Dear Elementary Classroom Teachers: The FBISD Department of Fine Arts and the Alley Theatre have partnered to create a unique professional development opportunity for FBISD Elementary Teachers. Are you interested in enhancing your teaching skills in order to increase student engagement and promote better learning and retention? Then apply for the FBISD Arts Integration Network! Arts integration combines objectives in core curriculum with theatre arts to promote a deeper understanding of both subjects, while also addressing students’ multiple learning styles. Arts integration nurtures metacognitive, motivational, and social-emotional learning and the competencies flowing from them. Additionally, arts integration boosts student outcomes and, just as importantly, inspires students to take more responsibility for their own learning. Schools using arts-integrated lessons witness deeply engaged students managing their own behaviors, ultimately improving classroom climate. Compelling data show a strong correlation between arts integration and improved learning and engagement. A study by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities showed that students participating in the arts out-performed their peers on traditional measures of academic success. Another noteworthy finding revealed that learning through the arts helped level the field among socio-economic categories. To meet the growing demand and enthusiasm for arts integration techniques, FBISD and Alley Theatre are combining efforts to form the Arts Integration Network (AIN). AIN will begin this summer with two-weeks of hands-on, intensive professional learning during Fort Bend ISD’s Playmakers Camp, June 6-18, 2016. The Playmakers Camp not only will deepen student learning in STEM subjects through arts-integrated lessons and activities, it also provides a hands-on, professional development laboratory for teachers who want to incorporate arts integration into their daily teaching practice. Job-embedded, long-term, professional development has proven the most important step in creating systemic change in teaching practice; therefore, each teacher participating in the AIN summer professional development workshop will receive 16 hours of direct, in-class mentorship and coaching from an Alley Theatre Teaching Artists during the 2016-2017 school year. Our goal is to mentor a core group of approximately 12-15 elementary teachers who will create a professional learning community to cultivate arts integrated learning techniques. Here is more information about the two-week professional learning workshop: this summer’s Playmakers Camp will provide selected teachers the opportunity to interact with the Alley Theatre’s Teaching Artists, work directly with age-appropriate students, and familiarize themselves with theatre arts techniques and how to incorporate them into their teaching practice. Also, the professional learning will train teachers how to create arts-integrated lesson plans and provide the time necessary to develop them.

If you are interested in participating in this exciting, cutting-edge professional learning opportunity, Arts Integration Network, please complete and submit the attached application to Phillip Taylor, FBISD’s Coordinator of Theatre & Dance, by Friday, May 6, 2016. Applications will be reviewed and selected participants will be notified by Friday, May 13.

To recap:

1. Submit the attached application by Friday, May 6. 2. A cohort of 12-15 teachers will be selected for the Arts Integration Network and notified by May

13. 3. Selected teachers will enroll in the AIN two-week professional development workshop through

True North Logic. 4. Attend the AIN two-week professional development workshop (Playmakers Camp) at Quail

Valley Elementary School from June 6-18, 2016. 5. Receive 16 hours of job-embedded coaching, mentoring, and co-teaching by an Alley Theatre

Teaching Artist during the 2016-2017 school year. 6. Participate in quarterly PLC meetings with other AIN teachers throughout the 2016-2017 school

year. Please contact Phillip Taylor if you have any questions regarding AIN or the application process.