ARTSblog

My first blog entry was focused on suggesting that schools and communities need to develop parent leadership in schools to best capitalize on leveraging intent and desired action with regard to parent engagement, whatever that may be.  So if it’s about supporting arts education programming within the school, laying that foundation of leadership, or identifying it prior to exploring or pushing new ideas, is a critical step.

Within the realm of what parents should “know” about the arts and arts education, the field has been working hard to build research that codifies and articulates what many have long known: that the arts are a powerful vehicle for reaching children, and the benefits can be wide in scope and significant in depth.

What I would point out to parents right now is some research that a colleague of mine working to support parent engagement in Nebraska has shared which I find especially compelling.  It’s a meta-analysis by established researcher Robert Marzano that shows that school level and teacher level factors account for approximately 20 percent of the variance in student achievement.  No one would dismiss the critical importance of that 20 percent, needless to say, and we have much work to do as a nation to address the inadequacies of the system.  However, the other 80 percent, which is comprised of student characteristics, including home and community environment, learned intelligence/background knowledge and motivation, is no a small factor.   Read the rest of this entry »

I was at a post Rosh Hashonah service luncheon on Saturday with neighbors and friends. At one point our hostess shared that she had gone to elementary school with one of the other guests and surprised us by singing a song about Benjamin Franklin that had been part of a play she performed in at that elementary school. Even more surprising was that her classmate joined in singing from the other side of the room.

This was a song they had learned over forty years ago!

One of my own favorite memories is of singing O’ Shenendoah in my 6th grade chorus. It was just before my voice changed and the last time anyone has allowed me to sing in public. Read the rest of this entry »

In the world of arts education, public education, and arts advocacy, we are at home with many acronyms. In fact, my husband often accuses me of speaking in another language when I attempt to describe my work day to him – and he’s a practicing music educator! I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to one of the newer acronyms in arts education land – SEADAE.

SEADAE stands for the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education – in other words, my colleagues around the country. We are the content specialists in the arts located within state departments of education – whether it be AnneRene at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Washington, Jamie at the Pennsylvanie Department of Education, or Vicki at the New Mexico Department of Education. In 2004, we began the process of getting ourselves organized and recognized as a non-profit association. And we couldn’t have done it without the support of many forward-thinking national leaders, including Doug Herbert, then at the National Endowment for the Arts, Jonathan Katz at the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and Laurie Schell at the California Alliance for Arts Education. Read the rest of this entry »

In the arts, we have a reputation to maintain as outside-of-the box, unique, spontaneous, wild and imaginative people. These blogs are filled with the joy and truth of learning, and of learning creatively. We are filling the internet with optimism and passion.

Parents have advocated for rich curricula, they have spent hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on dance costumes, they have walked around the house for years with cotton in their ears during tuba practice, they have been charmed by indescribable ceramic gifts, they have encouraged this behavior. Their children are thinkers and they are off to college and careers.

But, what are we doing at the other end of the journey?

As noted in the NEA study Artists in the Workforce (June 2008), there are two million trained, entrepreneurial working artists across the country who are assets to their communities. Representing 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force, artists constitute a sizeable class of workers –only slightly smaller than the total number of active-duty and reserve personnel in the U.S. military (2.2 million). Read the rest of this entry »

Biologists have been excited by a recent experiment that reversed color blindness in monkeys. Male squirrel monkeys do not see color (females do). After six months of gene therapy, the monkeys in the experiment (Dalton and Sam) enthusiastically began indentifying red and green dots on a computer screen in order to receive grape juice. They appear to be as pleased by their new visual acuity as they are by their increased access to beverages.

This experiment has amazed scientists, who assumed that the introduction of color receptors into male monkey optic nerves would have no effect on brains that had not been genetically programmed to see more than white, black, and grey. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post about Clark County School District.

At Basic HS (a CCSD high school located in Henderson, NV) the principal spoke to the value of an education in the arts.  In another article from Tuesday’s (9.23.09) Las Vegas Sun, Principal David Bechtel is beaming about his school’s music program.  Even with district-wide cuts of over $120 million for the 2009-10 academic year, Basic High School’s Arts Program stays strong.

