Muscogee kindergarten teachers learn ways to integrate arts into lessons

As more than 200 Muscogee County School District kindergarten teachers and paraprofessionals were about to learn ways to integrate the arts into their lesson plans during Tuesday’s conference at Northside High School, Norman Easterbrook reminded them of the gathering’s goal.

“Through the arts, and through what we hope to accomplish today, we hope to give you an arrow in your quiver of wonderful, talented skills that you have,” said Easterbrook, executive director of the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts. “You can bridge that gap and let that child see a deeper relevancy in the world in which they live.”

The RiverCenter collaborated with the Woodruff Arts Center, the Alliance Arts for Learning Institute and Georgia Wolf Trap to bring seven teaching artists to work with the educators in breakout sessions. They learned how to design and incorporate arts-integrated concepts into their teaching. Two of the shows coming to the RiverCenter, “Junie B.’s Essential Survival Guide to School” (Nov. 7) and “Seussical the Musical” (Feb. 2), will be the basis for their lesson plans.

And their classes will see those shows for free.

Rick McKnight, the RiverCenter’s director of education, explained the reason for his institution’s investment.

“The RiverCenter is a community asset,” he told the Ledger-Enquirer, “and we have a responsibility to help spark imagination and creativity in children.”

Kinetic Credit Union is the program’s underwriting sponsor, and Brasfield & Gorrie contractors paid for the lunch.

The conference is part of MCSD’s effort to add an “A” for the arts to the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and math — and to become a STEAM school district.

MCSD Superintendent David Lewis said it’s up to the kindergarten teachers and para-pros to lay a solid foundation for students to enjoy learning.

“You set the stage for how kids think,” he told them. “Unfortunately, what has happened in our country, kids come in, they’re excited about school, they love school … and the longer they’re with us the more they hate it. … It shouldn’t be that way. The same energy and enthusiasm they have in kindergarten, first grade and second grade, they should build upon that, and it should grow throughout their educational careers.”

The conference featured two keynote speakers: Jennifer Cooper, director of the Vienna, Va.-based Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, and Wolf Trap master teaching artist Rachel Knudson.

The nonprofit organization’s name comes from the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts.

According to Wolf Trap’s website, an independent study conducted by the American Institutes for Research and funded by the U.S. Department of Education indicates teachers using Wolf Trap’s arts-integrated early childhood strategies significantly improve their students’ performance in math, and another AIR analysis shows such students gaining the equivalent of more than a month of additional math learning.

Infusing the arts into the classroom, Cooper said, improves complex thinking and abstract reasoning. For example, she said, patterns are the basis for algebra and they are essential in dance.

Knudson illustrated that example further when she showed how math can help examine a ballerina’s pirouette. True arts integration, she said, has equal parts academics and arts.

McKnight told the educators something not often heard at a conference: “Take your cellphones out and use them, because we want to spread this word.”

He encouraged the educators to use the hashtags #ArtsReach and #RCTI2016, which stands for the RiverCenter’s Teachers Institute, and to visit the RiverCenter’s Teachers Lounge public Facebook page to share their ideas.

This story was originally published August 2, 2016 at 12:53 PM with the headline "Muscogee kindergarten teachers learn ways to integrate arts into lessons."