to Arts Integration, Why and How of Arts Integration, Arts Integration Connections, and Arts Integration in Practice. After the sessions, MAIC teacher-leaders will develop an arts integration lesson plan and pilot the lesson in their classroom. Following the pilot period, teachers will create arts integration workshops and present them three times to other educators during the 2014-15 school year. The collaborative will collect and share lesson plans and resources for all educators to expand their knowledge and skills to improve teaching and learning across the curriculum.
The goals of the collaborative include:
- Build capacity for educators to share in best practices toward the implementation of arts integration statewide for Visual and Performing Arts
- Increase cross-state collaboration through a webinars, face-to-face regional workshops and online conversations
- Create learning experiences that provides a solid foundation for arts integration theory and practices
- Increase confidence to deliver arts integration methods to students and to other educators
- Encourage reflection that leads to new ways to think about and practice teaching
An outcome of the arts integrated classroom is that students meet dual learning objectives when they engage in the creative process to explore natural connections between an art form and another subject area to gain greater understanding in both. Arts integration creates a rich environment for formative assessment and the characteristics of assessment that support arts integration include, engaging in complex tasks, designing evaluation activities to move students toward self-evaluation and providing criteria to develop independent thinking.
For more information about the Maine Arts Integration Collaborative, contact Maine DOE Visual and Performing Arts Specialist Kevin Facer at kevin.facer@maine.gov or 624-6826.