SmArts
Integrating Arts with Academics
What is SmArts?
SmArts is about Arts Integration.
The SmArts Grants Program encourages K-12 classroom teachers in all disciplines to integrate the tools and processes of the Arts into daily learning. SmArts encourages educators to reach out to the Arts community as a resource for all students to learn and grow. The focus of SmArts is to engage students and allow them to find meaning and make linkages across content areas. SmArts is about using the arts in unison with traditional education.
SmArts is about facilitating artists and arts organization community partnerships
SmArts Long-Term Grants provide classroom teachers with access and exposure to non-traditional ways of learning and improving teaching practices.
SmArts schools first identify curriculum areas where their students are struggling and then select an arts partner to work with. Teachers and arts partners collaborate to design units and lesson plans to meet Ohio’s curricular standards, while developing a mutually beneficial relationship with their arts partner. Teaching artists and arts organization partnerships (music, art, dance, drama) can energize teachers and students, connect learning to the wider community, and demonstrate quality work in the Arts; all as they collaborate to develop learning activities, provide instruction, and assess the impact of their work through action research.
ArtsinStark Awards $90,000 in SmArts Grants
Building on the part of its mission that states, “growing the arts to create smarter kids,” ArtsinStark, The County Arts Council, has announced $90,000 in SmArts grants over the next three years to Canton Local Schools, Massillon City Schools and Jackson Local Schools. These schools will each host a 36-month project that uses the arts to supercharge learning in the classroom.
“This is a bold initiative,” says Susan Steiner, chair of the County Arts Council’s Education Committee. “It will allow us to collect the data we need to demonstrate to community leaders the amazing power of integrating the arts into classrooms.”
Sarah Shumaker, Outreach Coordinator for ArtsinStark, will be overseeing the SmArts partnerships. “Successful schools are the ones that utilize the skills of their teachers and of their arts community ---and have a strong vehicle for measuring results,” Shumaker says.
SmArts is the name given to a new County Arts Council program that encourages classroom teachers, in all disciplines, to integrate the Arts into daily learning. SmArts invites educators to reach out to the arts community as a resource. The focus of SmArts is to engage students and allow them to make linkages across content areas.
“We are not creating a new Arts Education Program,” says Robb Hankins, president and CEO of ArtsinStark. “There are many fine ones already in existence and we’re all engaged in the same process.” SmArts is a funding program that supports short and long-term partnerships betweens schools and arts organizations to supercharge learning. “To put it in more basic terms --- you can actually use arts in the classroom to raise test scores,” says Hankins. The SmArts Program in Stark County will be based on success stories from the Chicago Arts Partnership for Education and Arts for Academic Achievement (Minneapolis) where test scores and reading scores have all improved dramatically. This has been accomplished by creating classroom situations where a team of teachers worked with artists-in-residence to co-teach core subjects such as reading, writing, mathematics, sciences and literature.
Using the lessons learned from Chicago and Minneapolis, the Education Committee of ArtsinStark, comprised of community representatives, has spent the last two years preparing the plan for the SmArts Program. As with the models researched, the Stark County participating schools are asked to demonstrate that they have the commitment, the continuity of staffing, and the willingness to allow artists and educators to teach together.
The projects are briefly explained, as follows:
Dream Reading and Writing will be hosted at Faircrest Memorial Middle School in the Canton Local Schools. It will use the arts to improve reading performance beginning with next year’s 6th grade students. The goal is that Ohio Achievement Test Reading Group Scores will show an increase of 15% by the time these students complete 8th grade.
The 3-year SmArts project, at Faircrest Middle School, will link the KIMONO AS ART exhibit, at the Canton Museum of Art, to lessons in geography, reading, writing and vocabulary. The student’s 7th grade year will use sound and music, and in 8th grade, the teacher-artist team will utilize speech, drama, and art. For more information about the Canton Local Schools SmArts grant, contact Stephanie Rosselli, Gifted Coordinator 330-484-8010 or Rosselli@cantonlocal.org.
Growing through Genre will be hosted at Gorrell Elementary School in the Massillon City Schools. It will use the arts to improve student performance at every grade level (K-5) in reading, writing, science and social studies, with a special emphasis on increasing 3rd and 4th grade OAT Reading group scores by 5 %.
Year One, having a fairy tale theme, will focus on integrating visual and performing arts with language arts and social studies. Year Two is called “Going Green at Gorrell” and will incorporate visual and performing arts into language arts non-fiction reading and writing and science. In the final year, visual and performance art by way of poetry slams will be use to promote achievement in language arts and social studies. For more information about the Massillon City Schools grant, contact Marva Kay Jones, Assistant Superintendent 330-830-3900 ext 50155 or mjones@massillon.sparcc.org.
