Need To Know

ATA Board Member Russell Granet, who is a pioneer in the field of arts education and disability issues, hosts another installment in a series of useful webposiums for TAs. The first in the series, "Artists in Classrooms: The Role of the Teaching Artist", took place last year. It brought together TAs together from all over the world, and was sponsored, as is this one, by the DANA Foundation, leaders in the field of arts education research and funding.

Structured as a panel discussion, this latest webposium session will be streamed live, and viewers are invited to join in a Q and A at the end.

Not to be missed.

Details are below:

TEACHING ARTISTS & SPECIAL EDUCATION WEBPOSIUM

Friday, January 29, 2010

11:00-12:00 (CST) 12:00-1:00PM (EST)

What do teaching artists need to know, understand, and be able to do to achieve success in a self-contained or inclusion classroom?

Join us for an online discussion about the challenges and successes of working with students with disabilities.

The panel consists of artists and educators dedicated to making the arts accessible to all students. The panelists will discuss practical classroom strategies, lesson plan modifications, as well as the necessary questions to ask in order for everyone (artists, students, teachers, para-professionals, and administrators) to be successful.

Panelists include:

• Judith Jellison, Regents Professor of Music and Human Learning, Butler School of Music, University of Texas, Austin
• Allison Orr, Artistic Director, Forklift Danceworks, Austin, TX
• Sherry Snowden, Lecturer, Art Education, Texas State University
  

Moderator:

Russell Granet, Founder, Arts Education Resource

REGISTER NOW! Registration ends January 28 at 5:00pm

Schooled

A recent issue of Time Magazine reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has never been a regular classroom teacher or school principal, visited Columbia University Teachers College and gave a speech in which he said to the students in training "By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom."

TGIF: The Galaxy Song (Monty Python) and ATA is on Facebook.

Birds of a Feather

I mean, where do all the professional teaching artists hang out?

ATA ONLINE

The Association of Teaching Artists' on Facebook

Teaching Artists Organizations

The Association of Teaching Artists' Listserv

Top 10 Funding Sources for Arts Education

Research on Teaching Artists

What is a Teaching Artist?

Who are Teaching Artists?

New York Foundation For The Arts' Teaching Artists Source

Health Insurance Resources for Teaching Artists in New York State

Arts Advocavy

In California:

TEACHING ARTISTS ORGANIZED

Home
News
Contact
PD & Workshops
Jobs in Arts Learning
Services & Resources
TAO Associate Form

From a series of websites maintained by Chicago Artist Resource

Dance Education

Music Education

Theater Education

Visual Education

In Washington, D.C., the Kennedy Center is Changing Education through the Arts. Their website says:

"Hundreds of TEACHERS in the Washington, D.C metropolitan area learn ways to teach in, through, and about the arts. SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS learn ways to harness the power of the arts for learning. TEACHING ARTISTS learn ways to be more effective in their work with students and teachers."

We are all over the place.

Events Unfold

Unfortunately, we live in interesting times. Luckily, Teaching Artists on both coasts are taking charge of their professional lives, and spectacular things are happening--many of them free.

Hold tight!

COMING UP IN NEW YORK CITY

The New York City Arts in Education Roundtable presents

By Teaching Artists for Teaching Artists

A chance to examine best practices & work one-on-one with fellow TAs to share & strengthen your lesson plans.

Join us for a professional development presented BY Teaching Artists FOR Teaching Artists

Workshop


4:30 – 7:00pm

Wednesday November 18th


Brooklyn Arts Council
55 Washington Street
Suite 218
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Click Here to Register!

COMING UP IN THE BAY AREA

Second Workshop (part one took place Oct 3rd: Mind Your Own Business)

Saturday November 7th 9:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Online and In-the-Know: Educational Resources for Teaching Artists

A half-day workshop (including breakfast snacks) led by Megan Simmons of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. This interactive, hands-on workshop will engage participants in finding, using, and modifying high-quality, free, and freely available online resources. Participants will reflect on their own processes and experience how Open Educational Resources (OER) can impact their teaching, using OER Commons (www.oercommons.org) and web-based collaboration tools, such as wikis and nings. Web resources from such services as the National Endowment for the Humanities, Library of Congress, Lincoln Center Institute, Kennedy Center’s ArtsEdge, and other arts-rich, education based sites.

