University Partners with Arts Organizations to Educate Teachers

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Participants in the ARTeacher Fellowship Program gathered on May 30 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville for a final day of training and a reception celebrating the program’s first year.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The first group of participants in the ARTeacher Fellowship Program said the year-long arts-integration instruction changed the way they teach.

Several said the program was the best professional development experience they have had as teachers. It was put on by a partnership of the Center for Children and Youth at the University of Arkansas, the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.

The fellows were honored at a year-end celebration May 30 at Crystal Bridges, at which representatives of all of the groups involved spoke and the fellows described the program's impact. Several principals of the schools represented by the fellows also attended.

"This training has revolutionized the way I have taught and it will continue to," said Bryant Davis, a world history teacher and coach at Bentonville High School. "This is by far the most effective training I've ever had. It has led to more student engagement, more student expression and less behavior problems."

Davis said he and Josh Vest, another of the fellows who teaches English at Bentonville High, plan to teach an art-based, project-based class together next year combining world history and world literature.

"This class for 60 students will pretty much be what we've learned here," Davis said.

The fellows and their schools:

• Katy Buehrer, English, Hackett High School
• Bryant Davis, world history, Bentonville High School
• Brandon Flammang, social studies and art history, Archer Learning Center, Springdale
• Scott Lampkin, history, Fayetteville High School
• Wayne Levering, ESL American government, ESL American history, human relations, Heritage High School, Rogers
• Katy Moore, English, Har-Ber High School, Springdale
• John O'Berski, English and drama, Lincoln High School
• Elizabeth Spicer, English, Rogers High School
• Joshua Vest, English, Bentonville High School
• Kenya Windel, English, Deer High School

The program began last summer with a three-day institute followed by five days of professional development spaced throughout the school year. The program changed their teaching lives and techniques, several of the participants said, and trips to Crystal Bridges were life-changing for their students. Others said they thought they were already integrating arts into their classrooms, but the program made they realize they were just scratching the surface.

"I had also thought that I knew what arts integration was by putting a picture up and saying this is from the time period we're going to read about, 'Isn't it cool?' " said Moore, of Har-Ber High. "It's not. My kids are producing art. They are engaging in art. They are desperate to come to class to find out what we're going to talk about."

O'Berski, of Lincoln, said the arts fellowship helped him realize how much all of the arts can show students that art is real and representative of their cultural heritage.

"They see how much fun it is and that it's for them," O'Berski said. "My ideas about teaching have really changed this year because I think I've gone from feeling like a literature  person who wants to make literature more interesting to seeing art as the entryway for all of learning."

Chris Goering, director of the Center for Children and Youth and an associate professor of English education at the U of A, said the pilot project started with high school teachers of English and social studies with the long-term goal of expanding to kindergarten through 12^th grades in all subject areas across the state. He said the College of Education and Health Professions established the Center for Children and Youth in 2006 with an emphasis on helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds, stimulating creative learning through the arts, and developing pro-social behavior in children.

Laura Goodwin, vice president of learning and engagement at the Walton Arts Center, said the Walton Arts Center and the Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative have been partners for more than 20 years with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington in providing professional development to train teachers to use arts throughout the curriculum. They brought in educators and performing artists to work with the ARTeacher participants through dance, visual art and reader's theater.

Anne Kraybill, director of school programs for Crystal Bridges, said the fellows became a professional learning community through the program. She described another presenter brought in by Crystal Bridges who helped take the mystery out of teaching from works of art and two from the National Gallery of Art who taught the fellows how to create open-ended questions that help students understand and talk about art in different ways.

"Everybody was able to use these strategies to get their students to care, to make these relevant connections to subject matters in English and social studies that might not seem inherently relevant," Kraybill said.

Hung Pham, a graduate assistant for the Center for Children and Youth, and Patricia Relph, arts learning specialist with the Walton Arts Center, provided leadership and service throughout the year.

Eight of the 10 fellows will continue this summer with the second year of the program, Goering said, with the expectation that all fellows will share what they learn with other teachers in their schools and beyond.