LOS ANGELES (July 20, 2006) - The Music Center of Los Angeles County presents the annual Institute for Educators, July 24 through 28, 2006 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Institute will support teams from several area schools as they learn innovative teaching methods for integrating the arts into the classroom.

Participating schools are Arlene Bitely Elementary and Rice Elementary from the Garvey School District, J.E. Van Wig School from Bassett Unified School District, and South Ranchito Elementary from El Rancho Unified School District. The San Gabriel area schools are part of a multi-year partnership with the Music Center supported in part by a grant from The Rose Hills Foundation.

The participating educators will work with Music Center teaching artists Peter Kors (theatre/story telling) and Beth Peterson (puppetry) in studying the poem Maya Angelou wrote for the 1993 Presidential Inauguration - "On the Pulse of Morning."

Participants engage in theatre and visual arts sample tasks to understand how a single great work of art can serve as the focal point for in-depth learning in the arts as well as interdisciplinary lessons. They learn how to guide student learning in the arts with links to listening, speaking, reading and writing and enhance their personal creativity, arts literacy and appreciation. Following the Institute, Music Center artists will visit the participating schools to continue their arts learning, practice and peer coaching.

"We are excited about developing in-depth partnerships with the schools," said Music Center Vice President for Education Mark Slavkin. "Between the new state funding for arts education and the remarkable commitment of these educators, we are confident that major strides will be made in enhancing arts instruction for all the students in these schools," he added. "The key is providing classroom teachers with both the inspiration and the concrete tools to embrace new ways of engaging their students."

Since 1981, the Music Center's Institute for Educators has offered extraordinary professional development opportunities in the arts. Participants develop an increased comfort-level and acquire knowledge, skill, and resources to teach standards-based performing and visual arts lessons within their classroom curriculum. The Music Center is one of only four organizations in the United States to receive a National Endowment for the Arts Teacher Institute Grant this year. In addition, the Institute received a major grant from the Ahmanson Foundation in Spring 2006.