Andrea Cummings, a fourth-grade teacher at East Aiken Elementary School, is going to take her kids to the Morris Museum of Art and has several activities planned with the trip.

"We're going to integrate an English/language arts lesson in writing," she said recently. "All of the students will be assigned a portrait to study, and (art teacher) Carrie Power will have talked to them about how to write through looking at art."

For many years, Power and physical education teacher Kathy Linton have promoted that kind of arts integration throughout the curriculum, getting support from principal Mary Robinson.

Faculty members got a chance for in-depth discussion and interactive activities related to the concept last Wednesday through a professional development session. The facilitators were two art educators - Nancy Halverson, an executive of the Peace Center, a performing arts center in Greenville; and creative writer Heather Magruder, who has done a writing residency at East Aiken in recent years.

"It's a great opportunity to bring the arts into math and language arts into the classroom," said Power. "They're going to take several standards, including arts standards, and show how to teach them through the core curriculum."

The Peace Center is part of the Kennedy Center partnership for arts integration, said Halverson, a former college professor.

"We'll have a lot to say about sharing work with others," she said. "A lot of times, parents see the final project but don't see how their kids got there. We'll talk about the process and how teachers can share it with the community, creating a value for the work they're doing."

Teachers continue to realize that arts integration can help children absorb instructional material faster and in a different way, said Linton, who has incorporated instruction in character assembly programs and her physical education classes.

"It makes things exciting in the classroom, and, when they see my excitement, it just balloons," Linton said. "They figure out that learning is fun. We'll do some things today to give the teachers interesting and diverse ways to teach the subject matter."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.