Information for Educators
Centrum’s programs for young artists help districts to provide the variety and depth of experience in the arts needed to meet today’s learning objectives.
The model for our elementary and middle school programs is to have artists and scientists, engaged in the most current cultural issues of our times, mentor young people in grades 5-9, as well as the teachers and adult chaperones who accompany them.
Centrum’s Explorations program for middle school students introduces young artists to visual art, dance, music, theater and creative writing in a weeklong intensive workshop.
“I learned how to not be afraid to try something new and that I can be whatever I want to be, if I put my mind to it.”
---Alison Kiva, Explorations participant from Gault Middle School, Tacoma, WA
Centrum's Water World is a groundbreaking week for students in grades 5-6 that integrates art with marine science, in a week of personal and environmental exploration on the edge of Puget Sound. Students work with educators from the Port Townsend Marine Science Center to discover and explore marine ecosystems. Then, working with visual, movement, and literary artists, students learn how to creatively express and embody the results of their research.
Centrum provides a completely hands-on experience outside the traditional classroom. Darcy Herrett, visual arts teacher at Woodward Middle School on Bainbridge Island says:
“The time I have spent at Centrum during the middle school creativity workshop has fueled me throughout the year, every year. I get to experience how education is meant to be: three dimensional and individually focused. It is Outward Bound for the creative mind and spirit.”
What Herrett experiences is active learning by doing. The creative process is presented in a fresh and original way. Spending a week focused on art, or a combination of art and science, allows for the kind of concentrated accomplishment that is renewing and transformational.
“Before going to Centrum, I viewed painting as a messy pain in the neck. Now I’m much more confident, I don’t hesitate. If there’s some project that ties in to my curriculum I go for it. There’s something that happens to kids when they do art projects. They relax and make discoveries. They don’t realize it’s work. This comes back to the classroom from the Centrum experience."
Centrum is a non-profit, artist-centered organization with a 35-year partnership with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). OSPI recognizes the value of Centrum’s programs for teachers as well as students, and awards clock hours to teachers attending a workshop with their students.
As an educator/participant at Centrum, you interact with professional artists to evaluate and understand the content of your artwork, learning new techniques in a variety of genres. Dance, theater, visual art, new media, creative writing, and music are offered with an eye towards 21st century skills- thinking creatively, critically, analytically and logically. Final presentations at the end of the week offer the perfect opportunity for authentic assessment.
We also partner with the Port Townsend Marine Science Center in creating integrated arts and science programs. We look to the OSPI standards in the Arts and Sciences, as well as newer forms of assessment (CBPAs) as a guideline in developing programming.
The arts at Centrum provide access for growth of the whole child- often for the whole adult as well. Increased self-confidence encourages students to “be who they really are.” In many cases students also feel their experience at Centrum helped them to be more than they thought they could be.