About ISKME The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education is an independent, nonprofit research institute located in Half Moon Bay, CA, that helps schools, colleges, universities, and the organizations that support them expand their capacity to collect and share information, apply it to well-defined problems, and create human-centered, knowledge-driven environments focused on learning and success. ISKME's OER and Arts Education Project, supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation, engages teachers and teaching artists in trainings around collaborative learning strategies and shared online resources and processes.

Fee: $35 for TAO Associates/$15 if you already attended TAI Workshop on Oct 3rd Mind Your Own Business..

REGISTER NOW!

Also: Janis - Get It While You Can

The Program

Eric Booth will helm the advisory board of a new professional certification program for Teaching Artists at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Designed in collaboration with the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts , the program will start in the fall. Mr. Booth, who started teaching for Lincoln Center in 1980, says “Establishing this certificate program is a major milestone for an emerging field."

The Application deadline is June 30, 2009. 

For the Teaching Artist Certificate brochure, click here.

Also: A brief dialogue with Donald Schön conducted during a seminar titled Professional Capability:  Requirements and Accreditation (PDF).

Plus: A brief history of Midwifery in America (PDF).

And: David Bowie - Space Oddity

Conference

The Brooklyn Arts Council lists an upcoming conference in Brooklyn.

Culturals of Color Symposium Connecting and Serving Community Arts Leadership

This day-long conference for arts and cultural organizations that represent and serve New York City's communities of color addresses current challenges in the nonprofit arts sector by providing an opportunity for African, American Indian, Asian, and Latino/Hispanic diasporic organizations to learn from top arts administrators, share best practices, and network.

Friday, April 17th, 2009
Skylight Gallery
1368 Fulton Street, 3rd Floor
Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
9am – 5pm

Please RSVP for this seminar.

$25 when purchased online; $30 on-site

Call 718-625-0080 with questions about RSVPs and payment.

Super

Speaking of community, the Superflux Collective will offer a three-day Professional Development Exchange on Wednesday-Friday, April 15, 16 & 17 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The event will be held at ART/NY 520 Art Spaces in Manhattan. The address is 520 8th Avenue 3rd Floor.

In case you are wondering, the Superflux Collective is an assemblage of artists dedicated to finding new ways to provide quality professional development and training in teaching and learning through the arts. Superflux invites you to expand your arts education skills by sharing what you know in a peer exchange framework.

For more information about Superflux, contact Mike Halverson by email: mike@superflux.us

Dance Transmission

The Ailey School, the educational wing of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, is offering a summer workshop on the pedagogical techniques of dance pioneer Lester Horton who died in 1953. Before his death, Horton created and taught a modern dance technique which was complex, "anatomically corrective" and organized. He trained both Alvin Ailey and Carmen de Lavallade and dancers are still trained by his successors.

Horton may be gone, but, because they were transmitted to others, his pedagogical techniques and insights are still available.

You can access that artistic legacy for just $1175.00, which seems like a lot but is probably a bargain.

Get more information and register for the July 2009 Lester Horton Pedagogy Workshop here.

Meta-textual: Although he was the Buddha's longtime companion, Ananda did not achieve enlightenment until after the Buddha's death.

Tradition says that as the Buddha lay dying "Ananda was weeping. He walked away, to hide his tears."

But the Buddha comforted him saying:

"Do not grieve, Ananda, do not despair. Remember my words: from all that delights us, from all that we love, we must one day be separated. How can that which is born be other than inconstant and perishable? How can that which is born, how can that which is created, endure for ever?"

Read the rest of the story here.

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:

Mark Twain Stood Here

Utica, NY.

For 19 years, the Arts in Education Institute (AEI) of the Stanley Center for the Arts has been offering arts integration and aesthetic education for the benefit of teachers, teaching artists and students. With help from funders, including NYSCA, they seem to be fostering an oasis dedicated to community building and process.

The institute programs performances and exhibitions and relies on a roster of local teaching artists to help regular classroom teachers link artistic experiences to larger educational goals. If you want to get involved, Coordinator Serena Belmont has all the answers at (315) 724-1113 or sbelmont@cnyarts.com.

Meta: Samuel Clemens wowed Utica on his tour of the lecture circuit in 1870. In a letter home he describes how he transfixed the crowd and brought the house down by doing nothing:

I stood patient & silent, minute after minute...till my roused good-nature passed from my heart & countenance to theirs along a thousand invisible electrical currents & conquered their reserve, swept their self-possession to the winds, & the great house "came down" Like an avalanche!"

Recently, I reread Clemen's sly piece The War Prayer.

It felt timely and just a bit painful.