OMA
Welcome to OMA
Opening Minds Through the Arts (OMA) uses instrumental music, opera, dance, theatre, and visual arts to help teach language arts, math, science, and multiple cultural perspectives to children kindergarten through 5th grade. OMA’s team of artists works alongside classroom teachers adapting lessons to support teaching of core content and knowledge.
What is Arts Integration?
Arts integration is an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding of a subject area through an art form. At Mary Belle McCorkle, we study ELA using Physical Theatre. OMA connects common core standards from your child’s classroom to arts standards while providing a creative approach to learning, discovery, and content reinforcement.
Watch a video by Angela Horchem about how she integrates art through OMA at our school
Angela Horchem is a mask-maker and performing teaching artist--specializing in ensemble-created physical theatre--who performs and teaches across the country. She joined TUSD's Opening Minds through the Arts (OMA) program as a teaching artist in 2019. Thanks to support from the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona (AFTSA), she is currently creating a one-woman show called Fin. She recently assisted to build puppets and props for The Scoundrel and Scamp's Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins and directed and built masks and puppets for Live Theatre Workshop's Pinocchio: The Legend of the Wooden Boy. She also completed a tour as an aerialist with the Royal Canadian Circus. Her work draws from clown, commedia dell'arte, traditional Balinese performance, and more, and has been supported by/featured at the Arizona Commission on the Arts, AFTSA, National Endowment for the Humanities, and numerous primary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions across the country.