Arts Professional Development for Utah Teachers
Content originally researched, developed, and published in 2018.
Highly-qualified arts educators and elementary arts specialists need inspiration and networking time with other highly qualified artists, educators, and professionals. We hope professional development in the arts leads to students in our schools singing, dancing, acting, and drawing regularly as they address essential core curricular standards, ask questions, and express their own ideas. Educators, artists, and school administrators can find invaluable lesson plans, curriculum guides, and funding opportunities through resources from the Utah Division of Arts and Museums Toolkit.
These resources are essential for enhancing arts education, providing educators with the tools they need to foster creativity and learning in their classrooms.
POPS: Professional Outreach Programs in Schools
Utah’s Professional Outreach Program in Schools (POPS) is a consortium of professional arts organizations that receive funding from the Utah State Legislature to provide performances, workshops, demonstrations, and arts experiences for students in Utah’s schools. POPS organizations also provide free and subsidized opportunities for teacher development in arts skills and pedagogy.
Professional Development for Dance Education
- Professional Development Workshops for Teachers offered by RDT help teachers understand the state core dance standards and build teachers’ confi-dence in their ability to teach the dance core in their own classrooms.
- RDT can provide professional development workshops for faculty and staff at your school.
Children’s Dance Theatre, Tanner Dance, University of Utah:
- CDT’s Side-by-Side Dance Residency program offers weekly dance classes in elementary schools where students and teachers actively participate. Teachers work with teaching artists to collaborate on a plan to integrate dance into the classroom.
- Tanner Dance also hosts a summer workshop for teachers, usually in June.
- Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company provides both a workshop and a professional development series for teachers.
- Lectures and demonstrations for students are also provided.
Professional Learning in Drama and Theatre
- The Utah Storytelling Festival website offers lesson plans and tips for integrating storytelling into the classroom.
- “Storytelling in the Classroom” is a program that not only provides students with free access to a storytelling performance, but also provides teachers with lesson plans, DVDs, and other resources for their professional development.
- Each summer, the Utah Shakespeare Festival hosts a workshop for teachers entitled “TheatreMethods for the Classroom: Elementary.”
- Participants explore methods of incorporating Shakespeare and theatre arts as powerful inclusions in the curriculum. Tuition charged.
Media Arts PD Programs
- All teachers who have students participate in Spy Hop programs receive access to SpyHop’s online teacher resource. This resource provides free, easy-to-use software, prompts for integrating digital media arts into class projects, and instructional sheets for video game programming so that students and teachers can learn the language of coding and design together.
- Specific lesson plans developed by Spy Hop’s teaching artists can be used by any interested professional for non-commercial uses.
- The Utah Film Center offers K-12 educators immersive, high-quality professional development experiences in a program called SHIFT. This program supports the integration of the filmmaking process into educational settings.
- Workshops and instructional materials provide comprehensive, standards-linked lesson plans to guide educators on how to produce documentaries, public service announcements (PSAs), instructional videos, personal narratives, and other short film projects with their students.
Music Education Professional Development
- Music! Words! Opera! During this week-long course, teachers work side-by-side with students in a summer music camp. Together, students and teachers learn about opera traditions and history, create a libretto, and compose music for an original opera they will perform in the Utah Opera Production Studios at the end of the week.
- Utah Opera will also help teachers make individual plans for a classroom opera project including the services of a composer (hired by Utah Opera)during the following school year.
- Teachers who attend Utah Opera performances can earn four relicensure points by signing in an hour before curtain at Patron Services, attending thePrelude lecture, and then enjoying the performance.
- Teachers who attend Utah Symphony performances can earn three re-licensure points by signing in an hour before the beginning of Masterwork concerts at the Youth Guild Coat Check, and attending the pre concert lecture and then enjoying the concert.
- Opera by Children is a professional development program that provides training for teachers and in-class mentoring to help the teacher lead their students in creating original operas.
