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Partners in Education

In 2010, Young Auditorium and The School District of Janesville were accepted as a team in the Kennedy Center's Partners in Education program.  The team participates in ongoing training to develop the Reaching New Horizons program, which provides professional development training in arts integration for teachers in the region.  Arts integration is an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form.  The purpose of the program is to empower teachers with the skills and knowledge needed to connect an art form (music, drama, dance, visual art) with another subject area, such as math, science, social studies or reading.  The goal of the program is to best meet the needs of all learners by engaging multiple learning modalities: visual, aural and kinesthetic, and providing opportunities for the different ways in which students acquire, process, and demonstrate what they know.

The Young Auditorium and School District of Janesville are members of the Partners in Education program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Selected because of their demonstrated commitment to the improvement of education in and through the arts, the Partnership Team participates in collaborative efforts to provide professional development opportunities in the arts for educators.Six schools will participate in an arts integration pilot program as a part of Reaching New Horizons during the 2012-2013 school year.  Teams of 4-5 teachers and administrators from LINCS (Lincoln Inquiry Charter School) in Whitewater, Kennedy Elementary, Madison Elementary, Roosevelt Elementary, Van Buren Elementary, and Edison Middle School in Janesville will attend at least two of the Reaching New Horizons professional development workshops.  Additional support will be provided to the teams post-workshop through classroom demonstrations of teaching strategies by the teaching artists/workshop presenters, on-line communication with colleagues and team meetings to support strategy implementation.  The goal of the pilot program is to provide in depth professional development and a support network for teams of teachers at schools that are interested in integrating the arts with core subject areas.  Please contact Shannon (262-472-1432) if you would like more information about coordinating a team at your school.This year we are offering four 3-hour professional development workshops.  The workshops focus on the arts disciplines of drama and movement/dance which are paired with the core subject areas language arts, science and social studies/diversity.  Presenters are Edric Johnson, Marti Gobel, and Randy Barron. Please see the Reaching New Horizons brochure for full descriptions of each workshop and registration information, or call 262-472-1432.

Arts Integration Links:

• Kennedy Center publications
• Baltimore Sun article: "Arts integrated into other subjects in Howard County schools"
• Scholastic: Strategies for Arts Integration
• Links to arts integration articles
• SE Center for Arts Integration
• The Inspired Classroom: What is True Arts Integration?