Program Summaries

Revealing Character
A language arts teacher and a visual art teacher ask eighth-graders to demonstrate their understanding of a novel's characters by creating unusual ceramic place settings.

Breathing Life Into Myths
Puppetry provides a lively way for a language arts teacher to engage her sixth-graders in exploring Greek myths.   For help with puppetry techniques, she draws on the expertise of her school's theatre teacher.

Two Dance Collaborations
In a first-time collaboration, a dance teacher and a science teacher combine forces to explore the laws of motion with a seventh- and eighth grade dance class.   At another school, a dance teacher and a math teacher work with sixth-graders on imaginative interpretations of the idea of circles.

Constructing a Community
A visual art teacher and a social studies teacher use the distinctive architecture and history of their school's neighborhood to help eighth-graders see their community in a new light.

Making Connections
Teachers of music, visual art, and theatre build thoughtful connections to topics their seventh-graders are working on in social studies and language arts.

Exploring Our Town
Seventh- and eighth-grade students explore Thornton Wilder's classic play Our Town from the perspectives of theatre, visual art, music, language arts, and social studies.

Creating a Culture – The Story Begins
Sixth-graders develop their own cultures, complete with language, clothing, artwork, and rituals.   Weeks of hard work culminate in a surprising twist.   This program is the first of two parts.

Analyzing a Culture – The Story Continues
Students become archeologists, analyzing artifacts from other student-created cultures.   They then design a museum exhibit from those artifacts.   This program is the second of two parts.

Folk Tales Transformed
A visiting theatre artist works with a language arts teacher and a visual art teacher to help eighth-graders transform folk tales into original scenes that the students perform.

Preserving a Place for the Arts
When faced with budget cuts, the staff of a rural middle school finds innovative ways to keep the arts a viable part of the curriculum.

Can Frogs Dance?
A dance teacher and a science teacher ask seventh-graders to compare the anatomy of frogs and humans.   Then a language arts teacher coaches the students in a lively debate about whether a frog should be allowed to join a ballet company.

Finding Your Voice
Drawing on themes of conflict and genocide that eighth-graders are studying in their World Cultures class, four arts teachers organize an interdisciplinary unit that encourages students to use their artwork as a form of protest.