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Southeast Center for Education in the Arts

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Sallie B. Howard School for the Arts & Education

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Sallie B. Howard School for the Arts & Education, located in Wilson, NC, is a public charter school serving grades K-8. Teaching and learning in, about, and through the arts is central to the mission of the school, where students have the opportunity to study dance, theatre, visual art, and music.

see the Sallie B. Howard School website for more information


The Southeast Center for Education in the Arts created a Professional Development Program in Arts Integration in response to research that has shown that effective professional development must be ongoing, experiential, and engaging; contain focused and relevant content; and become job embedded to effectively impact teacher change. The basic three-year program includes summer workshops and four onsite mentoring visits throughout the academic year.

SCEA staff acted as mentors and facilitators for learning communities of teachers who explored learning in, about, and through the arts. Teachers examined arts integration pedagogy, investigated instructional and assessment practices across grade levels and subject areas, and devised site-based curriculum aligned with state and national educational standards.

The program recognized that teachers bring varying levels of expertise to the table and invited them to work with their SCEA mentor in an individualized way. However, the collaboration between teacher and SCEA mentor branched out into the entire school. As teachers worked through the program, SCEA mentors facilitated many opportunities for teachers to partner and co-teach with their colleagues. As a result, teachers became more effective collaborators with their surrounding community.

A vital piece of this program was establishing an onsite Arts Leadership Team that consisted of teachers, school administrators, and other community stakeholders. The Arts Leadership Team provided a forum in which all educators had a voice in the management and execution of the arts integration initiative. Maintaining ownership among stakeholders was critical for the program’s long-term success.

 

SCEA and SBH were engaged in a four-year partnership to provide site-based professional development, including classroom-based mentoring and art-specific cohort groups, in arts education and integration for the 85-member staff. Intensive workshops were held on-site each summer, and SCEA mentors worked with teachers and their students in their classrooms in the fall and spring. In 2009, SBH received a major grant from the U.S. Department of Education (written by SCEA) to fund the professional development work for three years.




At the 2011 Summer Intensive Workshop, SBH teachers explored concept-based art integration lesson planning and experienced immersion in the arts. In this series of photos teachers experience the differences between giving instruction and giving directions in a session facilitated by Joel Baxley.

 
Instruction vs. Pedagogy
Math & Dance

 

Teachers also engaged in a dance integration lesson led by Erica Locke exploring the concept of "relationship" in Math and Dance. photos

 

2012 Summer Workshop