The Arts Express Conference is an annual two day conference for educators put on by the BYU Arts Partnership. Educators come from all over in order to gain new insights on how to integrate the arts into their classroom. In the conference they have breakout sessions that teach about how to integrate movement, music, visual arts, literary arts, and drama. I was lucky enough to be able to attend both days of the conference, along with some of my coworkers on the external relations team. We all learned so much and had a lot of fun! I would highly recommend this conference to all students in the BYU McKay School of Education.
The first breakout session I attended was "Dine botany." We got to learn from Navajo woman about how they live and the food that they eat. We also got to try some! The blue mush is a mix of corn meal and juniper tree ash. For my second session of the day I got to learn how to add movement to any piece of literature. It was so fun to be able to learn how to engage students more in literature while also stimulating their brains. I definitely want to implement using movement when teaching pieces of literature in my classroom. If I had fun doing it, I know that my future students will have even more fun dancing around the classroom while they learn!
On the second day of the conference, Ms. Frizzle came to teach us about readers' theater! It was such a fun and interactive experience. She turned a "Magic School Bus" book into a readers' theater for over 20 students to participate in. I will definitely be doing this in my future classroom. Along with meeting Ms. Frizzle, I learned how to add music and movement to math. There are SO many ways to integrate the arts into your classroom to boost engagement with little effort on the teacher's part. This conference taught me so much and I hope to go again next year!
Mark your calendars for next year's conference in the first week of June! If you would like to learn more about the conference or any of the majors in the McKay School, click here to meet with a student ambassador.