Arts Integration Online Conference Reflection

Earlier this summer, the AIM Teaching Artists got together and participated in an online Arts Integration Conference. We watched several teaching artists present on how they integrate arts into the classroom. I watched some additional sessions last week. 

Overall I thought the conference and sessions were time well spent. The sessions I watched were for integrating music, fine art, and dance into core classroom subjects. In some ways, seeing how arts other than my own specialty (music) were incorporated let me see the process from a different perspective. I didn't anticipate that these sessions would be as relevant to me as they turned out to be. In some ways, seeing the incorporation of dance and fine art from an outside perspective informed the process of arts integration as a whole for me. I found the session focused on integrating fine art in math to be particularly informative.

The most interesting music session I watched combined music and math in a session called Moving through Math. I though the concept was interesting though I am a little skeptical of how some of the ideas really related to study of math. It seemed a bit abstract to me, but perhaps that abstractness is he point. In any case, it got me thinking about trying to make those kind of connections in the math curriculum. 

Overall, the conference was interesting and several of the sessions were very informative. I'm glad I had the opportunity to attend and would do so again if new sessions became available.