Chapter 1: Introduction: “Nobody Told Me There Would Be Dancing!”: The Why and How Behind Arts Integration in Secondary Settings

The truth is, none of us fully knew what we were getting ourselves into back in the summer of 2012, when we—Chris and Hung—convened our first group of ten secondary-level teachers who would become the inaugural class of the ARTeacher Fellowship program¹. The initial vision for the Fellowship was straightforward: provide talented teachers with a yearlong learning experience in arts integration, giving them the training, resources, support, and time they would need to deeply transform their classroom practice through the arts. Fellows who successfully complete the yearlong cycle are invited to participate for a second and third year, continuing to develop their knowledge and practice. Each year since 2012, we have inducted another cohort of ten new members into the Fellowship. And each year, the program’s founding organizers—representatives from the University of Arkansas (that’s us) in partnership with two local art institutions: the Walton Arts Center and Crystal Bridges Museum—continue to learn alongside and be informed by these talented educators. This book collects a decade of wisdom gained from the ARTeacher Fellowship and witnessing the impact on participating teachers and their students. We now know what we got ourselves into: an exciting model for cultivating middle and high school teacher expertise in arts integration, with a wealth of resulting knowledge and wisdom worth sharing with the larger teaching community.