The article explains that even though Basic HS “is expected to dodge any fine arts cuts because it had no enrollment drop…Principal David Bechtel says he’s not satisfied with the status quo.  Someday, he says, he hopes to add a mariachi class and a second band teacher. Research has long shown that students who are involved in fine arts programs typically do better in their academic classes than their peers who don’t take part.”
Principal Bechtel was quoted as saying, “Those kids are traditionally our best students. We need to give more of them a chance to find something that offers them a creative outlet, a way to get involved.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Integrating the arts into learning provides numerous opportunities for kids to explore and work with concepts.  By integrating the arts, I mean using the arts in learning as a form of communication and expression.  This is different from teaching about art forms, such as learning to paint landscapes, play an instrument, or dance a minuet.

Learning science by drawing carefully from nature is an example of learning through the arts.  Imagine a high school classroom where the goal of a curriculum unit is to learn about the local environment. In my neck of the world in southern California, the ocean is literally on many a school’s doorsteps.  My local high school has an award-winning surf team.  An approach to the science unit on the local environment using a learning through the arts strategy could begin with students drawing a seashell they have collected from the beach. Using a method of drawing from the inside out (students literally find a place in the middle of a shell and draw every detail of the shell going outward which guides them to capture each and every detail on the shell).  While they sketch, they keep two lists: 1) things they notice about their shell, and, 2) things they wonder about their shell.  If you have the opportunity, try this yourself, it’s a lot of fun, and you will come up with many questions. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently received an informational brochure from SPACES, an organization that is based in Cleveland, Ohio. It advances the artist’s vision by providing freedom, resources and an audience; SPACES enables artists to engage the public in a vital dialogue about contemporary art (from their website: www.SPACESgallery.org).  

Printed on the front of the brochure were the words “We’re Hot for Teacher.” It looked like a clerk at the post office had used the brochure to take down some notes… and as I opened the brochure I realized it was all part of the design … “Join us for an experimental school-as-exhibition” … I read more … it was appealing and interesting.  Wow, arts education for me … well for adults!

As stated in the brochure this is “An Institute for Situated Practices” and includes a series of forums (classes) in September and October. The forum descriptions are so interesting: Academy Dis-Orientation, Bad Art Day, Chance and Procedural Writing, Graffiti Frost, I Like the Way Dancing Feels … Just Not the Way Dancing Looks: An Exercise in Radical Choreography, and my favorite – Of Sound Mind: Ephemeral Fusion of Found Sounds and Created Clatter.
Read the rest of this entry »

A wise friend once reminded me that students are the only people in a school community that do not really have a choice about being there. When we promise our kids that all of this learning will pay off in a fabulous adulthood, we need to remember how long it takes to get to that reward.

Along the way we know that many kids will choose to stay in school, try harder, and succeed in many areas as a result of participation in the arts. We also know that very successful systems exist to spread that potential. But, what do we do for the student who is struggling to understand why school matters to them today? Is there any way that we can make this very day as meaningful and important right now?

There is a bold team of arts education thinkers that dare to look beyond the important drive for great quantity such as our own “Ask for More” intentions. They are defining a quality of arts engagement that is almost impossible to systematize, difficult to measure, and certainly tricky to sell to adults who are looking at career and college goals. Read the rest of this entry »

What does it take to lead a Cause on Facebook?

I believe all good leadership begins with a study in following. Between setting my first giant goals (post 1) and deciding to set objectives (post 2) I dug around the Cause for awhile and asked a lot of questions. I got super clear on what could work better and what members wanted from an effective Cause.

I made an agenda to serve from and ran it by the Administrator of Keep the Arts in Public Schools. At the time, I had no idea about becoming an Administrator myself, I just saw that there was work that could be done. And so I made a list.

