A districtwide commitment to arts integration

In Keith Spencer’s class, students are making a set of colorful, larger-than-life puppets; in Lisa Norberg’s class, they’re immersed in the subtleties of design thinking. Neither of them is an art teacher, though — Spencer is a 7th-grade English teacher, and Norberg teaches 7th-grade social studies. However, like most of the academic teachers in three K-8 schools in Everett, Mass., they are committed to providing their students with opportunities to blend their learning of core academic subjects with artistic expression and engagement.

Everett is an urban district with high percentages of English learners and students living in poverty, and like many school systems in economically stressed parts of the country, it offers only limited amounts of traditional arts and music instruction — roughly one class every seven days for most students. However, its embrace of arts integration has enabled it to provide meaningful access to many kinds of music, visual art, and theater, reaching students on almost a daily basis.

Inspired by the growing movement to integrate the arts into other parts of the K-12  curriculum, the Everett schools pursued, and in 2013 were awarded, a grant from the federal Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination program. To help them design and launch their approach, district leaders contracted with SmART Schools, a national arts-in-education program that supports schools and districts across the country. And, in turn, SmART Schools created professional development and classroom services for Everett’s middle grades teachers. Shortly before the school year began, 50 of them participated in a weeklong summer institute, which featured instructional coaching by master teaching artists from colleges and arts organizations throughout the region. Just a couple of weeks later, the teachers were implementing an array of new strategies in their own classrooms.