Episode Guide

1. Revealing Character — A language arts teacher and a visual art teacher ask eighth-graders to demonstrate their understanding of a novel’s characters by creating unusual ceramic place settings.

2. Breathing Life into Myths — A language arts teacher draws on puppetry techniques and help from her school’s theatre teacher to engage her sixth-graders in exploring Greek myths. 

3. Two Dance Collaborations — In a first-time collaboration, a dance teacher and a science teacher combine forces to explore the laws of motion with a seventh- and eighth-grade dance class. At another school, a dance teacher and a math teacher work with sixth graders on imaginative interpretations of the idea of circles. 

4. Constructing a Community — A visual art teacher and a social studies teacher use the distinctive architecture and history of their school’s neighborhood to help eighth-graders see their community in a new light.

5. Making Connections — Teachers of music, visual art and theatre build thoughtful connections to topics their seventh-graders are working on in social studies and language arts. 

6. Exploring Our Team — Seventh- and eighth-grade students explore Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town from the perspectives of theatre, music, visual art, language arts and social studies. 

7. Creating a Culture — The Story Begins— Sixth-graders develop their own cultures, complete with language, clothing, artwork and rituals. Weeks of hard work culminate in a surprising twist. This program is the first of two parts. View web resources for this program here.

8. Analyzing a Culture — Students become archaeologists, analyzing artifacts from other student-created cultures. They then design a museum exhibit from those artifacts. This program is the second of two parts.

9. Folk Tales Transformed — A visiting theatre artist works with a language arts teacher and a visual art teacher to help eighth-graders transform folk tales into original scenes that the students perform. 

10. Preserving a Place for the Arts — When faced with budget cuts, the staff of a rural middle school finds innovative ways to keep the arts a viable part of the curriculum. 

11. Can Frogs Dance? — A dance teacher and a science teacher ask seventh-graders to compare the anatomy of frogs and humans. Then a language arts teacher coaches the students in a lively debate about whether a frog should be allowed to join a ballet company. 

12. Finding your Voice — Drawing on themes of conflict and genocide that eighth-graders are studying in their World Cultures class, four arts teachers organize an interdisciplinary unit that encourages students to use their artwork as a form of protest.