Empire State Partnership:  Arts Integration with Niagara Falls High School

The Castellani Art Museum recently entered into an exciting new partnership with Niagara Falls High School funded through an Empire State Partnership (ESP) grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, Arts in Education Program. 

This collaborative effort brings teams of students, teachers, and administrators from Niagara Falls High School together with Castellani Art Museum staff and some of the area’s finest teaching artists to develop integrated learning experiences for students utilizing the rich collections, special exhibitions, and resources of the museum.  The mission of the partnership is to enhance teaching and learning at the high school through a culture that provides integrative instruction in and through the arts.  A primary goal of this program is to develop meaningful projects that allow teachers, students and administrators to explore and examine the powerful role the arts can play in education and life-long learning.  Our objectives are to assist students with higher order thinking skills and achievement of the New York State Learning Standards and to bring about school-wide curriculum reform.  In 2007, students participated in a number of integrated learning experiences both in the classroom and at the museum.  Working with a photographer, poet, collage artist, and musician/composer, students wrote poetry, created artworks, produced music collages, and wrote essays utilizing artworks from the museum’s collection and special exhibitions.  As one teacher noted, “at least 90% of my ELA students addressed poetic devices in their essays for the first time as a result of working with art!”

Artist Gerald Mead works with 9th grade English

students on an integrated unit exploring the Holocaust.   

Students connect global studies themes with
artworks during a recent trip to the museum

To learn more about this program, please contact Marian Granfield, CAM Education Coordinator, at 286-8367.