Hey CCNY Art Ed family! My name is Amanda During and I am in my final year — moving quite GLACIALLY towards my masters in art education. I have been teaching art for over 10 years — working mainly with preschool through elementary aged students — with a few high school classes here and there. In September of this year I started teaching an arts integration curriculum with all the 9th grade English language arts students in a public high school here in Harlem. I have been inspired and motivated by my students but I have also struggled with feeling effective.
Considering that this program takes up almost 20% of students’ English class time, it has felt critical that this collaboration truly augment the students English curriculum. Unfortunately, the arts organization I am working for did very little in terms of professional development prior to the start of the program. And my collaborating classroom teacher and I were only in the same room once speaking for only 20 minutes prior to my classes beginning. Over the course of the program, I have had lots of “aha” moments many of which have been related to ways things could have been done differently basically ways to improve the program. As a result this teaching experience has put arts integration at the center of my thesis exploration.
I’ve become curious about how different arts education organizations train their teaching artists to develop and execute integrated curricula that engage all students while meeting them where they are. Organizations like LeapNYC and Dreamyard have longstanding in-school arts integration programs, I’m hoping to examine their teaching artist training manuals along with those of a few more organizations in a document review as one of my sources of data.
Because the intention for this — and many other in-school arts collaborations — is integration of the arts with the curriculum rather than simply arts engagement I have been dreaming of a toolkit to help myself and other teaching artists(as I imagine I am not alone in having these feelings…especially considering
all of my experience teaching as well as all my coursework at CCNY). I also hope this research impacts collaborating classroom teachers and ultimately, and most importantly, the students participating in these programs ensuring that everyone takes away the most possible from these types of collaborations.
