PAIR Partnership
The PAIR Program is an arts integration program developed by the Education Office of the Springer Opera House, Georgia’s Historic State Theatre. The PAIR Program is a hands-on, gradual release professional development program that teaches arts-based strategies adaptable across content and grade level. The PAIR Program is a teacher-centric program and aims to equip and empower teachers with Arts Integration instruction, which in turn creates creative, curious, and compassionate students. Typically, PAIR Specialists host after school trainings, followed by personalized classroom visits to model, co-teach or give feedback on PAIR strategies. PAIR Specialists are professional teaching artists in their respective areas of expertise and represent a mixture of certified and non-certified teachers. PAIR Specialists are adaptable to classrooms of any size, demographic, achievement level, or physical capability.
Arts Disciplines: Theatre/Drama, Music, Dance, Creative Writing, Visual Art
Core Content Curriculum Areas: Theatre/Drama, Music, Dance, English/Language Arts, Media Arts, Visual Art, Math, Science, Social Studies/History
Specialized Content Areas: Literacy, STEAM, Arts Integration
Grade Levels: Pre-K, K-2, 3-5, 6-8
Special Populations: At-Risk Students
Pre-Service Learning and Professional Development: Post-Secondary/Pre-Service Learning, Professional Development for Teaching Artists, Professional Development for K-12 Teachers
Geographic Availability: Metro Atlanta, North Georgia, Middle Georgia, South Georgia
Program Fees:
- Program fees – Fees vary by school– approved for Title I and Title IV funding
- $300-$15,000 based on school needs
Artistic Profile:
The PAIR Program is an arts integration program developed by the Education Office of the Springer Opera House, Georgia’s Historic State Theatre. The Education Office is a multifaceted branch of the Springer’s Educational mission, which includes a thriving Community Outreach program, Arts in Education performances for over 20,000 students, and the Springer Theatre Academy.
Heading into its 24th year, the Springer Theatre Academy is the premier actor training program for students in the Southeast. The Academy teaches “Life Skills Through Stage Skills” through a variety of classes focused around all elements of performing arts. Students focus on all elements of theatrical performance, including Musical Theatre, Scene Study, Improvisation, and Voice and Movement.
The PAIR Program continues the legacy of the Academy by bringing that same artistic integrity into classrooms and integrating it with classroom content. The PAIR Program is a teacher-centric program and aims to equip and empower teachers with Arts Integration strategies, which in turn creates creative, curious, and compassionate students. PAIR’s ultimate goal is total school transformation, which includes shifting the teaching pedagogy and cultivating a positive, rigorous, arts-focused mindset in every classroom.
Teaching Experience:
Teaching artists become PAIR Specialists by demonstrating a commitment to both art and education and undergoing training by the Springer Opera House Education Staff. PAIR Specialists also receive supplemental education by the Springer’s community partners, including the Columbus Museum and the Department of Education STEAM. PAIR Specialists are often dance teachers, producing artists, professional musicians, theatre performers, etc.
PAIR Specialists are professional teaching artists in their respective areas of expertise and represent a mixture of certified and non-certified teachers. This allows for a more artistically diverse and varied approach to training teachers in arts integration strategies. PAIR Specialists develop relationships with teachers to better understand their level of artistic comfort and their desired classroom culture. PAIR Specialists are adaptable to classrooms of any size, demographic, achievement level, or physical capability.
Sample Programs:
3rd Grade Fossil Machines
- Traditional PAIR Partnership- Visual Art/ Music/ Dance/ Theatre serving all core content areas. This Lesson Plan comes from a 3rd-grade class, though all PAIR Strategies can be scaffolded up or down to serve Kindergarten through 5th Grade Students.
- Using the Movement Strategy “Machines,” students physically explored how fossils are created–focusing specifically on heat, pressure, and time. Working in collaborative teams, students used scientific information to create a movement sequence that accurately represented the content, but was also retained artistic integrity. Students were evaluated on the understanding of the content and also evaluated the elements of dance, including a variety of movement, body control, and responding to improvised stimuli.
6th Grade Poetry Body Percussion
- Traditional PAIR Partnership- Visual Art/ Music/ Dance/ Theatre serving all core content areas. This
- Lesson Plan comes from a 6th-grade class, though all PAIR Strategies can be scaffolded up or down to serve
- 6th through 8th-grade students.
- Using the Music Strategy “Body Percussion,” students musically explored the themes and structure of Maya Angelous’ poem, ‘Life Doesn’t Frighten Me’. Students first analyzed the music quality of each of the Body Percussion sounds– clap, lap, snap, stomp– and gave emotional qualities to each sound. Students then associated these qualities to the words and rhythms in Angelou’s poem. Through this process, students created their own Musical Score that directly correlated to the narrative structure of the poem and also provided a deeper emotional understanding of the text.
Program III
- Because of the nature of this program, teachers are allowed to select the classroom content they would like the most support in. Depending on their level of comfort, teachers are also able to select a fine arts area they think would be most successful. Attached is a sample of the Planning Guide PAIR Specialists use when garnering this information from teachers. The PAIR Specialists’ main function is to maintain the artistic integrity of the lesson while the teacher provides the content expertise.
Sample Lesson Plans/Study Guides:
Program Photos:
PAIR Program – Photo 1
- Listing ID: 6060