With your donation, CoTA (Collaborations: Teachers and Artists) is able to continually provide rigorous and meaningful professional development in arts-infused instruction within the educational ecosystem. CoTA offers a number of opportunities for educators, administration, and schools to deepen academic learning by engaging teachers in the design, creation, and presentation of arts-integration projects that align with the academic standards. Our belief is that integrating arts into academic subjects promotes engagement, equitable content access, and pathways to improved achievement for students.
Your donation helps support the following programs:
Collaborations
Over the course of three years, teachers receive approximately 60 hours of one-to-one training with highly qualified teaching artists at their school sites. By the end of the third year, teachers are skillful and purposeful in enlisting the visual and performing arts as a mode of meaning making and communication.
Teacher Institutes
Institutes offer a deep dive into focused arts integrated learning. Over the course of three to five days, educators participate in 20 hours of hands-on learning experiences led by a team of artist educators. CoTA currently offers a STEAM Institute that investigates the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices and Cross Cutting Concepts, and a Literary Institute that demonstrates how the arts can support close reading and literary response in the K-8 classroom.
Artist Training
CoTA’s Artist-Educator Institute is a professional development program for emerging mid-career and experienced teaching artists.
The Institute is designed to build the capacity of visual and performing artists to collaborate with public school teachers and transform schools through meaningful arts-based learning experiences.
The Artist-Educator Institute involves a 3-phase program including:
• Coursework that explores the role of art in the classroom and teaches how to align art lessons with academic standards.
• Active Observations of mentor artists in the classroom to identify lesson design, implementation, and assessment.
• Mentoring/Coaching support for refining lesson plans, developing assessments, and managing classroom activities.
Workshops
CoTA’s two-hour Exploratory Workshops provide training in specific art strategies that can be used in the classroom to deepen student comprehension of academic content.
Participants are introduced to a specific art form, see projects that demonstrate how it can be used in the classroom, and given the opportunity to create their own projects. Together with round-table discussions and curriculum planning time, teachers leave CoTA Exploratory Workshops confident in the skills and knowledge needed to lead a similar activity in their own classrooms.