- Utah Festival Opera also offers art workshops. These are “Ginormous” teacher paint parties where mural sized art is created in the training by participants as they learn how to conduct a paint session with their students.
Visual Arts Education Professional Learning
Springville Museum of Arts:
Evenings for Educators:
- Sponsored by the Springville Museum of Art, Evenings for Educators are held once or twice a month during the academic year at museums and galleries across the state of Utah. The evenings feature keynote speakers, hands-on workshops, networking opportunities, light refreshments and free educational materials designed to help teachers integrate the night’s theme into their curriculum.
- The Museum of Fine Arts offers interactive, hands-on, and art-making intensives for teachers. Their services include open houses, Evenings for Educators, and curriculum-based works.
Conferences with an Arts Education or Arts Integration Focus
Arts and Arts Integration
- Arts Express: (June) BYU ARTS Partnership, Utah County
- Utah Inclusive Arts Festival: (Fall and Spring) Conference focuses on all four art forms and special education students, University of Utah
- Arts Fusion: (July) Southern Utah University
- Americans for the Arts Annual Convention: (June)
- Arts are Core: (workshops throughout the year) Utah State University
Art-Form Specific Opportunities
Dance
- UDEO Fall Conference: (October). The Utah Dance Education Organization hosts a Saturday professional development conference for dance educators and elementary school teachers interested in incorporating dance into their classroom.
- NDEO Annual National Conference: (October). The National Dance Education Organization hosts a three-day conference for educators interested in dance education.
- daCi Utah Day of Dance: (October). A multi-generational and multi-cultural community dance event that provides teachers with training in cultural art forms and the creative process.
Drama
- UACTT Summer Conference: (July). The Utah Advisory Council of Theatre Teachers (UACTT)hosts an annual summer conference for teachers.
- UTAC Annual Conference:(January). The Utah Theatre Association (UTAC) holds an annual three-day conference each year for a few days in January.
- Timpanogos Storytelling Festival
- Utah Shakespeare Festival
Media Arts
- NAMLE Annual Conference: (June). The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAM-LE) hosts an annual conference for teachers seeking professional development in media arts.
- Utah Film Center
- Spy Hop
Music
- Orff-Schulwerk in the Mountains Workshop: (June). A ten-day workshop for teachers leading to certification in Orff-Schulwerk Methods of music education.
- UMTA State Conference: (Oct/Nov). The Utah Music Teachers Association (UMTA) hosts a two-day conference for teachers interested in integrating music into their classroom.
- NAfME National Conference: (Oct/Nov). This three-day conference provides parents, teachers,and administrators, and parents with professional resources that promote music education.
- UMEA Midwinter Conference: (Feb). The Utah Music Educators Association (UMEA) hosts a conference for two days in February for teachers.
- MTNA Annual National Conference: (March). Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) also hosts an annual conference for teachers.
- InterMuse Academy: (June). A two-week workshop hosted by Brigham Young University leading to Kodaly certification, a powerful and distinctive pedagogy for music education.
Visual Arts
- UAEA Fall Conference: (Fall and Spring). Utah Art Education Association meets for a fall confer-ence and spring conference each year.
- NAEA Annual National Convention: (March). This three-day event is the world’s largest art education convention. Its express aim is to improve visual arts instruction in America’s schools.
- Statewide Arts Partnership Evening for Educators: Find a professional development workshop in visual arts at museums across the state of Utah at various times throughout the year.
The professional development opportunities for arts educators in Utah are abundant and diverse, spanning dance, drama, media arts, music, and visual arts. These programs offer essential resources, workshops, and networking opportunities that empower teachers to effectively integrate the arts into their classrooms. By participating in these professional development initiatives, educators are better equipped to inspire creativity and enrich the learning experiences of their students.
For more detailed guidance for building an arts-rich school, download the Arts-Rich School Handbook, which covers everything from hiring educators to producing student performances and exhibitions. This resource is a crucial tool for any school looking to enhance its arts programs and foster a vibrant, creative culture and community.
