Faculty of One Louisville School Learns About the Arts

This week, an arts education program will be training a whole school of teachers for the first time in its 26-year history. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer reports.For the next two weeks 43 teachers from throughout Kentucky will attend the Kentucky Center’s annual Institute for Arts in Education. It includes seminars where participants get hands-on experience in how to use the arts in teaching.This year, more than half of the teachers are from one Louisville school, says Jeff Jamner, the center’s director of school programs."The faculty at Lincoln Elementary will have 27 teachers going through, immersed in four art forms," Jamner says, "which will really jump start them as they prepare to become the new elementary performing arts magnet for Jefferson County schools."This fall, Lincoln will be the school district’s first magnet elementary school to integrate the performing arts into core academic areas. It also will collaborate with leading arts groups.Jamner says the institute will pay special attention to science."This year we’re going to model how to integrate the arts with other subjects and we picked science," he says. "We have a field trip each on the fifth day and we use the field trip to show how the arts can be used to deepen learning."Jamner says the teachers will also study the elements of visual art, dance, theater and music as well as their histories and their place in different cultures.