And from there I had a framework I could operate out of. I knew the primary concerns, challenges, goals and objectives of the membership in general. And, I dug around until I was satisfied in the material about the non-profit organization our Cause was supporting. Read the rest of this entry »

A parent of a pre-k special needs student contacted me last year. She had taken a workshop led by one of our artists and really enjoyed it; she felt it could help her child learn to find her own creative voice, and feel successful at school. Her daughter, Cristina, attended classes at two pre-k centers that hosted visiting artists in the classroom. However, because she was special-needs designated, she missed both opportunities. How? At the first site, Cristina was pulled out of one class for one-on-one instruction time during the artists’ visit. At the second site, she was placed in a stand-alone class for special needs students. Unlike the other classes at her school, this class did not host a visiting artist.

For students with special needs, access to arts learning opportunities are often few and far between. Yet, special needs-designated students are often the most likely to benefit from arts learning. There is a lot of talk in the education world about “access and equity.” Read the rest of this entry »

My friend and colleague, Jung Ho Pak, conductor of several orchestras including Orchestra Nova (formerly the San Diego Chamber Orchestra), and I have had several discussions concerning the notion of desire.  For Jung Ho, the question is, “how do I create a desire for classical music?”  His concern is warranted since over the last decade, support for classical music has waned, and creating an audience for an orchestra is key to keeping in the business of presenting concerts.

The question of creating a desire for classical music, especially among a generation of young people most of whom have not had exposure to classical music via their grade school education, has been central to his approach as a conductor.  Among the changes he has made with regard to performances include simple things like having the orchestra musicians dress less formerly, smile on stage, and meet and greet audience members.  An aim of Pak’s is to break down the barriers of “us” and “them” when it comes to classical music. Read the rest of this entry »

Occasionally at some parent/teacher coffee or at the end of the school day I can trap some poor parent and make them listen to me about how great and important the arts are for their kid.  Usually, they try to agree with me very quickly and get away from my increasingly zealous preaching.

Here’s a tune I’ve been whistling recently.  The arts provide an important thing for our kids.  They give them a safe place to fail.  We fail a lot in the art-making process.  It sort of comes with the territory.  No one artist gets it right every time.  Some get it right a lot but there is still plenty of “oops” in the background.  If you are a collaborative artist – dancer, musician, actor – you have plenty of opportunity to fail in front of other people.  Rehearsals are full of large and small failures, nearly all of them public.   Read the rest of this entry »

In my experience as a music educator and arts supervisor, parents often ask me what they can do at home to encourage their child’s love for the arts. Recently the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education, a statewide arts education service organization dedicated to monitoring and advocating for policy to improve arts education for Ohio’s children, developed Fine Arts Standards Guides for Families. These guides articulate the academic content standards in the arts and advocate for arts education as part of a complete education for Ohio’s children. 

Here are some thoughts, tips and activities for simple, easy, no or low-cost activities for parents to do with their children at home included in the Fine Arts Standards Guides and a few of my own for parents to think about. 

For young children, stock a designated drawer with a variety of art supplies such as crayons, watercolors, water-based markers, modeling clay, and paper in an assortment of sizes. Use art vocabulary, color, shape, line, and texture in discussing the artwork your child has created. Display their artwork to let them know that you value the artwork they have created. Read the rest of this entry »

The Lower Kuskokwim School District in western Alaska is a huge (22,000 miles) network of small, K – 12 village schools ranging in size from 40 to 800 in Bethel, the district hub. Schools are accessible only by small plane or snow machine, depending on the time of year and weather conditions. The city of Bethel has a population of 5,800, and five schools. Excluding Bethel, 99.5% of the population of the District is Native Alaskan and Yup’ik is the primary language in these communities. There are no Arts Specialists in the district, and no formal arts curriculum, though there is a vibrant Yup’ik culture and language program which incorporates indigenous art forms practiced for generations and passed on by respected Elders.

The distrtrict operates a district-wide Title One Program, as it is one of the most poor of rural Alaska districts; 87% of the total student population are Title One students. Though it has an average childhood poverty rate of 64%, eighteen village schools have over 80% of their students living in poverty. Children come to school speaking Yup’ik and use it as the language of instruction through third grade. Read the rest of this entry »