Arts Integrated Learning Built with Student Imagination through Literacy, ELA, Music and More!
Sessions 4 & 5: Grades K–6
Arts Education integration is alive and thriving with Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre education programs: Opera by Children, having served K–6 classrooms for 20 years. Creativity is robustly unleashed in each student as groups either create a class opera or a professionally realized song; radio ready. Learn the literacy, ELA, Fine Arts standards, and more which drive this program while creating your own original work as a group!
Pam Gee
Pamela Nelson Gee is an accomplished arts educator, performer, playwright, wife, mother, and friend. Over the past 20 years she has taught, mentored, performed, and inspired using the arts, especially in education. From grassroots to state to national involvement, Pamela has been able to develop purposeful processes in arts education in collaboration and association with the best people in the arts education business. Pamela began acting as a young child and was teaching creative drama by age 15 with the Children's Festival Theatre in Rexburg, ID. She graduated from Ricks College and Utah State in Theatre Arts with an emphasis in music and dance. While attending Utah State, Ruth B. Call hired Pamela to teach and direct shows for the Unicorn Theater and she continued for 12 years (she has recently returned, moonlighting as the education director). Having worked for CVCA as the Education Outreach Manager and Art Camp Director, she moved into an administrative role as education associate in 2003 for Utah Festival along with her continued creative role with the Opera by Children program since its inception and has now been the director for five years. She is a co-author and co-editor of the "Opera by Children" training manual, a step-by-step approach for teachers to use as they incorporate opera into their core curriculum. Pamela also directed the development of the online training website, and developed and teaches the online OBC course for USU. She has traveled the country teaching Opera by Children methods. She is a frequent presenter on teaching the arts to children, arts administration, creative drama, and adjudicates for the Utah High School Musical Theatre Awards. She also enjoys being a private acting coach and a playwright! She stands as a Change Leader for the Utah Division of Arts and Museums, and a frequent grant panelist. She has been influential with the recent update of the Utah Fine Arts Core Standards.