BYU A.R.T.S. Partnership

Arts Reaching and Teaching in Schools
Motto: Every Child, Every Art

The BYU A.R.T.S. Partnership works to ensure that all elementary children in the BYU–Public School Partnership benefit from opportunities to explore the arts. To accomplish this, the A.R.T.S. Partnership develops a replicable approach to educator training that will improve the quality and quantity of arts education in the Partnership’s 100-plus elementary schools.

A gift from Beverley Taylor Sorenson made the A.R.T.S. Partnership possible. Now in its second year, the Partnership has done much to pursue its goals in many Utah school districts.

• 51 elementary school teachers participated in Arts Academy training
• 337 elementary teachers participated in some form of arts professional development
• 18,000-plus elementary school children were enriched through A.R.T.S. activities
• 11 BYU arts students had side-by-side teaching experience in arts classrooms

The A.R.T.S. Partnership currently supports the following instructional programs:

• Arts Academy
• Arts Express Summer Conference
• Arts Education Symposium
• Side-by-side teaching
• Outreach and access to the arts
• Arts mentoring for BYU interns

Because of the generosity of Mrs. Sorenson, her family, and other donors, the A.R.T.S. Partnership will continue to grow. An initial endowment gift will be enhanced over the next five years, enlarging the Partnership’s capacity to affect more than 100,000 elementary students in the BYU–PSP.

You Too Can Teach with the Arts

Arts Academy

Educator Pat Bradley exclaims, “What a wonderful opportunity Arts Academy was. It changed my life. It even changed how I view myself. And how you view yourself is so indicative of how you teach others.”

Because educators must understand the arts and arts instruction before they can effectively integrate arts into their teaching of core curriculum, the BYU A.R.T.S. Partnership developed the Arts Academy as one of its programs. It has two main purposes:

• To help teachers develop their skills and confidence for teaching the arts
• To instruct teachers on how the arts can be integrated with other curricular areas

Even before Arts Academy, Bradley was a supporter of the arts—teaching her own seven children music and drama. She felt that art was a natural part of childhood learning and expression. But as a first grade teacher Bradley was unsure how to include the arts in her instruction. “I knew what I wanted to do with my students, but I didn’t have the confidence to use art in instruction until I had the Arts Academy experience. It gave me the confidence to say, ‘This is what is best for children.’ That training gave me lots of tools to use as well as the license to use them.”

Bradley now teaches PE and social studies curriculum by teaching her students a variety of dances from the cultures they study. This integration results in the students performing their own Christmas Around the World program. She also has her class construct a puppet theatre and perform fairy tales to meet core requirements for using oral language and imagination. In addition, she uses the arts to nurture two struggling children in her class; one child has oppositional defiant disorder, the other has autistic behaviors. “I watch the transformation art brings to each of them. It speaks to the soul. It soothes the soul.”