Separated at Birth

It is February 15th, 2010, and, according to the always reliable Wikipedia, the student population of New York City Public Schools is 36.7 % Latino/a, 34.7 % African American, 14.3 % Asian, and 14.2 % White.

In contrast, the latest census figures say New York City's resident population is 27.4 % Latino/a, 25.2 % African American, 11.65% Asian, and 44.1% White.

Also: In 1954, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision on Oliver L. Brown et. al versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that dismantled the doctrine of "separate but equal" and toppled the legal apparatus that supported a system of public schools segregated by the notion of race.

Now, that's history.

The Last Sad Song

It's been a rough year for employment. For those teaching artists who depend on money for things like food and rent, gigs may be harder to come by.

Luckily, it's both necessary, and possible, to think that things are getting better all the time, and no one can stop you. Next week, the plan around here is to post more jobs, and daily links to resources and information about things that we professional teaching artists can do to not starve, all while delivering high quality teaching and learning in the arts.

Also, today is Friday!

Here are some random items, and a terrific disco hit to hum while polishing up the résumé.

In Politics: Next week, if you live in NYC, it's time to vote. Voting in citywide elections is a great way to show how much you care about arts education.

In New York State: Please respond to the latest NYS Arts Advocacy Action Alert! Gov. Paterson proposed billions of dollars in spending cuts in the current 2009-10 budget seeking to close a deficit for this year that he projects at $3 billion. Tell your politicians how you feel about their priorities. Send a letter.

In the Health-care Debate: The New York Times says hopeful Democrats present their health-care legislation. Republicans disagree completely. But the San Francisco Chronicle says the "Public option isn't much of either."

In Books: The miraculous Marilynne Robinson tries her best to rehabilitate John Calvin, and she nearly does. The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought

In Education: At Education Week, a new report (pdf) questions Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's presiding over the closing of dozens of failing schools during his tenure in Chicago. He's touted this as an achievement, but the actual students saw no benefit, says the study.

In Disco: Donna & Barbra - No More Tears (Enough is Enough)

Say Something

I know I've told you this before, but I worry. Recently, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governor’s Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices released the first official draft of the college- and career-readiness standards.

Comments on the draft are only being accepted until October 21, 2009.

I hope you've told them how you feel.

To learn more about the common core standards initiative and provide feedback, please visit the Common Core Standards website at http://www.corestandards.org/.

Back to School

Summer is over.

Get back to work.

Idealist

NYFA Classified

Also, President Barack Obama has released the text of his back to school speech.

Dialogue

Hold tight. Our madcap tour continues.

According to the website of Education Week, Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch have "found themselves at odds on policy...but they share a passion for improving schools."

Their shared blog, Bridging Differences,offers their opinions on what matters most in education.

I read it faithfully and yell things back at the computer screen.

Invigorating.

New Things

According to Education Week, the U.S. Department of Education has started spelling out its spending priorities; letting school districts know how they should be planning to allocate their shares of the federal stimulus package. The funding involved is something close to $100 billion for K-12 education over two years.

Arne Duncan's list of favorite things includes improved data collection processes; using teachers as coaches and mentors; creating new teacher evaluation systems based on student progress; and developing online individualized education plans for students.


Also: The Three Sisters - Anton Chekhov. Translated by Carol Rocamora

TUSENBACH: What about it? Those who live after us, they'll fly around in hot air balloons, the style of their clothing will change, perhaps they'll even discover a sixth sense and develop it, but life will remain just as it is, difficult, full of joys and mysteries. And even after a thousand years, people will sigh and say: "Ach, life is hard!" --just as they do today, even then they will fear death and will not want to die.

VERSHININ: (After a moment's thought. How can you say that? It seems to me that everything on earth must change, little by little, indeed, it is changing even now, right before our very eyes. After two hundred -- three hundred years, after a thousand years, even, -- it's not the length of time that matters -- a new life will finally dawn, a life of happiness. And we shall not take part in that life, of course, but we are living for it now, we are working for it now, yes, even suffering for it, we are creating it --- and this, and this alone, is our reason for being, indeed, this is our happiness.

