Educational Programming
Dance Evert integrates the art of dance with academic content standards.
Through developing an appreciation and understanding of dance we use
movement language to study the core curriculum. Evert Education
supports the teacher’s work in the classroom with amazing results for
children.
Arts Integration
Arts Integration uses an artform to examine and express academic content. Art involves the highest human functions of creativity and invention.
Academic Content Standards
Using your State’s Academic Content Standards for the core curriculum and the arts, instruction is aligned with grade-level goals and objectives.
Social-emotional Learning
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.
Learning Connections
Evert Education engages multiple intelligences, offering children with different learning styles opportunities to succeed.
The creative process allows students to make their own connections- it is participatory, empowering, engages a sense of wonder, and a desire to learn. Fostering growth with 21st-century skills of cooperation, teamwork, and critical thinking.
Traditionally we approach learning in an academic setting with a linguistic approach (talking, writing, and reading). When we take an Art Activities Integrated with Academic Standards we broaden our experience to include what Howard Gardner calls Multiple Intelligences, which are listed here in parentheses. When we start a lesson and ask students to stand and form a circle, we are learning through our bodies (kinesthetically). We become aware (spatially) as we form the circle, we interact (interpersonally) as we become sensitive to the others in the circle, we grow as an individual as we process our own emotional experiences (Intrapersonal), we learn as we establish patterns and set up (musical) frameworks, in order to create the meaning we need movement solutions that are solved (logically and mathematically). As we move we feel the forces of nature such as gravity and balance (Naturalist). Even more, let’s not overlook the core function of the arts, which is an expression of who we are and our response to the world around us. The creative process is fun, engaging learning, and building self-esteem.
Results
Unprecedented jumps in test scores, with up to 40% improvement. The results also show an overwhelming increase in focus and participation among students. Evert Educational programs have been successful in all schools where applied, whether Inner City or Inner Ring, Special Education, or Rural regardless of socio-economic background. (Research-based test scores are available on request).
“Not only does the “Geometry in Motion” program cover my standards so well, it gets students up and moving and enjoying math! I have had the pleasure of seeing so many students who struggle in math excel in the math classroom. Students who do not typically volunteer or participate were in the front row answering questions and helping other students as well!”
-Megan Birchfield
4th Grade Math Teacher
McCormick Middle School
Arts-Integration
Statements from “Renaissance in the Classroom”, pg. xxvi
Why Arts Integration?
"When well-planned and implemented, arts integration is one of the most effective ways for a wide range of students with a wide range of interests, aptitudes, styles, and experiences to form a community of active learners taking responsibility for and ownership of their own learning."
What is arts integration?
Arts integration is an instruction that integrates content and skills from the arts—dance, music, theater, and the visual arts—with other core subjects. Arts integration occurs when there is a seamless blending of the content and skills of an art form with those of a co-curricular subject.
Why do it?
· Arts integration is highly effective in engaging and motivating students. It supports academic achievement and improved the social behavior of students while enhancing school climate and parental involvement.
· A rich array of art skills and intellectual processes provide multiple entry points for students to approach content in other subject areas, while the art instruction is likewise deepened through the integration of content from the other subject areas. The arts provide students multiple modes for demonstrating learning and competency.
· It enlivens the teaching and learning experience for entire school communities. At its best, arts integration is transformative for students, teachers, and communities. The imaginations and creative capacities of teachers and students are nurtured and their aspirations afforded many avenues for realization and recognition.
How do you do it?
· Arts integration is a fundamental cultural shift. It takes time to build awareness, understanding, and commitment among members of the school community.
· Ongoing professional development is essential to give classroom teachers facility in arts disciplines, enable them to analyze curricula to find the natural connections between arts curricula and the curricula of other subject areas, and create lessons and units of instruction.
· Collaboration is essential between and among classroom teachers and arts specialists. Common planning time is critical.
· Arts specialists are key resources, collaborators, and leaders in developing arts integration programs. They are extremely valuable in guiding the planning of professional development and supporting collaboration among teachers and with partners such as cultural institutions and teaching artists.