The Aesthetic Education Program (AEP) is a multidimensional arts education program developed in partnership with New York's Lincoln Center Institute. It brings together teachers, students and professional artists from the McCallum faculty for active involvement with different works of art - focus works.

Intensive professional development courses for educators, artist residencies in the classroom and encounters with live performing works of art and exhibits, allow students in grades K through 12 unique opportunities to be actively engaged in dance, theatre, music and the visual arts.

Students' critical thinking skills and perceptual abilities are sharpened by aesthetic education methods, which lead to improvements in subject areas across the curriculum.

The Aesthetic Education Program offers educators an opportunity to learn how to integrate the arts with an existing curriculum. Participants grow as professional educators by expanding on instructional methods, strategies and tools that support students' learning.

The Aesthetic Education Program consists of the following components:

• Exploring the Work of Art -in the first phase, educators from affiliated schools participate in an intensive Professional development workshop at the Institute in which they explore specific works of art with teaching artists. At the core of this phase is the participants’ engagement in a firsthand experience of the creative process - dancing, acting, making music and painting. In addition, the artworks are analyzed through inquiry, reflection and research of context; discussed, and written about in order to be understood from a variety of perspectives.
• Designing a Curriculum - in the second phase, educator teams are paired with teaching artists in an enriching partnership for the benefit of student learning. The teachers use the knowledge and skills they acquired during the first phase to design a classroom curriculum in collaboration with the teaching artist. Each curriculum is based upon a performance/exhibit from McCallum Theatre Institute’s annual repertory of focus works, and is built around four classroom sessions with the teaching artist. A lesson plan is custom-tailored to the particular group of students depending on their age, strengths and needs, and integrated with topics they are exploring in other subject areas.
• Awakening the Imagination - the final phase brings educators and teaching artists to the classroom, where students study the focus work in the same way their teachers did: through hands-on artistic experience interwoven with reflection that can lead to imaginative leaps and interpretations. The teachers and the teaching artists jointly deliver the curriculum which they co-created.

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