FOCUS STEAM Overview

ARTS for BORDER CHILDREN 

Karen Kay Husted,
Executive Director & Program Manager

P. O. Box 3535   Douglas, AZ  85608

Phone/FAX 520.558.2346    CELL 520.400.1474

KARENKKHUSTED@GMAIL.COM     www.artsforborderchildren.com

FOCUS STEAM

The purpose of Focus STEAM is to improve K – 8 teaching and learning. The proposed project is a four year, professional development effort to impact over 1,000 students. Through the collaboration of seven school districts and six arts organizations, the University or Arizona and the Amerind Foundation,10 teaching artists along with 40 classroom teachers will design, implement and assess science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM) integration at rural campuses and reservation schools in Southern Arizona.  Financial literacy, a 21^st Century arts education priority, will be incorporated into all aspects of learning.

The process will extend the highly successful, research-driven Southeastern Arizona Arts in Academics project facilitated by Arts for Border Children. To accomplish this dual agenda, teachers and teaching artists are trained to create quality STEAM learning experiences, which they collaboratively teach and assess in the classroom.  It will engage the support of community partners from mining, agriculture and general business.

The teacher and artist partnership will engage students in the Common Core through arts activities that require applying reading, writing and computation skills, problem-solving, as well as opportunities to employ learning processes associated with scientific and historical research to create a final product. Students will be using the 21^st Century Skills of communication, collaboration and creation. The result of this collaboration is to generate teachers who have sustainable skills to teach to all the content areas of STEAM and to establish professional learning communities that can continue to work to improve teaching and learning.