Examine the budget document.By redirecting enormous streams of deficit spending toward programs like health care, education and energy, and paying for some of it through taxes on the rich, pollution surcharges, and cuts in such inviolable programs as farm subsidies, the $3.55 trillion spending plan Mr. Obama is undertaking signals a radical change of course that Congress has yet to endorse and Republicans were quick to pounce on.
"Myths to Drama” isn’t another class; this is not just to repeat what has been offered in other classes. It is to provide a different model of learning. So, the basic theory of how we deliver “Myths to Drama” is the philosophy of multiple intelligences.People learn differently, so you need to give people different avenues of learning. So for us, myth is a way of learning a culture in an alternative model, in a way that social studies are not taught in school.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Julia
O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!
Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey
And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!
I'll kiss each several paper for amends.
Look, here is writ 'kind Julia.' Unkind Julia!
As in revenge of thy ingratitude,
I throw thy name against the bruising stones,
Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.
And here is writ 'love-wounded Proteus.'
Poor wounded name! my bosom as a bed
Shall lodge thee till thy wound be thoroughly heal'd;
And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.
But twice or thrice was 'Proteus' written down.
Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away
Till I have found each letter in the letter,
Except mine own name: that some whirlwind bear
Unto a ragged fearful-hanging rock
And throw it thence into the raging sea!
Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ,
'Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,
To the sweet Julia:' that I'll tear away.
And yet I will not, sith so prettily
He couples it to his complaining names.
Thus will I fold them one on another:
Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will.
The world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books, Scholastic earned nearly $337 million last year from the book clubs... The company estimates that three-quarters of U.S. elementary-school teachers -- and more than 2.2 million children -- participate annually..."
As part of their new marketing campaign, "The Strength Inside," Nike Sportswear assigned high school teens in New York City, along with those in Philadelphia and Baltimore, with the task of creating a photo journal of what strength means to them...In New York, Nike partnered with the Center for Arts Education (CAE)...
The New York Times editorializes about the impact of the stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama on school reform efforts:"The stimulus package has given a real chance to resuscitate school reform, but these reforms will only happen if the new education secretary ignores political pressure from resisting states."
Typography is something we encounter everyday...and yet it seldom receives the attention it deserves in the K-12 art curriculum. The following collection of resources is for art and design teachers who are looking for ways to teach students about typography as well as to make them more aware of the typography that’s around them.
"The effect of the budget crisis in my school is that they want to cut all K-12 music as well as many other arts which prepare us for the future. I will be a musician, but this budget cut is going to hold me back."
“These are people who never really had to ask for help before,” said Brenda Beavers, human services director for the Salvation Army in New Jersey, which dispenses emergency food supplies at 30 pantries throughout the state. “They were once givers and now they’re having to ask for assistance.”
"The workshops are intended for teachers, administrators, librarians, or anyone interested in education -- and there's no technical expertise required. They are self-paced, so you can explore them on your own time and go back as often as you like; you can take all of the workshops, or just one."
With the new administration in Washington comes the prospect of new approaches to education policy and practice that would directly affect schools and districts at the local level. Get an advance look at how decisions on the No Child Left Behind law, Title I, and other key legislation by President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan may change the education landscape.
Arts Journal
Is there a Better Case for the Arts?
A Public Conversation, March 7-11, 2005
"Back when I was NEA Chairman, it was a great deal of fun to work with the good Endowment staff, Americans for the Arts, NASAA, members of Congress pro and con, in order to get the agency moving again. We accomplished that together, and it's great...
Thanks for all the good ideas.
- Bill Ivey"
Wall Street Journal
The Arts Need Better Arguments by Greg Sandow
February 18, 2009
People in the arts had a triumph.
They got culture money into the stimulus bill -- but not without a fight. The House, in its version of the bill, gave $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts, increasing its budget by more than the third. Then the Senate took that out. Arts advocates mobilized, made phone calls, asked supporters to make some noise. And lo! The final version of the bill restored the funds.
