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The CoTA Teacher Resource Center will provide teachers a variety of arts-based instructional tools designed to enhance student learning of core academic content in K – 6 classrooms.

Our mission

CoTA (Collaborations: Teachers and Artists), is a 501(c)3 organization that aims to make the arts a lively, essential, and ongoing aspect of elementary school education. CoTA is based on the belief that integrating the visual and performing arts into other content areas promotes engagement, accessibility, and relevance for students. Since its inception in 1998, CoTA has collaborated with more than 450 teachers and 10,000 students at 26 schools throughout San Diego County.

CoTA encourages learning-in-action and exploring new ways to integrate arts learning with other curricula such as literacy, history, science, and math. By enhancing the curriculum with new approaches using the arts, students are engaged in learning through two or more of the seven intelligences outlined by psychologist Howard Gardner (such as bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, logical-mathematical, and linguistic). Through CoTA projects, students are encouraged to work in groups, thus learning collaborative skills, sharpening problem-solving skills, listening/responding to each other during presentations and performances, developing their humanistic side (development of the whole child), and engaging in learning through the arts.

What we are building

The focal point of the site is the Teachers’ Toolbox —a collection of resources designed to support arts-based instruction in the classroom.

Core components include:

Lessons—Database of arts-based projects that extend student learning and deepen their understanding of core academic content material.
How-Tos—Instructions on a variety of visual and performing arts techniques that are proven to engage students in learning.
Forum—A place for artists and educators to converse about arts-based instructional approaches.

The site will also include information on CoTA programs (three-year artist/teacher collaborations, in-service professional development workshops for teachers, conferences and exhibitions), partners and funders, as well as links to valuable online art education resources.