PD SESSION: Arts Matters: Integrating the Arts Across the Curriculum

On Thursday, October 27 and Friday, October 28 I attended the optional Arts Matters conference, where we discussed how to implement the arts across the curriculum. This experience was great! It helped confirmed my thoughts of wanting to teach the arts in an elementary school one day. I left the 2-day conference feeling motivated and confident. This PD session allowed teacher candidates the opportunity to interact with the fellow colleagues and experienced teachers who have the love for the arts.

About the Arts Matters Conference:

The conference started with a keynote speech by Dr. Larry Sawrtz. His speech was very inspirational and engaging. He helped to outline possible ways to integrate the arts in other curriculum areas. This was a great start to a fun-filled two days. After the keynote speaker, we were split up and attended an hour long visual arts workshop and then a hour long drama workshop. The second day started with a great performance called “Raven in the Sky” by Red Sky performance. The performance incorporated the various strands of the arts such as: music, drama and dance. We were then split into groups and attended an hour long workshop for both music and dance. All four of the workshops were engaging and offered valuable lesson ideas and strategies.

This workshop provided me with many ideas of how to effectively implement art throughout the curriculum. I also went home with many lesson plans that I can use in my own classroom one day. Overall, I took home the feeling of inspiration and excitement and will definitely use some of the activities learned in the workshops. I have already used one of the music activities, experienced in the music workshop, in my music presentation at Brock University.

Furthermore, I definitely see a real need for this type of session because I feel that many teachers often skip over the arts. I think this is because teachers are afraid of not being educated enough on the art curriculum or are just too busy and cutting the arts always seems to come first.  This PD session emphasized the importance of the arts and also made me feel like I can teach the arts, even without further education.