Arts advocates, from Robert Redford to the president of New York's Lincoln Center, are celebrating now. But I wonder, in a still, small voice, if this is really such a victory.
For one thing, in the larger scope of things, it's not much money. Fifty million dollars, in a hastily assembled $800 billion stimulus, is just a bubble on a wave...
"Anyone fearing for the future of the arts ought to give Cotter a look. He argues that the art-crash now in progress, like those that came before, is an opportunity to reach down into the muck that is the current art world and produce an entirely new vision. Which, after all, is what art is supposed to be about."It's a nice line of thinking, but I refuse to get overly excited about the creative opportunities that are the inevitable by products of poverty.
I’d particularly welcome thoughts from teachers and principals — particularly those with experience in under-performing schools — about how to improve education. This is a relatively new area of interest to me, and I’m still on the steep part of the learning curve.
"An artist’s book is a book made by an artist. While this sounds rather obvious, scholars have been grappling with describing the genre since the 1960s. Often deviating from conventional publications, artists’ books have complicated storytelling in myriad ways....The carefully selected sequences of information they present empower the reader to interact with them liberally and at their own discretion."
Fractured Atlas is a non-profit organization that facilitates the creation of art by offering vital support to the artists who produce it."(Heracles) comes for help... Heaven and earth fold away from each other, but here they lie edge to edge. To this doubleness he comes for help, this man of double nature, the god in him folded back in human flesh.
‘What kind of help?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Well,’ said Heracles. ‘If you’ve got all the time in the world, I’ll begin.’ "
As long as we expect schools to perform miracles, we will continue to be bitterly disappointed. Perhaps it is this phony expectation that has created so much anger and frustration among the public. Surely they wonder why all teachers can't be like Jaime Escalante or any of a dozen other miracle-workers.
I was struck, too, by your mention of the journalists who see a miracle where there was none at all. Geoffrey Canada's school, as described by Paul Tough, is one such. It really was a story of Canada abandoning the kids who started at his charter school because they couldn't get the scores he wanted. So out they went. No miracle there!
Do you love the work of Romare Bearden? I do.
According to the Library of Congress researchers, Abraham Lincoln was a poetry reader and writer. His "fondness for poetry influenced the nature of his thought and the character of his writing."Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government : of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Do you know about WritersCorps?
Professional Teaching Artist Craig Roland keeps a blog called Art Junction which is about "ideas, tools, and resources for teaching art and design in a digital age."
The Kennedy Center's On Location: Spotlight On Your Community tour bus is still on the road visiting schools to help students produce video documentaries about art in their communities.The team settled in at the Samuel S. Gaines Academy and got a chance to touch base with Anita Prentice, the glass mosaic artist who is the subject of our documentary. The weather is beautiful, and we are looking forward to driving around town to see the bus stop benches Anita has worked on.They still haven't posted any video but I'm going to keep cheering them on until they do.
In two recent articles posted on the Community Arts Network, writer and social activist Arlene Goldbard has outlined the history of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and called for Washington to fund new arts initiatives and create new jobs for artists. As the battle around the stimulus package heats up, Ms. Golbard's thoughtful articles have become an advocacy platform for the community. If you haven't read her work, you must.My current motto comes from Voltaire: "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Most teaching artists already work within a government-sponsored context, the public school system. So in the simplest terms, if there were more public money to hire more teaching artists, both the good things and the dangers affecting those who currently have work would continue: more of the same.
I've been searching fruitlessly all my life for the perfect position, the one that rewards me generously just for being me, no strings attached. I doubt that most teaching artists have been more successful than I in finding it. In the absence of a free lunch, there are always concerns: Who judges the value of one's work? Are there undue constraints on freedom of expression? Is there enough continuity of support to establish and maintain the ongoing, meaningful relationships so key to effective work for teaching artists and community artists? Are collegial relationships encouraged and supported between teachers, administrators, parents, students and teaching artists, or does an atmosphere or competition prevail? These are perennial questions for anyone working in the field of cultural development; I can't see them changing much if a "new WPA" were to come into being, although the existence of increased funding could heighten some of these tensions.
