20 Innovative Ideas

From the 2017–2018 Champion Creatively Alive Children Grant Winners.
Principal Supplement: Champion Creatively Alive Children
September/October 2018

Art Helps Navigate the Complex Sense of Home and Place
Belle Chasse Academy,
Belle Chasse, Louisiana
Mary Swazey, Principal
Students whose families serve in the United States military are challenged by frequent relocations that disrupt routines and relationships. Constantly moving increases children’s need for connections to places and people. The Creative Leadership Team provided professional development for colleagues on using art integration to promote connections.

Art Integration Supports English Language Learners
Live Oaks Elementary School, Fallbrook, California
Dr. Wendy Kerr, Principal
Building upon the district’s blueprint for success, the Creative Leadership Team coached colleagues on ways to use art, blending visual and written communications to support English-language learners. Self-assessment portfolios gave students increased control over their learning.

Braided Stories Explore
Self and Others
Lee Expressive Arts Elementary School, Columbia, Missouri
Julia Coggins, Principal
Using the multiliteracies approach of linking written and visual literacy, students’ unique stories unfolded. Through multimodal narratives, students explored personal identities. Teachers were trained in the art of storytelling, tableaux, illustration techniques, portrait, and mentor text.

Building Creative Capacity
Fort River Elementary School, Amherst, Massachusetts
Diane Chamberlain, Principal
The school’s Creative Leadership Team provided a series of workshops for teachers, paraprofessionals, and parents on art integration. They focused on design thinking and engineering inventions aligned with the art standards.

Coaching Colleagues
to Merge Math, Science,
and Art
Mary Pottenger Elementary School, Springfield, Massachusetts
Valerie Williams, Principal
Teacher-led professional development, based on art integration, helped this learning community meet students’ academic and social-emotional needs. Teacher leaders helped colleagues integrate art into science and math lessons.

Environmental Advocacy Weaves Together: Art, Natural History, and Activism
Montpelier Elementary School, Laurel, Maryland
Carla Furlow, Principal
In partnership with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, students and teachers analyzed and synthesized the intersections among art, natural history, and advocacy. The Creative Leadership Team helped colleagues plan art-infused environmental projects that inspired activism.

Exploring Culture, Heritage, and Personal Identity Through Art
Corinth Elementary School, Corinth, Mississippi
Brian Knippers, Principal
This rural school served as a model for Project-Based Learning and innovative teaching practices. Faculty formed extensive collaborations with museums and the local community to deepen the use of art to bridge personal heritage stories.

Extended Collaborative Team Planning
Joseph Pye Elementary School, Ladson, South Carolina
Wanda Carroll-Williams, Principal
Teacher leaders helped colleagues apply the design thinking process to their art-integration and STEAM initiatives. They increased collaborative planning time between the fine arts and classroom teachers, co-created art-infused lessons, and used student portfolios to document progress.

From a “What if …?” Lens
Franklin Elementary School, Wadsworth, Ohio
Roger Havens, Principal
This Creative Leadership Team guided the faculty through the design thinking process, using “What if …?” to spark innovative thinking. They focused on the inquiry approach and challenged students to imagine the future.

Handbook for Starting Arts-Integration
Spring Ridge Elementary School, Frederick, Maryland
Pattie Lee Barnes, Principal
For the past three years, this school has focused on arts-integration. To share their insights, they drafted a Handbook for Arts-Integration Schools, a road map to help others on this journey. Teacher leaders helped all staff understand creative pedagogy, and they conducted instructional rounds, like doctors recommending promising practices.
Innovation Lab Moves STEM

School to STEAM
Otter Lake Elementary School, White Bear Lake, Minnesota
Cynthia Mueller, Principal
Students used the design thinking process to generate innovative solutions to real-world problems. The Creative Leadership Team, which includes the STEAM coach and a partner from the University of Minnesota, provided professional development to colleagues.

Living Museum Uses Art to Bring History Alive
Willard School, Sanford, Maine
Deb Gaudreau, Principal
This school’s Creative Leadership Team used art-infused strategies in a schoolwide time-travel project that imagined living in 1616, when Tisquantum helped early settlers survive winters. Teacher professional development explored how innovation was relevant in the past and prepares students for the future.

Peer Coaching Supports Art Integration Schoolwide
Governor Wolf Elementary School, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Theo Quinones, Principal
Peer observation and coaching increased creative instructional practices, improved collaborative culture, and established a whole-school mindset. Teacher leaders are the driving force of change, helping colleagues develop and implement art-integration projects.

SEEKing New Insights
Marshall School, South Orange, New Jersey
Bonita Samuels, Principal
In collaboration with the district arts supervisor, their PTA, and Crayola creatED coaches, the school’s teacher leaders have been using the SEEK™ and OASIS™ protocols to help colleagues read art, decode images for meaning, and scaffold teacher learning.

SLIDE Into Promising Practices
Vero Beach Elementary School, Vero Beach, Florida
Cynthia Emerson, Principal
The school has established Project-Based Learning Academies in which students use SLIDE: Science, Literacy, Inquiry, Design, and Engineering to solve problems and understand others. Students analyzed school data to redesign the school’s learning spaces.

STEAM: Infusing Collaboration and Authentic Assessment Across the Curriculum
Circle Cross Ranch STEM Academy, San Tan Valley, Arizona
Holly Dalby, Principal
This STEM academy infused art across the curriculum, leveraging master teachers’ talents and their students who are “chief science officers.” Three-dimensional STEAM artifacts and digital portfolios documented student growth.

Student Advisory Program Based on Growth Mindset and Character
Charlotte Lab School, Charlotte, North Carolina
Mary Moss Brown, Principal
Based upon Angela Duckworth’s research on character development, every student in this school participates in an Advisory Program to foster social-emotional well-being. Teacher professional development wove the expressive and healing powers of art into their social-
emotional learning program.

Teachers Learning an Artist Mindset
Ticonderoga Elementary School, Ticonderoga, New York
Elizabeth Hayes, Principal
What if students saw teachers as learners, and teachers learned to enjoy art-making? Classroom teachers explored the studio approach to teaching—creating, presenting, responding, and connecting their lessons to the arts. Parents also engaged in the “arts mindset” with “family take-home art projects,” reinforcing creative thinking beyond school.

Therapeutic Arts: Power to Restore and Self-Regulate
Integrated Arts Academy, Burlington, Vermont
Bobby Riley, Principal
This school’s community includes a blend of generational poverty and newly immigrated refugee families. Children face chronic, complex, and extended trauma. Teachers were trained in multimodalities approaches to intervention, using the therapeutic and restorative power of the arts to increase students’ resiliency, sense of self-efficacy, and self-control.

Words to Reality: Art Assemblages Visually Summarize Books
Cerbat Elementary School, Kingman, Arizona
Vicki Trujillo, Principal
The Creative Leadership Team refreshed the school’s approach to literacy by merging reading, writing, and art-making. Students created three-dimensional assemblages that convey visual and text narratives and demonstrate deep understanding of characters.


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