Overview
Overview
What Artful Learning Is
Artful Learning is a transformative, three-year professional development experience for teachers, inspired by 20th-century musical icon Leonard Bernstein’s conviction that the creativity and critical thinking are the most powerful ways to learn anything.
It transforms schools by giving teachers a practical framework for embedding inter-disciplinary teaching and creative thinking into how they deliver the core subjects—reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. This approach takes a quantum leap beyond affixing the arts to the school day. Instead, it changes how existing lessons are taught.
Every unit follows the same four-phase sequence—
Experience | Inquire | Create | Reflect
Students encounter a concept, investigate it, produce original work that demonstrates their understanding, and reflect on what they learned and how.
“Artful Learning is rocket fuel for your curriculum.”
— Teacher, Portland, OR
A Three-Year Immersive Training
Each year for three years, teachers receive inspiring, supportive training from Artful Learning Trainers in two ways:
- An immersive four-day Summer Institute, where teachers learn the model and design their own Artful Learning units aligned to their curriculum.
- Two on-site trainings during the school year, plus ongoing remote support, so teachers are coached as they put the model into practice.
Artful Learning is effective at every grade from kindergarten through high school and in all types of schools. By the end of the third year, the school owns the practice and continues independently—no ongoing trainer presence, no subscription. Over 30 years, Artful Learning has been successfully implemented with measurable and ongoing results across the nation.
Artful Learning is a not-for-profit entity. The model seeks above all to make Leonard Bernstein's visionary approach to teaching and learning available to as many classrooms as possible. While there are costs involved, our intent is to keep them at a minimum however we can.
The adjacent sections address school district leaders, principals, teachers, parents, and funders, and then detail how Artful Learning works, what the results show, how it fits today’s educational priorities, and model options and costs.