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the arts book

The ARTS Book: Designing Quality Arts Integration
with Alignment, Rigor, Teamwork and Sustainability
by Linda Whitesitt, Ph.D. and Elda Franklin, Ed.D.

The ARTS Book describes four factors that are essential in quality arts integration programs: alignment, rigor, teamwork and sustainability. Based on the authors’ evaluations of eight arts integration projects over the past seven years in which they conducted over 1000 structured classroom observations of arts-integrated lessons, The ARTS Book explains how to

  • Align project vision, activities, and outcomes.
  • Align professional development offerings with arts integration curriculum and instruction,
  • Ensure rigorous professional development,
  • Guarantee rigorous arts integration curriculum and instruction,
  • Include teamwork as a foundational strategy in project design and professional development, and
  • Embed the sustainability of transformed teacher practice in the overall project design.

After using The ARTS Book, teachers, teaching artists and arts administrators will be able to design and implement a quality arts integration program noted for its sound underlying theory, quality curriculum and instruction, dynamic learning community, sustainability, and measurable impact on teacher practice and student learning.

About the authors:

linda whitesitt Dr. Linda Whitesitt is Director of Research and Evaluation for RealVisions as well as an active music educator, musicologist and professional violinist. She and her husband Dr. Bennett Lentczner, retired president of New World School of the Arts in Miami and professional trumpet player, live in Berkeley Springs, WV.

elda franklinDr. Elda Franklin is Professor Emerita of Music at Winthrop University, and is an experienced evaluator for Real Visions as well as a professional violist. She lives with her husband, saxophonist and jazz writer Dr. David Franklin, in Rock Hill, SC, and Beech Mountain, NC.

 
What they are saying about
The ARTS Book

Accessible common sense meets uncommon expert guidance in The Arts Book. This book is a thorough, reliable, wise, inspiring, user-friendly, distillation of the best the field of arts learning knows. Whitesitt and Franklin have created an essential foundation book that will take the national experiment in arts integration ahead a giant step. Buy it; trust it; wear out its pages. —Eric Booth

      Eric Booth is on the faculty at Juilliard, the Lincoln Center Institute, and the Kennedy Center. He is a frequent keynote speaker and international arts consultant, the author of “The Everyday Work of Art,” and founding editor of the Teaching Artist Journal.

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I love this book!! The Arts Book clearly defines what authentic arts integration is, how to implement an arts integration project, and how to assure sustainability. Based on thorough research, The Arts Book provides the framework for successfully implementing meaningful arts integration projects in the classroom. This book is an excellent guide for any classroom teacher or arts administrator interested in enriching instruction through arts integration. —Ralph Opacic

      Ralph Opacic is president of Arts Schools Network. He is founder and executive director of the Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana, California.

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Linda Whitesitt and Elda Franklin have written a book for the development of truly successful arts-integrated programs in schools. This guide provides essential tools for educators, especially principals and teachers, interested in developing such programs in their schools, or even struggling in the early stages of arts integration projects that are simply not working effectively. It gives a step-by-step sequence of planning, complete with examples, charts, forms and an array of other documents and is the most complete book on the topic I have seen. The ARTS Book should be required reading for anyone interested in the power of arts integration to transform schools. —Valerie Morris

      Valerie Morris is Dean of the School of the Arts, College of Charleston in South Carolina. She is the immediate past president of the South Carolina Alliance for Arts Education, a member of the steering committee for South Carolina’s Arts in Basic Curriculum project and a former board member of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans.

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This book should be required reading for anyone wanting to start an arts integration program. Whitesitt and Franklin have clearly made the case for how alignment, rigor and teamwork lead to sustainability of quality school wide arts-integrated instruction.  I will be recommending this book to all schools beginning the arts integration process and to all schools that have established programs and want to evaluate the impact of arts-integrated instruction on the school community. —John Ceschini

      John Ceschini is the Executive Director of Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance. He is the former principal of Kensington-Parkwood Elementary School, an Arts Integration Model School in Montgomery County, Maryland.