Delivering on the promise of "World Class Education," the combined faculties of Auburn and Bethlehem Elementary Schools in the Barrow County School System will receive training using the fine and performing arts as a medium for teaching the Georgia Performance Standards (or GPS) to their young students.

ArtsNow/Creating Pride, Inc., based in Atlanta, through funding provided by the Harrison Foundation, will import a staff of world-class professionals to provide the teacher training.

The training will be delivered in the Winder Cultural Arts Center, located at 105 E. Athens St., in Winder, from 8 a.m. to noon on Friday, Jan. 16. Teachers will be given the tools to thoroughly integrate the fine arts into their "everyday" classroom teaching as a creative, imaginative way to help students master the GPS, in turn raising standardized test scores.

The use of the arts, namely dance/movement, theater/drama, visual arts, and music, as a method for conveying the important concepts contained in the GPS for math, science, social studies and English language arts is a first-time endeavor on this scale for any school in Barrow County school system.

Research has confirmed time and again that the arts teach children the skills necessary and valuable for the 21st century workforce: collaboration, creativity, imagination and communication.

ArtsNow, in a partnership established with the Auburn and Bethlehem schools in the summer of 2008, will have widely renowned staff teacher-trainers at the January event from a variety of professional and collegiate-level fine arts organizations, including: the Atlanta Ballet, the High Museum Atlanta, Synchronicity Theater’s Playmaking for Girls Program and nationally-recognized music consultant Maribeth Yoder-White.

Teachers will explore how various fine and performing arts can convey the GPS content to their young students of varying learning styles. Break-out sessions will focus on arts media like printmaking and additive sculpture as a process not unlike creative writing, or addition/subtraction in math; dramatic engagement and non-verbal communication in theater as a way to demonstrate social studies concepts related to culture; music composition and found-sound instrument making that parallels mathematic process and discovering patterns.

The Fine Arts Department of the Barrow County School System is headed up by Fine Arts Coordinator Kerry Bryant. He can be reached by e-mail at kbryant@barrow.k12.ga.us or be calling (678) 425-2815.

The school system employs 45 full-time, fully-certified art, band, chorus, drama and elementary general music teachers, each with their own dedicated classroom across all three levels: elementary, middle and high school. The Barrow County School System and community has fully supported the arts through the years, and in so doing has gained a reputation as a forward-looking, innovative school system for the 21st century, garnering many awards and honors in all areas of fine arts education.

This year’s Barrow County Schools’ Fine Arts Festival will be held April 13-17 with the venue as the Colleen O. Williams Theatre.