The Value of Arts Integration

Learning through the arts is an exciting way to engage students. But integrating the arts into your curriculum can be more than just an engagement strategy. The arts can cross a multitude of grade levels and disciplines and reach a wide variety of learners. Critical thinking, risk taking, and collaboration are just some of the areas where Bates Middle School educators report big improvements since integrating the arts.

Bates Middle School in Annapolis, Maryland got started with Arts Integration as part of a school-wide turnaround effort. Edutopia highlighted this middle school as part of its “Schools that Work” feature. “The school made changes in schedules, funding, and even the approach to community and parent involvement. Most important, the teachers had to change. Through intensive and continual professional development, teachers now are able to engage students in content they previously found uninteresting. The transformation was successful because every teacher integrated arts into their teaching.”

Creating a learning environment that fosters and encourages creativity requires teachers to be creative too. Edutopia’s feature on Bates Middles School, Integrate the Arts, Deepen the Learning provides some tips for teachers wanting to pursue arts integration:

• Take advantage of professional development: PD serves many purposes. It can help teachers learn the fundamentals of various art forms and develop integrated lessons, and it provides them with the opportunity to experience art for themselves.
• Use AI intentionally: At Bates, every teacher is required to use AI in some shape or form, although not every lesson needs to be, or should be, taught with AI. Teachers should use two main criteria for implementing AI:
• Look for a natural fit with the content.
• Identify where students are struggling. AI can provide a context that will help students build connections and gives them triggers for remembering the content later.
• Collaborate and brainstorm: Brainstorming is one of the best ways to develop arts-integrated lessons.

Pepper Professional Development Courses and Workshops and the Resource Library can help provide support as you think about arts integration in the classroom. Arts Integration provides a great opportunity to engage and excite students and can be an effective way to differentiate instruction. At Pepper we're adding new courses and workshops regularly so we can support educators in reaching students and creating lifelong learners.