ArtsNOW has been awarded a $2.78 million Assistance for Arts Education (AAE) grant by the US Department of Education (USDOE) for its project, “STEM + the Art of Integrated Learning (SAIL)." Garden City and Gadsden Elementary Schools will be part of the program through the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System's partnership with the project. Other project partners include Barrow County School System (Winder Elementary and Statham Elementary), Cobb County School District (Dowell Elementary and Mableton Elementary), along with Georgia Tech's Center for Education Integrating Science, Math and Computing (CEISMC), Young Audiences, Inc., Hillside Conant School (Atlanta Public Schools) and Youth Villages-Inner Harbor campus (Douglas County School System).
The AAE program promotes arts education for students and teachers through activities such as professional learning, development and dissemination of accessible instructional materials and arts-based programming, and community and national outreach activities that strengthen and expand partnerships among schools, local educational agencies, communities, and arts centers. The focus of this project is to develop and test the use of a set of arts-integrated lessons that are: aligned with the 3rd through 5th grade content standards for math and science, supported by standards in the arts, and incorporate inquiry-based activities to support the development of students' critical thinking skills.
SAIL will also explore ways in which arts-based programming can be used to build students' social-emotional competencies. Overall, SAIL will include the development of eighteen inquiry-based math and science units supported by 124 hours of professional development over three years and will benefit six elementary schools with over 2,200 students and 114 teachers.
ArtsNOW is a national non-profit that offers customized solutions to improve teacher efficacy and student results through authentic arts integration.