The Fabric of our Culture will be hosted at both Jackson Middle School and Jackson School for the Arts in the Jackson Local Schools. The 3-year project will use the arts to increase targeted reading comprehension scores of selected sixth grade students by 15%. Students from both the ninth and tenth grades at Jackson’s School for the Arts and a team of sixth graders from Jackson Middle School, in conjunction with visiting artists and artists-in-residence, will study the significance of fabric to world cultures using KIMONO AS ART as an educational backdrop to teach literature and history. In Year Two, “The Magic of Fabric” concept expands the discussion to include a variety of community arts connections. And in Year Three, “What Not to Wear: A Global Perspective” will use fabric as a learning tool for world history. For more information about the Jackson grant, contact Susie Gardner, Director of Alternative Schools 330-830-8004 or srg2jc@jackson.sparcc.org.
“SmArts funding is planned to be a lasting focus of ArtsinStark granting,“ says Grants Officer Anne Wadian. “As school budgets continue to narrow the inclusion of arts in our schools, we, as the County Arts Council, need to find a way to enhance and reward partnerships with arts and academic linkages that will benefit the student in the long run.” In addition to the three long-term SmArts projects, Wadian notes that 17 short-term SmArts grants were awarded to schools earlier in the year.
For more information about the SmArts program at ArtsinStark, please contact Sarah Shumaker 330-453-1075 or sarah@artsinstark.com.
Designing The Ideal Long-Term SmArts Grant: Teaching, Learning, Testing
The ideal SmArts grant integrates the Arts (music, visual art, dance, and/or drama) into classroom curriculum and addresses Ohio’s content learning standards both in the core-curriculum and the arts area involved. School teams determine the assets and needs of their students, the resources and challenges of the school, and how and where the Arts will make the largest impact in the curriculum.
One or two teaching artists from the Arts organization work with school staff and teachers to map curriculum to identify common content, concepts, understanding goals and inquiry questions across disciplines. This partnership enables teachers to use the hands-on, participatory processes of the Arts to engage students with learning, both individually and in classroom collaborations. Participating students gain deep understanding of essential concepts and knowledge in both Arts and non-Arts disciplines. SmArts serves as the support system to facilitate in-depth projects tailored to the circumstances of the schools.
To help assure quality and consistently evolving programs, SmArts grants require both summative and formative assessments – ideally both of a qualitative and quantitative nature.
In other words, SmArts grant programs look for measurable successes and feedback that will lead to future improvements.
The ideal SmArts grant integrates the Arts (music, visual art, dance, and/or drama) into classroom curriculum and addresses Ohio’s content learning standards both in the core-curriculum and the arts area involved. School teams determine the assets and needs of their students, the resources and challenges of the school, and how and where the Arts will make the largest impact in the curriculum.
One or two teaching artists from the Arts organization work with school staff and teachers to map curriculum to identify common content, concepts, understanding goals and inquiry questions across disciplines. This partnership enables teachers to use the hands-on, participatory processes of the Arts to engage students with learning, both individually and in classroom collaborations. Participating students gain deep understanding of essential concepts and knowledge in both Arts and non-Arts disciplines. SmArts serves as the support system to facilitate in-depth projects tailored to the circumstances of the schools.
To help assure quality and consistently evolving programs, SmArts grants require both summative and formative assessments – ideally both of a qualitative and quantitative nature.
In other words, SmArts grant programs look for measurable successes and feedback that will lead to future improvements.
SmArts Grants Process
Download the application.
Once grant applications are completed by the Educators and their Artist collaborators, they are then sent back to ArtsinStark. When received, the applications for mini-SmArts Grants and Special Project SmArts Grants are first reviewed by the Grants Panel. Long-Term SmArts Grants are forwarded to the Education Committee for review.
The recommendations from these meetings are then presented to the Executive Committee, and finally the Board. The Board then reviews the recommendations and ultimately determines distribution of grant monies.
Long-term SmArts grants also differ from mini and special projects SmArts grants in that the Outreach Coordinator consults with the districts and arts organizations in advance of the application deadline. The applications deemed most complete are then presented to the Education Committee. At this time, we expect to fund 3 long-term SmArts grant programs for the 2008-2009 school year.
Contact: Sarah Shumaker, Outreach Coordinator – ArtsinStark
330-453-1075 ext. 207, 330-934-0997 cell
sarah@artsinstark.com