Arts Integration at NCMA

I've had a delightful week hanging out at my favorite museum! This year I'm participating in the North Carolina Museum of Art's Fellowship for Collaborative Teaching, along with my school's media specialist, Heather. Heather and I joined an awesome group of teacher pairs from around the state for three days of learning and exploring the museum's collection. 

​We learned lots of fun ways for students to look at art, like the activity pictured here. Our facilitators had a stack of terms from the NC visual arts standards printed on slips of paper. With a partner, we walked around the gallery and placed the slips near artworks that we connected them with, then talked as a group about some of the artworks with the words participants had selected. 

Heather and I decided that we wanted to focus on developing professional development for teachers at our high school that would highlight using art as primary sources across subject areas. 

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Elias Sime, Tightrope 9, 2009-2014, Reclaimed electronic components on panel.

Closeup of Tightrope 9

We were interested in work like Tightrope 9, which has connections to a variety of subject areas. It looks like a map  but on close inspection is created out of circuit boards. The artist, Elias Sime, uses electronic waste as his material, collected from a market in Addis Ababa where it is shipped from all over the world. This work could be a great starting point for learning about issues surrounding sustainability, globalization or geography. 

One thing I love about the idea of using art with students is that it can inject diverse points of view in our classes, which can have a tendency to be heavy on viewpoints that are male and white. 
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We've planned some PD I'm really excited about for this year, including inviting teachers to meet us at the museum after work in September!

​Another idea I'm excited about - having my high school art history class pair with an elementary class to give students a tour of the museum. Any NC teachers interested? I have funds for a bus!

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If you are interested in arts integration, check out the free, online resources the museum has created on NCMALearn. They will also be offering this online course this fall, which I'll be taking. The description: "Visual Literacy: Making Connections with Works of Art:  This online course will introduce a variety of engagement strategies to facilitate deeper inquiry into works of art. Teachers can receive 10 hours of participation (1 CEU) in Art or Literacy upon completion."