Arts Integration in Action: The Creation of the Rockin' Teacher Curriculum

Well over 40 years of budget pressures and a focus on reading and math have results in the arts – music, art, dance - largely beening squeezed out of the school curriculum. Numerous authors describe how arts-poor classrooms translate into missed educational opportunities for students, particularly those students who need it the most. The purpose of this project was to describe and share the process and selected products (i.e., elements of the first grade Big Dogs Beg multi-media learning package) of the Rockin’ Teacher Curriculum that this teacher researcher created over the course of several years in order to provide elementary teachers and students with instruction materials and a multi-media system that uses the visual and performing arts to enhance student engagement and achievement in the curriculum. The Big Dogs Beg materials and the entire curriculum enable teachers to integrate the visual and performing arts into their classrooms and use it as a tool to teach academic standards rather than treating the arts as a separate discipline. The Big Dogs Beg materials and Rockin’ Teacher Curriculum can be seen at  www.rockingteacher.com.