MASHA laughs softly.

TUSENBACH: What is it?

MASHA: I don't know. I've been laughing like this since this morning.

The Awful Truth

The New York Times reports that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has told governors that, in return for stimulus funds, they must submit new school-performance data.

In a “Dear Governor” letter to the 50 states, Mr. Duncan said $44 billion in stimulus money was being made available to states immediately. To qualify for a second phase of financing later this year, however, governors will need to provide reams of detailed educational information. The data is likely to reveal that in many states, tests have been dumbed down so that students score far higher than on tests administered by the federal Department of Education.

Ouch.

Information Retrieval

The NYC Department of Education launched its third annual Learning Environment Survey on February 24th, 2009. Parents, teachers and students can take the survey until April 24th, 2009.

In 2008, 806,539 parents, students, and teachers in community and Special Education District 75 schools filled out the 2008 Learning Environment Survey. That's a lot of people--close to 1 out of every 10 New Yorkers. Survey results count for 10% of schools’ yearly Progress Report grades.

Who knows if all this collected data is accurate or useful?

Who knows if all the effort to collect it was worth it?

Who knows where the money might have been better spent?

Data doesn't care.

To access a school's Learning Environment Survey Report, all you have to do is go to the NYC DOE website portal, enter the school name and up pops a survey report on that school.

Hyper-cinema: Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

Concept to Classroom

Have you discovered Channel 13's online series Concept to Classroom?

I am loving it.

Concept to Classroom is a ridiculously useful online series of FREE, award-winning professional development workshops on various education related topics. If you qualify, you can even get credit for taking them.

The website says:

"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."

I'm winding my way through the workshop on Multiple Intelligences which was developed by Howard Gardner, Ellen Weber and Jane Carlson-Pickering.

I told you it was FREE, right?

Talk Fast

Education Week is currently accepting questions for an upcoming web chat on President Barack Obama's education plan. If you are a fearless leader, you might want to add an arts-related question to the cue.

The Chat starts on Thursday, February 19th @ 3 p.m.

Yikes, that's today!

Here's the blurb:

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.

It's FREE, which is one of my favorite words.

Did I mention this is happening at 3:00 p.m. today?

Smart

Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter?

That's the question asked by researchers conducting a three-year study sponsored by the Dana Foundation, one of the leading funders of brain science, immunology and arts education. Their report titled Learning, Arts and the Brain provides evidence that "children motivated in the arts develop attention skills and strategies for memory retrieval that also to other apply to other subject areas."

Dana shares the results of this important research and more on their useful website.

Download a pdf version of the full report (2 mb).

Bande à part

The National Association for Music Education is the largest education organization in the country that you have probably never heard of. That may be because they have a weird acronym (MENC) which does not match their name or mission statement anymore for some historical reason which they earnestly try to explain on their website...but my attention span is so short...

...one two three four one two three four...

Anyway, the organization itself is terrific. They nurture and support future music teachers and represent artists at all levels of teaching from preschool to graduate school. They have a long track record.

...shimmy shimmy snap...shimmy shimmy snap...

The MENC online forums where artists can exchange resources and information about jobs and other opportunities are in the process of being updated but they are active and you if you are interested in that sort of thing, you know like getting a job in your chosen field, you should check it out.

I was reading over there and then I fell in love with Jean Luc Godard all over again because I was multi-living.

Watch and learn the dance at the same time. That's what I've been doing:

We Are What We Think

MAXINE GREENE

"Consciousness doesn't come automatically; it comes through being alive, awake, curious, and often furious."

THE BUDDHA

"Sit.
Rest.
Work."

Lincoln Center Institute has posted the On-line Conference Proceedings for Aesthetic Education: Expanding Notions of Excellence in K-18 Learning Communities (2007)

The Buddha has left us the Dhammapada.

Kōan # 1

William Powell

Joan Blondell

Carolyn Kennedy

Arne Duncan

Fred Rogers

Project Zero

Wow.

Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Project Zero Classroom 2009

July 27–August 1, 2009

The institute"addresses fundamental education questions, such as:

• What are the components of an effective education for the world that students live in now and will live in 10, 20, or 50 years from now?

• What is understanding, and how does it develop?

• What are the roles of reflection and assessment in student and teacher learning?

• How can participants continue to share and pursue their understanding of Project Zero’s ideas with others after the institute?"

It looks really amazing. Howard Gardner, David Perkins and Steve Seidel are the faculty.

Tuition is $2100, which could maybe be enough for a one-bedroom in Manhattan.

Wow.

Plus: Project Zero Update on Current Work, July 2007 (pdf)

Wonderland

The Community Arts Network promotes information exchange, research and critical dialogue within the field of community-based art. Their website is so useful it beggars all description, but I will try:

Rabbit Hole

I am over there now, skimming this mostly terrific essay by doctor Stephani Etheridge Woodson phd called Models for Working with Youth in Community Arts. She discusses the importance of using "educative models" in our work with young people and also proposes a list of basic areas of competency for professional Teaching Artists:

• Ability to parse information, build progressive skill sets and establish learning goals;

• Understanding the audience/learner/student both as an individual and as a member of diverse cultures;

• Basic familiarity with the strengths and weaknesses of different teaching modalities;

• Classroom management, leadership behavioral strategies;

• Assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes.

If I hold any of these skills and understandings, and I better, then I learned much of it from master Teaching Artists in professional development workshops provided by my employer. I also learned it by working on the job, reading in the public library, surfing online and sitting in the aisles of the Barnes and Noble on Court Street in Brooklyn because they have a pretty good selection and there's a Trader Joes down the block now. Did you know?

I think on the job peer-to-peer training and paid professional development are the models for getting emerging TAs to meet high standards. I know I couldn't have afforded tuition and expenses to learn how to evaluate learning outcomes or to learn how to plan with a classroom teacher. My employer pays me to show up for training and that is swell, because otherwise I would probably be tempted to just stay at home and watch Battlestar Galactica on Hulu.

I can't help wondering why basic TA training isn't included as a part of conservatory training when the reality is that it is rather difficult for most artists to make a living solely on their art.

I wonder.

Then, I start to get sleepy.

Plus: Alice in Wonderland

Cecil M. Hepworth & Percy Stow, 1903

This 1903 short is the first version ever put on celluloid of the Lewis Carroll classic.

Now is the Time

Toward the end of last week's great debate, Eric Booth blogs:

"I believe we know more as a field than our current practice would demonstrate."

In TA parlance--I feel really close to that idea. 

One of the manifestations of this phenomenon in my life as a Teaching Artist comes when I am planning a 45-minute workshop. How to fit everything into that little window of time? Much of my innovation and creativity has to go into figuring out what to cut out, abbreviate or gloss over so we can make sure to get something done. 

I love the concept of "time management" because it is completely imaginary like a unicorn. 

Time will not be managed. 

Time unfolds and authentic learning is an individual process that cannot be rushed, right?

I think we may have to consider changing the world.

The Dangling Conversation

Do you read Arts Journal?

Last week they posted a marathon blog chat titled "A Debate on Arts Education: Will our culture suffer if we don't do more to teach the arts?" 

I think it's a trick question.

Featured 0n the blog were Eric Booth and Jane Remer. There's also a video of Peter Sellars!

If you didn't follow along as it unfolded, you probably want to start here or, better yet, start with David Shookhoff's reflections. 

Continuing Education

To enhance my career, perhaps I could go back to school to earn a degree in education. Unfortunately, since college is now officially unaffordable for most Americans , I think I will have to wait until I become more rich.

I know of an engineer whose employer is sending him to school for his MBA. They are paying for his education because he is a valuable team member and his new knowledge will be useful for the company. He says, "It's an investment." 

A dream.

Usable Knowledge

Harvard has this website for educators called Usable Knowledge. 

I surf there.