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Increased metacognition, social-emotional growth, and career viability are all researched benefits of including the arts as part of core content instruction. Arts-integrated learning provides an even greater impact for struggling students, emergent bilinguals, and students with disabilities. Infusing the arts in your school can help you meet the specific needs and goals of your school, your students, and your community.

Developing an arts-integrated school requires explicit modeling, risk-taking, and permission from the school leaders and administrators. Strategic planning, shifting faculty mindset, maximizing limited resources, and celebrating innovation all take time and effort. However, the resulting enthusiasm for learning, gained critical-thinking skills, and enhanced school climate are well worth the investment. School leaders can foster arts-integrated learning spaces by planning with purpose, cultivating a shared mindset, growing with their community’s resources in mind, and celebrating every step.

When school leaders plan with purpose, any school can become arts-integrated, where the vision for the arts meets the needs of the campus. First, determine how the arts can positively impact your school. Then find the people, time, and structures that move towards your campus-specific arts-integrated mission and vision. This can be done by taking inventory of existing resources and aligning them to a framework, mission, and vision that you and your team create.

To start, take stock of what already lies at your fingertips. Before generating your framework, mission, and vision, survey staff, faculty, and families to unearth interest and expertise in the arts that already exist within your school community. Then, use this information to create an Arts Leadership Team of teachers, school leaders, and community members who codify the mission and vision of the arts in your building and create specific strategies to move that vision forward. Your Arts Leadership Team should create the scope and sequence of implementation with long-term goals in mind, but also assure that the beginning stages are bite-sized and approachable. Small steps and quick wins will embolden the faculty to continue with arts integration over time.

Finally, in order to make space for arts integration to thrive, determine existing initiatives and tasks that are no longer necessary and lift them from your faculty to make room on their plates for the new vision you are committing to. Determine the core places and times to put this vision into motion [PLC meetings, professional development (PD), art classes, core content teachers who will lead, etcetera]. Administrators who take the time to create a team, a vision, and an arts-integration framework at the outset will be able to leverage the alignment of the arts to meet student needs and cultivate effective implementation of arts-integrated strategies.

The leaders and administrators of any school hold the key to unlocking change. It is the leader’s job to authorize change and remove any fear the staff may have of trying new things. Without authorization from leadership, faculty are often reluctant to go off script. Furthermore, leaders must embody the culture of change through personal risk. This could include:

• arts-integrated modeling in PD,
  
• allowing and enabling safe places for teachers to experiment,
  
• sharing a deep understanding of the impacts of arts integration, and/or
  
• taking bite-sized strategic moves that invest staff and students and provide quick wins.
  

While the leader is at the helm, they cannot stand alone. In addition to embodying the shifts you seek, leverage your Arts Leadership Team, arts teachers, leading core content teachers, and other administrators who are passionate about arts integration to champion the school’s efforts. When that core team establishes a voice and vision, the impact will spread throughout the building.

Every school has its own reality and available resources. It’s important to know that an arts-integrated campus can be accomplished on any budget—not every initiative has to cost money. Resources go beyond dollars and cents, including community partnerships, in-kind donations, and time/expertise from local artists and culture bearers. Because arts and culture exist everywhere, these resources can be found in urban, suburban, or rural communities. They may not always be easy to find, but they can be fostered with time, cultivated relationships, and community efforts.

The arts can be integrated in many forms, including digital, visual, dance, music, theater, and culinary (to name a few). Opening doors between art in the community and art in your school, creating an environment with reciprocal relationships, and increasing your personal definition of “arts” can enrich the resources at your disposal. In the digital age, countless online resources are at your fingertips—don’t hesitate to lean into them. And encourage your team to see new possibilities in existing resources: paper towel tubes and tissue boxes can become string instruments; a classroom can become a shadow puppet theater; a cafeteria can become a cultural performance space; and a teaching artist or neighbor may have a gift to share.

One benefit of an arts-integrated building is joy. Once the plan is in place, your team is invested, and the resources are identified, it is time to celebrate each and every step along the way. Many small wins create a culture of growth and joy in the school, and you can use these wins to celebrate both internally and externally. Display successes within your school (thinking walls, bulletin boards, performances), and reach out to local media for public celebration (which may in turn increase your resources).

Equally important, establish ways to document and celebrate staff who are actuating arts-integrated approaches in order to eliminate fear and encourage further growth from your team. Include showcases, gallery walks, and digital presentations throughout PDs, weekly newsletters, or PLCs so staff have a space to celebrate one another. Not only will your faculty climate and culture win as a result of these celebrations, but movement toward the goals you set in the beginning will occur naturally as faculty, students, and staff become more invested in an arts-integrated approach.

Take each of these steps with a maximizing mindset. Imagine the impact purposeful planning, shared mindsets, additional resources, and celebration will have in your building. Modeling these shifts as the leader will create a joyful and intentional culture of creativity, ultimately improving the experience of children and adults alike.

To explore more K-12 arts integrated lessons, visit the Related Resources section at the bottom of this page or Lesson & Activities from the Digital Learning Resources Library.