Teacher Resources

These guides, opportunities, and articles will help you enhance your teaching, provide resources for your students, and help you advocate for the arts in schools. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can be of any assistance!

 Arts4Youth@FWPAEC.org  / 253-835-7027

Arts Integration Lesson Plans

• Find a robust collection of hundreds of digital learning resources: lessons, articles, performance guides, how-tos and much more at Kennedy Center Digital Resources.
• Arts Impact offers a wide variety of foundational arts lessons and arts lessons infused with math, reading, writing, and science.
• Free for classroom and arts teachers to use, Education Closet has over 100 arts integration lesson plans to choose from in grades Kindergarten through High School. These arts integration lessons are a perfect way for you to get started with arts integration, or to enhance a program you already have in place.

Arts Resources

• Arts Corps 
  Arts Corps is a force for creativity and justice in a region where race is the greatest predictor of whether a young person has access to an arts education. They believe creating art can be a personal act of liberation, and when done collectively can transform schools, neighborhoods, and beyond. A nationally recognized youth arts education organization, Arts Corps, works to address the race and income-based opportunity gap in access to arts education. Through participation in their arts integration, out-of-school arts and teen leadership programs, youth experience the transformative power of creativity and gain a deepened belief in their own capacity to learn, take risks, persist and achieve.
• Arts Education Month
  May is Washington State’s Arts Education Month, a time to celebrate and strengthen arts education in our schools for all students.
• Arts Education Week
  Passed by Congress in 2010, House Resolution 275 designates the week beginning with the second Sunday in September as National Arts in Education Week. During this week, the field of arts education joins together in communities across the country to tell the story of the impact of the transformative power of the arts in education.
• Arts Impact 
  Arts Impact, a program of Puget Sound Educational Service District, is a comprehensive professional development arts program for classroom teachers. The provide professional learning for teachers to build confidence and competence to integrate the arts into the everyday classroom experience, helping to ensure all children have access to quality arts education.
• ArtsEd Washington 
  ArtsEd Washington creates enduring system-wide change to ensure that the arts play an integral role in the education of every child in every school. Learning the arts keeps students engaged in school, improves their academic success and ignites the creativity that develops them into leaders in work and in life.
• ArtsWA 
  Every child has the right to a well-rounded education, which includes the arts. ArtsWA works to strengthen K-12 arts education as part of, and fundamental to, basic education. They do this by:
  • • Supporting local partnerships among arts organizations, schools, and community organizations.
    • Supporting and developing the arts teaching workforce of classroom teachers, teaching artists, and arts education leaders.
    • Engaging with regional, state-level, and national arts and education organizations to develop, align, and promote policies to support K-12 arts education.
• Early Music Seattle 
  Early Music Seattle offers teaching artists workshops at no cost to schools. All programs work in large and small group settings across the K-12 spectrum. These presentations are especially resonant for social studies (World History, Ancient Civilizations, Human Geography) as well as general or instrumental music and ELL. The underlying message of honoring our similarities and differences spans grades and topics. Our teaching team’s emphasis is on short- and medium-term residencies that empower students to develop hands-on skills.
• Music In Our Schools Month® (MIOSM)
  Music In Our Schools Month® is the National Association for Music Education’s annual celebration during March which engages music educators, students, and communities from around the country in promoting the benefits of high quality music education programs in schools.
• Northwest Symphony Orchestra 
  The Northwest Symphony Orchestra provides educational enrichment and free student concert tickets for the Highline School District.

Short Pieces for Arts Advocacy

• American Alliance for Theatre and Education: The Effects of Theatre Education 
• Why Arts Integration? Explore various viewpoints about the value of arts integration
• Increasing Arts Demand & Appreciation Through Better Arts Learning and Education 
• Music Matters: How Music Education Helps Students Learn, Achieve, and Succeed
• The Arts Education Navigator is your connection to the tools and resources you need to make the case for arts education.

Student Opportunities

• Arts Corps: ALLI
  The Arts Liberation and Leadership Institute (ALLI) is a one-week intensive summer program where 20 youth are trained in artistry, social justice and organizing.
• Federal Way Chorale
  The Federal Way Chorale offers a $2,000 scholarship to a qualifying graduating senior. This scholarship is to help a local high school student who wishes to study music at the college level.
• Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge
  The Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge, presented by the National Endowment for the Arts, is for any student enrolled in High School (grades 9-12) who demonstrates talent and a passion for writing musical theatre songs that could be part of a musical theatre production.
• National YoungArts Foundation
  YoungArts’ signature program is an application-based award for emerging artists ages 15–18 or in grades 10–12 from across the United States.
• The National Symphony Orchestra Summer Music Institute
  Every summer, approximately 60 students (ages 15-20) from all over the United States, as well as a number of other countries, meet in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center to attend the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute (SMI). The program is designed to expose and prepare students for a 21st Century orchestral career.
• Poetry Out Loud
  By participating in the program, students master public speaking skills and build self-confidence, while also learning how to connect with and analyze literature in new ways. Each state hosts an annual competition, culminating in a national competition among the state winners.
• Scholarship Resources for Music Students
  The following scholarship and grant opportunities are available to high school and college students involved in music education and music performance.
• The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) All-American Marching Band
  Pending confirmation of the program, selected students will receive an all-expenses paid trip to San Antonio, TX where they will rehearse and perform with 124 other selected students from across the country.
• The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) Electronic Music Competition
  The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) Electronic Music Composition Competition recognizes outstanding compositions and highlights the effectiveness of music technology in the school curriculum.
• The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) Student Composers Competition
  NAfME is seeking original music written by student composers for featured performance in the Young Composers Concert.