A place for teachers, students and caregivers of all ages to experience arts education.
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We currently have 500+ tickets available to the Mon, October 31st at 12:30 p.m. performance for only $3.50 a ticket, regardless of group size! We also offer bus reimbursement for all schools to attend a performance at the Ordway.
Dance to Learn Small Group Discussion, Photo by Amy Miller
The American for the Arts lists 10 simple ways to go about doing this.
1. "Enjoy the arts together. Sing, play music, read a book, dance, or draw with your child at home."
2. "Encourage your child to participate in the arts and celebrate their participation in or out of school."
3. "Explore your community’s library and read 'the classics' together—from Mother Goose to Walt Whitman."
4. "Read your local newspaper to find out about attending local arts events like museum exhibits, local plays, festivals, or outdoor concerts."
5. "Tell your child’s teacher, principal, and school leadership that the arts are vital to your child’s success and an important part of a quality education. Find out if your school has sufficient resources for arts education, including qualified teachers and materials. If not, offer to help."
6. "Contact your local arts organizations to inquire about the arts education programs they offer either during school hours or after school. Volunteer to donate time, supplies, or help with their advocacy efforts and connect these services to your child’s school."
7. "Attend a school board or PTA meeting and voice your support for the arts to show them you care and make sure the arts are adequately funded as part of the core curriculum in the school budget."
8. "Explore your child’s dream to sing, to dance, to draw, to act—and encourage them to become the best they can be through the arts."
9. "Be an arts supporter! Contact your elected officials—lawmakers and school board members—to ask them for more arts education funding from the local, state, and federal levels."
10. Sign up to become an activist on the Americans for the Arts website, just a click away!
To read this list in its entirety, click here.
National Arts in Education Week may be coming to a close, but that doesn't mean that your efforts in promoting and using arts education tools has to stop!
Keep educating yourself on how you can do your part in promoting arts education. There are numerous websites and books out there that will give you the tools and evidence you need to further arts education. Check out such resources as the Arts Education Partnership website, ARTSblog, and our Ordway Education News page to find out about grants, ways in which you can instill an arts education in your students, and etc.
Also, October is fast approaching, which is National Arts and Humanities Month. Get a head start on ways in which you can celebrate the arts during this month. American for the Arts has posted 101 things you can do to promote National Arts and Humanities Month and all that it represents.
Students Participating in the Dance to Learn Program, Photo by: Becca Barniskis
What School Leaders Can Do To Increase Arts Education is a great booklet made by the Arts Education Partnership that shows how school leaders can increase arts education in their schools. This is particularly important in our current environment of shrinking school budgets, which unfortunately can result in cuts to the school's arts department.
From this booklet, we are focusing on its section, "Create an Arts-Rich Learning Environment." Here's 5 easy steps that you and your school can do to provide an arts integrated education for your students.
1. Bring the arts into daily classroom instruction.
"As Stephen Noonan, Principal of the High School of Arts, Imagination and Inquiry in New York City puts it, 'We don’t limit student experiences with art to one class or one unit; rather
we find authentic ways to integrate the arts across the curriculum.' But in an already jam-packed day, some teachers might resist integrating arts learning experiences if doing so seems like an 'add-on.' Peg Winkelman, a teacher educator at California State University, East Bay, suggests principals 'eliminate the idea that it is difficult [to integrate the arts.] It may be
there are one or two teachers who already use the arts as part of their instructional practices.' Use their expertise to spark interest among other educators."
2. Provide arts-based professional development.
"Key to effective, high quality professional development is that it should be intensive,
on-going, and aligned with state and district curriculum requirements. At some schools, the arts teachers serve as the school 'lead' in providing or coordinating professional development for classroom teachers. At others, professional development support comes from outside the school, either from the school district or an arts or cultural organization. At Carnation Elementary School, Principal Doug Poage used a combination of both: 'We were able to get a teacher professional development grant from the state for two years. Now, 80% of teachers are trained in using the arts. We created our replica program so that now we train our teachers using our own staff. We also use an artist in our own community, which helps the local community as well as our school.'"
3. Support a school-wide arts learning community.
"Professional development alone doesn’t provide sufficient support for creating a school-wide
arts learning community that engages the entire staff—classroom teachers, specialist teachers, administrators, and school leaders. School principals can help build staff capacity by reinforcing the commitment to the arts through a school-wide arts theme, the sharing of arts-related books and articles and incorporating the topic into staff meetings."
4. Incorporate the arts into staffing and hiring decisions.
"Develop job descriptions for new hires that let candidates know arts coursework or experience using the arts in teaching is an expectation. Then, follow it up by asking arts-related questions in job interviews with prospective teachers. School principals also can reinforce the emphasis on using the arts in teaching by making it a part of classroom observations, teacher discussions and the evaluation process."
5. Involve the local arts community.
"Reaching beyond the school walls to arts and cultural organizations can produce many lasting benefits. Teaching artists—professional artists from cultural institutions or from the community—can play a key role in providing workshops, consultations, teaching demonstrations, assessment techniques and assistance in the development of curricular materials. Forming partnerships with the local arts community can help infuse the school with rich, comprehensive programs—not simply add-on experiences that can come and go with the availability of resources."
This article taken from What School Leaders Can Do To Increase Arts Education, Washington, D.C., May 2011.
To read the entire booklet, click here. You can also visit the AEP website at http://www.aep-arts.org/ for references and additional resources.
As Mark Slavkin, Vice President for Education at the Music Center: Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, discusses this in his article, "Helping Students Find Their Own Voices in the Arts."
We want to hear from you!
In what ways do you cultivate creativity, collaboration, and innovation in your classroom?
