Educators at the Arts Integration Summer Camp perform their song on ukuleles after writing it in one day. Photo courtesy of UTC Arts-Based Collaborative.
The Arts Integration Summer Camp returned to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Guerry Center July 22-24, drawing 67 educators eager to blend the arts with their teaching.
The purpose of the camp is to incorporate the arts into other subject areas, providing students with multiple ways to learn.
This summer was the third time the event was held at UTC. Angela Dittmar, director of teaching artist residencies at the UTC Arts-Based Collaborative (ABC), organized the event.
“Arts integration as a foundation is the idea that there’s an intrinsic way that the arts bring in a lot of different subject areas, thoughts, interests and concepts,” Dittmar said. “We can provide an immersive, holistic learning experience when we teach a concept and invite arts, math or literacy all together in the same learning experience.”
Dittmar is also a member of Partners in Education (PIE)—an organization that collaborated with ABC to provide the three-day learning experience for attendees.
Workshops were held where professionals could teach about art integration. Participants were encouraged to take art concepts like music or drama and apply them to their classrooms.
Robyn Stringfellow is manager of educational content and services at WTCI. Before her work at WTCI, she was a teacher for 15 years.
“My role is helping educators who are not arts teachers—who teach science, math, social studies or English—and figuring out how to use the arts in their classroom to accomplish their learning goals,” Stringfellow explained. “Also, to keep them on track for standardized testing and making sure that their students can improve and show growth.”
The first day, attendees worked with Tennessee musician Kelle Jolly, who taught ukulele and songwriting to teachers.
“The goal today is to give teachers a music learning experience that they can integrate into their classroom teaching,” Jolly said. “Events like this are part of the lifelong learning of a teacher or the lifelong learning of a human. We don’t stop learning just because we graduate from a program. We can continue to learn. We continue to look for opportunities to grow and to understand the world better and communicate with each other better.”
Jolly said one of the participants even bought a ukulele thanks to the workshop—already seeing the impact it can have on their curriculum.
“I hope that they take it to the classroom,” Jolly said. “We can express ourselves through music and you don’t have to be a professional to do it.”
Educators hard at work composing a blues song with the ukulele. Photo courtesy of UTC Arts-Based Collaborative.
Over the last two days of the conference, participants heard from other arts professionals. Ms. Tangles and Rachel Graber are both ABC teaching artists. Ric Morris, a theater teacher from The Howard School, taught a drama workshop. Melissa Astin from ArtsBuild showed how to incorporate visual arts into the classroom.
Stringfellow hopes this camp offers a chance for educators to find a community with like-minded people.
“I want them to make new friends,” Stringfellow explained. “I want them to feel supported.
“Some teachers who aren’t arts teachers come in with this idea of, ‘I’m not an artist. I’m just a math teacher. I’m just a science teacher.’ We’re all artists. Everyone’s an artist. I hope that they kind of awaken their own sense of artistry within them.”
ABC will host three smaller events throughout the school year at various locations around the Chattanooga area, hoping to continue the integration of the arts in classrooms.
Building on three successful summers, Dittmar and her ABC team hope to deepen the program’s impact in future camps, fostering creativity and collaboration among educators in Chattanooga.
The event was funded by a Tennessee Arts Commission (TAC) teacher training grant.
Dittmar said TAC and other key sponsors—such as ArtsBuild, WTCI, Hamilton County Schools and the Chattanooga Theatre Center—help ABC host events like this on the UTC campus.
“I am excited to take what we learned this year,” she said, “and I hope my colleagues are feeling the same way after our third year doing the PIE arts integration summer camp. We’ve discovered a lot of things over the last three years and they came together this year in ways that excite me. I hope we can dive a little deeper into those through our reflections and start planning for next year.”
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