Duration is an interesting question. On the one hand, as in the WPA of the New Deal, such public programs tend to be seen as temporary measures to aid economic recovery. On the other hand, the work of teaching artists and community artists should be an ongoing part of public provision, as integral to local cultural life and as permanent a feature as the public library. As part of national recovery, it makes sense to propose instituting public service jobs for artists with a defined beginning and end (e.g., a five-year, renewable program would make sense to me). Politically, I doubt that this is the time to succeed in advocating for ongoing, permanent funding, as much as it is needed and right. I hope Barack Obama will win the next presidential election too, so presumably anything that came into being on his watch would continue throughout the eight years. If the campaign for artists' jobs succeeds, the challenge will be to use the time well, documenting success and building the strongest possible arguments for continued funding, creating an initiative so popular and so firmly rooted in local communities, it could survive a shift in political winds. That's a tall order, especially when you consider that right now, "the arts" are widely seen as the most dispensable of public funding programs.
Right now we are seeing exceptionally keen interest in questions of cultural policy in this country—at long last. I would like to see teaching artists become active in advocating for public policies and funding initiatives that promote cultural democracy: creativity, pluralism, participation and equity in our nation's cultural life. This is a good time to complain to elected officials who have used arts funding as the poster child for government waste, making sure they hear from people who know how valuable and essential to cultural citizenship arts and education programs are. It's also a good time to become active in proposing new policies and programs, as I have done in laying out parameters for a "new WPA." What would education in this country look like if the best work of teaching artists were integral to every classroom? Now is a time to dream big and broadcast those dreams, creating a sense of possibility. I'd like to see teaching artists ask themselves what they want for themselves, their communities and those with whom they work, and then put that vision out without downsizing it to accommodate anticipated opposition.
Andrea Kantrowitz is a professional Teaching Artist, just like us. Sometimes, I surf over to her blog and just hang out because she has posted lots of reflective ruminations featuring "why?" and "how?" which are two questions that I've never been able to answer.We started a discussion about the small acts of superficial prejudice and hatred we encounter everyday, and how every person is infinitely more complex and mysterious than you might imagine at first, the more you get to know them. My hope is that through making art, the lessons I am trying to teach about being human will become real and concrete. I have thirteen more weeks with these students. In the end, how will I know I have succeeded?Andrea Kantrowitz is a painter and a teaching artist interested in anatomy of all kinds including "the anatomy of ideas, desires and the imagination."
Mr. Obama’s tone was for the most part serious and businesslike, and he was pointed in rebutting Republican criticisms of his economic plan, saying he was not willing to take advice from “the folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt.”NYS ARTS has an online Arts Advocacy Center that enables you to directly contact both your state and congressional representatives.
The Teaching Artists of Aspire of Western New York and their colleagues at The Resource Center work to help individuals with developmental disabilities realize their full potential.Ironically, the business community clamors for creative people, seen as the competitive key to innovating in a globalized economy; but the educational system continues to put greater importance on mathematics, science, and other "hardcore" disciplines, which are seen as more "useful." The arts help to promote both the creative abilities and cultural literacy that are critical to developing fully engaged citizens in the global society.I'm sure the report was used to bolster proposals and appeals to legislators, but I doubt it changed closed minds and I'm rather certain that no one who disagreed with the conclusions was invited to participate in the initial conversations. The people who make the actual decisions are not in the choir and it is clear that not enough of them have been convinced by this report or any of its relatives, ancestors or descendants.
Researching – knowing what funding is out there.I skimmed through while listening to my role model and hero Nina Simone who is as real as you can get without bursting into flame.
Evaluating – deciding if the funding is right for you.
Asking – requesting the funding you need in a way that favors you getting it.
Listening – hearing the response you are given and responding accordingly.
