Hiring The Right Arts Educators FOr Your Program
Hiring the right arts educators for your program is a critical decision that affects student learning, program culture, and the long-term sustainability of arts education in your school. While many assume that an "arts teacher" is a singular role, there are real differences between teaching artists, artist-educators, and certified arts teachers. Each brings different strengths, training, and perspectives. Understanding these distinctions will help you make hiring decisions that actually align with your program's goals.
Defining the Roles
Certified Arts Teachers
Certified arts teachers have earned degrees in art, music, theater, or dance education, often with state licensure to teach in K-12 public schools. Their training includes pedagogy, curriculum development, classroom management, and assessment.
What they bring: a deep understanding of educational standards and curriculum design, experience managing classrooms in structured school environments, familiarity with differentiated instruction and diverse learning needs, long-term stability, and knowledge of formal assessment methods and student progress tracking.
Where they may be limited: some certified teachers have less active professional artistic practice outside the classroom. Institutional training can sometimes lean toward standardized methods at the expense of creative exploration. And their experience may not transfer as easily to settings outside of a traditional school structure.
Teaching Artists
Teaching artists are practicing artists who work in schools, community centers, and cultural institutions to provide arts instruction. They may not hold formal teaching credentials but bring extensive professional experience in their artistic discipline.
What they bring: a strong artistic practice that informs their teaching with real-world experience, the ability to adapt lessons creatively and engage students through experiential learning, flexibility in scheduling and openness to project-based work, and connections to the professional arts world that can offer networking and mentorship for students.
Where they may be limited: many teaching artists lack formal training in pedagogy and classroom management. They are often hired as independent contractors, which makes continuity of instruction harder to maintain. And they may be less familiar with educational standards and formal assessment.
Artist-Educators
Artist-educators sit between teaching artists and certified teachers. They are trained educators who also maintain an active, professional artistic practice. They combine strong pedagogical knowledge with a personal creative life, which makes them effective in both school and community-based settings.
What they bring: a balance of artistic credibility and educational expertise, the ability to bring contemporary artistic practices into structured curriculum, strong classroom management and student engagement skills, and fluency in both creative and academic learning objectives.
Where they may be limited: it can be hard to find individuals who are equally strong in both areas. Some programs undervalue either their artistic work or their teaching skill. And their dual expertise can make them more expensive to hire.
Hiring Considerations
When hiring arts educators, start with the needs of your program. For structured, standards-based arts education in schools, certified arts teachers may be the strongest fit. For community-based programs, afterschool initiatives, or creative workshops, teaching artists often bring the right combination of flexibility and artistic depth. For programs that want both rigor and creative authenticity, artist-educators offer a compelling model.
Arts education works best when students experience both strong pedagogy and real artistic practice. Certified teachers bring continuity and educational structure. Teaching artists bring the energy of a working creative life. Programs that can integrate both, or hire artist-educators who carry both, will build something that serves students well.
