Arts Integration

NEWS

MAAE Expands its Eastport Integration Pilot to English Teachers County-wide – registration deadline has been extended!

The schoolwide teacher-based arts integration pilot in AOS #77 schools in Eastport that MAAE has been developing since 2018 in collaboration with the Department of Education will be expanded to teachers county-wide beginning this August.  With the support of the Washington County Consortium of Superintendents, the expansion of the pilot will continue its focus since last year on training English teachers at the secondary school level to integrate theater into their teaching.
 
English teachers county-wide of middle and high school grades are being invited to attend a training on August 19th and 20th at Eastport’s Shead High School.  The pilot’s training will give the teachers flexible, hands-on strategies that they can weave into their teaching of any text and adapt to any middle or high school grade level. The enjoyable, theater-based group activities require no special acting talent or even interest in theater. Most importantly, they are intended to engage and deepen students’ connection with curriculum texts, while the creative group interaction itself can foster a new level of social comfort among the students.
 
That same experience of connection both to the texts and to each other is the outcome MAAE hopes to achieve at the August two-day group “intensive” at Shead High School, which will be led by professional Maine theater integration trainer Dana Legawiec, (herself a former English major).  The teachers will interact together both in the theater activities themselves and in large and small group discussions about how best to apply them to texts they teach in common. They’ll also be given complimentary meals together, welcoming receptions hosted by Eastport arts organizations, and overnight local housing at a reduced price if they need it.
 
And the project won’t be over in August.  A private social media platform will be provided to the teachers for the teachers’ continued idea sharing and communication when they return to school and try out the strategies with their students.  And two group “reunion” sessions will be scheduled next year (one in the fall and one in the spring), as well as virtual meetings TBD by the group. Certificates of contact hours toward recertification will be available for all the training sessions.
 
The training is free but registration by August 9 is required. Please click here to register. Stay tuned for more information within the next few weeks, including about participant stipends and recertification credits.  For more information contact Susan Potters at spotters@maineartsed.org.
 

Eastport Pilots Schoolwide Arts Integration

In partnership with the administration of AOS 77 in Eastport, and with the encouragement of the Maine Department of Education, MAAE has been piloting the state’s first model of schoolwide and classroom teacher-based arts integration in theater and dance. Designed by MAAE to be sustainable at schools in Maine’s many remote, low-income communities, the model piloted in Eastport offers a way for Maine schools to respond to the growing research showing the benefits of arts integrated instruction for student learning and engagement. The project began last year at the Eastport Elementary School, grades Pre-k through 8. This year MAAE has been expanding its pilot to grades 9-12 at Eastport’s Shead High School. Funding has come from the Maine Community Foundation’s Washington County Fund and the Davis Family Foundation.

Unlike the models adopted by large urban schools in other states, which rely more extensively on the local presence of theater and dance artists, the MAAE model provides classroom teachers themselves with flexible models of individual and group student creation in theater and movement and gives the teachers the training and professional support to adapt those activities throughout their curriculum. The Maine DOE is treating the pilot as a case study, whose results the Department can help us disseminate statewide. 

At a demonstration at Eastport Elementary School last May by the EES teachers and students of every grade level parents and community members got to see exciting examples of the results at the elementary and middle school level. Those included grade 1/2 showing through movement the life cycle of plants, grade 5/6 enacting its exploration of missing scenes in a Harry Potter novel, and grade 7/8 performing the powerful dance they had created showing the apocalyptic impact of climate change. In the demonstration’s finale the 7/8 class invited the other students – and the adults too! – to join them in forming a group shape based on positive and negative space. One by one the students – even pre k four-year olds! – added themselves eagerly into the shape, and several adults joined in as well. It was quite a day! See below for photos. To see the write-up in the local newspaper, The Quoddy Tides, click here.

K 4-5 students demonstrate different weather conditions through movement
Grades 1/2 students show that the spring sun will revive the plants that have withered during the winter.
The climate change dance by grade 7/8 begins with glacial ice rising high…
A group sculpture based on positive and negative space begins to take shape… and others want to join in!

INFO, TIPS AND RESOURCES

The weaving of art-making strategies into the teaching of non-arts content areas of ELA, math, science and social studies has been shown to boost student engagement and student achievement. Low income and special needs students have been found to be helped more by arts-integrated classroom instruction in ELA and math than by traditional remedial programs. Arts integration is most effective when it is a school-wide practice, and the classroom teachers themselves are trained to integrate the arts, and can use them also to respond to unexpected opportunities and changing classroom needs, rather than relying only on pre-scheduled visits from teaching artists. For rural schools in low income and remote communities, the classroom teacher-centered model is also more practical and sustainable.