Building Bridges: Arts & Literacy for Early Learners

Building Bridges: A Story of Reawakening Through Arts and Literacy

There's a particular kind of electricity in the air when educators gather to rediscover what first called them to teaching. This past Fall 2025, under the leadership of Rae Takemoto, Creative Programs Director of When We Shine Foundation, we witnessed this phenomenon firsthand through our program, Building Bridges: Arts and Literacy professional learning for Early Childhood Educators and Teaching Artists. What unfolded was more than professional development—it was an educational reawakening.

The Gathering

We brought together teaching artists and classroom teachers from kindergarten through 3rd grade, all seeking something vital: a way to infuse their practice with deeper meaning, creativity, and connection, under the guidance of 3 Master Arts Educators:

           Jamie Simpson Steele, Associate Professor at the College of Education at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Dr. Jamie Simpson Steele is Associate Professor at the College of Education, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa where she prepares teacher candidates to integrate the arts throughout the curriculum. A Dr. Simpson Steele collaborates with leading arts organizations such as Honolulu Theatre for Youth, Hawai‘i Arts Alliance, and Maui Arts and Culture Center to better understand and sustain the arts in schools throughout the state of Hawai‘i.       

 

An ardent and outspoken teaching artist, Daniel A. Kelin II lives in Hawaii and travels a great deal. He is Honolulu Theatre for Youth (HTY) Director of Drama Education and recently served as President of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE). A 2009 Fulbright-Nehru Scholar in India, he has also had fellowships with Montalvo Arts Center, Theatre for Young Audiences/USA and the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America. He is on the Teaching Artist roster of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and was Director of Theatre Training for both Crossroads Theatre for Youth in American Samoa and a Marshall Islands youth organization.

       Sean Layne, the founder of a national arts education consulting company called Focus 5 Inc. This company focuses on arts integration across the curriculum for grades pre-K- 12 in schools across the U.S. Mr. Layne presents professional development workshops for teachers, and has designed training seminars for teaching artists nationwide for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For over a decade Mr. Layne acted, directed and designed sets for the InterAct Story Theatre, a professional theatre company that has served more than 4,000 schools, museums, libraries, and festivals around the world. He began working with the Wolf Trap Institute Early Learning Through the Arts program in 1989. 

Under these Master Arts Educatorsʻ direction, beginning August thru November of 2025, 15 professional Maui teachers from 5 different schools, didn't just learn about arts integration—they experienced it, breathed it, and rediscovered themselves within it.

Our purpose was threefold: to build robust support for our educator community, to nurture teachers' own creative arts learning, and to expand the reach of Arts Integration across more schools. What we discovered together went far beyond these initial intentions.

The Five Pillars of Transformation

Through intensive collaborative work, reflection, and hands-on exploration, five core elements emerged as the beating heart of what arts integration offers our youngest learners:

Joyful and Transformative Learning became our foundation. We watched as teachers remembered what it felt like to approach learning with curiosity rather than compliance, with wonder rather than worry. The arts didn't just make learning fun—they made it meaningful, memorable, and deeply personal.

Embodied Learning and Movement reminded us that young children think with their whole bodies, not just their minds. When we invited teachers to experience lessons through gesture, dance, and physical expression, they saw their students anew, recognizing that the child who can't sit still might be the one who understands most deeply when allowed to move.

Scaffolding, Sequencing and Facilitation provided the structure within which creativity could flourish. Our educators discovered that arts integration isn't about chaos or abandoning rigor—it's about building carefully designed pathways that allow every child to access complex ideas through multiple entry points.

Reflection and Feedback, Voice, Storytelling and Characterization opened doors to literacy in ways that traditional approaches sometimes miss. When children inhabit a character, tell a story through tableau, or reflect on their creative choices, they're developing the same critical thinking and communication skills we've always valued—but now with personal investment and authentic purpose.

Community, Collaboration and Belonging emerged organically as teachers worked together, taking creative risks in front of their peers. They modeled for themselves what they hoped to create in their classrooms: spaces where it's safe to try, to fail, to support one another, and to celebrate collective growth.

Finally, the Normalization of Failure and Growth Mindset became perhaps our most powerful discovery. In arts integration, there's no single "right answer"—there's exploration, revision, and the understanding that first attempts are just beginnings. Teachers who experienced this grace in their own learning carried it back to their students like a gift.

The Arc of Reawakening

What we witnessed follows a beautiful academic arc, one that every educator in our program traveled in their own way:

It began with experiencing arts integration firsthand—not as observers or theorists, but as learners themselves. Teachers painted, moved, created characters, and built stories. They felt what their students feel.

This led to discovering facilitation frameworks—the practical tools and structures that make arts integration accessible and sustainable in real classrooms with real constraints. Our master educators shared their wisdom generously, demystifying the "how" that often keeps teachers from taking the first step.

Through reflecting on practice through collaboration, teachers found their voice. In learning teams, they examined their assumptions, shared their fears, and celebrated their breakthroughs. They learned that they didn't have to transform their practice alone.

Ultimately, this journey led to reconnecting with joy and purpose—perhaps the most precious outcome of all. In a profession often weighed down by mandates, assessments, and exhaustion, our educators remembered why they chose this path. They rediscovered that teaching, at its best, is a creative act.

Building Bridges Forward

The name of our program—Building Bridges: Arts & Literacy —has taken on richer meaning with each session. We're building bridges between disciplines, certainly, connecting literacy and visual arts, movement and mathematics, drama and social-emotional learning. But more importantly, we're building bridges between teachers and students, between the joy of learning and the rigor of academic growth, between the teacher one is expected to be and the teacher one dreams of becoming.

Our early learner educators left the program professional learning sessions with more than lesson plans and resources. They left with renewed belief in their students' capacities, expanded vision for what's possible in their classrooms, and a community of fellow travelers committed to keeping creativity alive in public schools.

As we continue to expand our reach, inviting more schools into this work, we carry forward a simple but profound truth: when we integrate the arts into learning, we're not adding something extra or supplemental. We're restoring something essential—the recognition that children are creative, capable, whole human beings who deserve to experience learning as joyful, embodied, meaningful work.

This is the bridge we're building together. And when we shine the light on what arts integration can do, we illuminate not just better teaching strategies, but a more humane, more hopeful vision of what education can be.

When We Shine Foundation remains committed to supporting educators in this transformative work, one classroom, one school, one teacher at a time.