Professional Development

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun”.

      — Mary Lou Cook, The Forbes Book of Business Quotations

Since 1987 SMARTS has provided this region’s arts educators with current, relevant and practical continuing education that impacts thousands of students. SMARTS agrees with the Massachusetts Department of Education that “high quality professional development results in new learning evidenced by changed behavior, which is gained by opportunities to become aware, observe, practice, reflect, and refine (1994). The arts engender such knowledge for all learners.

The discipline-based and interdisciplinary dynamic of the SMARTS Summer Institute is the model used for services to the professional community. These in-depth professional development programs have trained southeastern Massachusetts artists and arts teachers K-16 to create model curricula, to provide internet access to their units of study and to be a cadre of mentor teachers who help to elevate the quality of arts education for the children of this region.

Click to download and/or view the 2007 "Bring Literacy to an Art Form" Brochure & Registration Form (PDF Format)

Some Professional Development Programs

Fall and Spring Professional Development Workshop Series - mini courses that give teachers an opportunity to present their "best practice" to colleagues and acquire new skills.

Forums and Informational Sessions - such as Arts Framework Forums; Block Scheduling: How will it affect your Fine Arts Programs?; Music Technology in the Classroom; Creativity in the Middle School Art Room; Assessment and the Arts; Weaving Literacy into Art and Music.

Pathway to Communication ('94, '95, '96) - Goals 2000 Pre-Service Grant: This project was a SMARTS/Bridgewater State College partnership. The three year project brought artists and classroom teachers to BSC to work with dance, drama, music, visual arts, and secondary education faculty to assist in the development of arts infused curricula at the pre-service level. A manual of integrated arts lessons for the secondary classroom was a product of the project.

ArtsLinks ('97) - Dwight D. Eisenhower Professional Development Program Grant: This three year project was a SMARTS/UMass Dartmouth partnership that linked the arts, learning technology and curriculum design through innovative cross-disciplinary pedagogy and studio performance. The goal of the project was to provide time, training, and resources for teachers, artists, and college faculty to discuss, develop, collaborate, write, implement and refine integrated arts curricula. ArtsLinks used the Internet to document the process and curricular outcomes. Go to: http://www.umassd.edu/SpecialPrograms/ArtsLinks/home.html

BRIDGES I, II, III - A consolidated "PATHWAY and Artlinks Redesign of Preservice Experiences Project - ('98, '99, 00) Goals 2000: Preservice and Higher Education Eisenhower Professional Development Project. Now in its third year this project is a continuing partnership between SMARTS and UMass Dartmouth. The project includes a course offered to pre-service teachers that trains them in arts-infused curriculum and assessment design and gives them practicum experience implementing their integrated arts lessons in mentor teachers classrooms.

INNERHYTHMS - a course in the art of drums, percussion and rhythm offered to teachers to immerse them in a wide variety of genres designed to improve their knowledge and skill base of ethnic music, musical listening skills, and oral traditions.

Seaside Watercolors - a three credit course designed for those who want to explore watercolor to integrate the medium into their curriculum as well as to refresh their own personal growth.

TAC I, II - Technology in the Arts Classroom - (’01,’02) SMARTS/ UMass Dartmouth partnership project funded by the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professional Development Program and the Mass. Board of Higher Education. The focus of the TAC project was on the design of arts-based, interdisciplinary curricular units that trained teachers to use the Internet as the primary mode of curricula implementation.