Life Support

Here are links to a few non-profit organizations that provide services and support to Teaching Artists. You may want to consider sending one of these organizations a small gift for the holidays. I gave my first political donations this year to the candidate of my choice. I felt like my $ made a difference. I am beginning to realize that in a capitalist society, you have to put your money where your mouth is. Even if it's just $5 bucks. 

Until we change the world a little, you may still need to access information, resources or direct services from:

The Field

Fractured Atlas

Bronx Council on the Arts

Brooklyn Arts Council

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

New York Foundation for the Arts

The Actors Fund

Working Today/Freelancers Union

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. 

It's About Making the Dance...

Twyla Tharp on the youtube says "I never thought I was going to make a living..."

"It's about making the dance that you're really curious about...", she says. 

It's not about making a living.

She did make a living though. 

Ideals and all.

The Ideal Job

One of the most popular hangouts for the idealists is idealist.org. I am there now in the metaverse searching for something. No, not idealism. I have that. Besides, you do not visit idealist.org to find idealism. You must bring the idealism with you. If you do not have idealism on a particular day, you visit monster.com or careerbuilder.com. Those places don’t really get on you about maintaining your idealism. They couldn’t care less. They only care about money.

No, you visit idealist.org to network with other people who care and to find a job that aligns with your ideals.

Let’s begin.

Go to the non-profit job search page--because you clearly don’t want to make a profit on this--and type in “Teaching Artist". No need to narrow the search terms. Cast a wide net. 

Right now, I am thinking:

I’ll work anywhere for anyone, anywhere—as long as they share my core values and believe in the power of art and have an authentic passion for this work and they should also be cultivating a warm and innovative professional community of practice that I can join! Also, the pay should be reasonable. I mean the going rate for an experienced TA in a big city should be anywhere from $80 - $150 per workshop. I can’t work for $25/hr because then I can’t pay my rent and my health insurance and my taxes. I’m a professional! I deserve a living wage, a chance for advancement and some job security!

That’s what I am thinking.

So, here is a summary of the results of today’s job search query.

9 hits!

1. Salary range: $66,799 - $102,982 commensurate with experience.

Director, Center for the Arts

The College of Staten Island

Staten Island, New York United States

Description: The College of Staten Island (CSI), a senior college of the City University of New York, is recruiting for a Director for the Center for the Arts (CFA), a $1M+ public cultural unit of the college, comprised of year-round guest artist presenting series and...

2. Salary: $38-$41K/year, commensurate with experience

Associate Editor

Youth Communication New York

New York, New York United States

Description: ASSOCIATE EDITOR for professional, nonprofit monthly magazine written by New York City public high school students on social, political, and personal issues (circ. 70,000). Duties include: training and supervising a diverse teen staff in writing and repor...

3. Salary: $30-$35K depending on experience

Program Coordinator

Project Create

Washington, District of Columbia United States

Description: ORGANIZATION DESCRIPTION Project Create, founded in 1994, provides free arts classes to children living in emergency, transitional and long-term affordable family housing programs in Washington, DC. We are committed to enriching & transforming the lives...

4. Salary: DOE. Excellent benefits

Visual Arts Education Coordinator

Working Classroom Inc

Albuquerque, New Mexico United States

Description: Multicultural, intergenerational, youth-oriented contemporary arts community in Albuquerque, NM. dedicateed to nurturing diverse voices seeks artist w/teaching experience to supervise street conservatory program. Coordinator will plan and schedule classes...

5. Pay rate is around $50 per hour, 3-4 sessions daily

Architecture Instructor

Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning

Jamaica, New York United States

Description: Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL) is Southeast Queens’ principal arts institution and has been established for over 35 years. JCAL is a non-profit organization that serves New York City by providing educational, performing, and visual arts progra...

6. Pay rate is $40-$50 per hour for instruction time, $20 per hour firing time.

Ceramics Instructor

Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning

Jamaica, New York United States

Description: Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL) is Southeast Queens’ principal arts institution and has been established for over 35 years. JCAL is a non-profit organization that serves New York City by providing educational, performing, and visual arts progra...

7. Salary: $25/hr

After-School Teaching Artist

Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility

New York, New York United States

Description: The PAZ (Peace A toZ) After-school Program is a product of a shared commitment by P.S. 24 and Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility to educate the hearts and minds of our youth through conflict resolution, cooperative games and sports, aca...

8. Pay Rate of $12/hr

Youth Development Specialist/Teaching Artist

Words Beats & Life (WBL)

Washington, District of Columbia United States

Description: Volunteers General Words Beats & Life is looking for people to sign up as homework tutors to work with students from 4-18 yrs old. We are a hip-hop non-profit looking to help kids study and learn in a comfortable environment. Homework sessions will incl...

9. Salary: Unlisted

Teaching Artist

DreamYard A.C.T.I.O.N Project (Arts Community Teams in Our Neigborhoods)

Bronx, New York United States

Description: We are looking for a professional performance artist (Theatre, Creative Writing, Poetry or Dance) with a background in teaching that includes working with high school aged youth and experience in doing community-based work in New York City. The ACTION Pro...

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.

Listen

Called El Sistema, the program has, over 30 years, made classical musicians out of 500,000 young Venezuelans--most of them underprivileged and at-risk youths.

On youtube:

El Sistema (AP Report)

Simon Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela

Se acabó. Have a good weekend!

Professional

Wikipedia is the source text. So, grain of salt and all that...

Definition:

"A professional is a worker required to possess a large body of knowledge derived from extensive academic study (usually tertiary), with the training almost always formalized. "

So far, so good. I'm a professional!

"Professionals are at least to a degree self-regulating, in that they control the training and evaluation processes that admit new persons to the field, and in judging whether the work done by their members is up to standard. This differs from other kinds of work where regulation (if considered necessary) is imposed by the state, or where official quality standards are often lacking. Professions have some historical links to guilds in these regards."

Ok. How much is it going to cost me to join the guild?

"Professionals usually exercise autonomy in the workplace, and are expected to utilize their independent judgement and professional ethics in carrying out their responsibilities. This holds true even if they are employees instead of working on their own. Typically a professional provides a service (in exchange for payment or salary), in accordance with established protocols for licensing, ethics, procedures, standards of service and training / certification."

Who is the decider of the established protocols? I don't know how it will all pan out, but I am nearly certain that certifications and regulations are coming and this may be a good time to join Americans for the Arts. I think you can get a Teaching Artist discount on the membership because it is obvious to everyone that most Teaching Artists probably don't make enough money to afford to join a national organization that represents our interests. There's an irony there and it makes me sad to point it out. Anyway, it never hurts to ask. Your employer might also be willing to hook you up with a membership.

Mentors and Teaching Artists

While every lesson plan and curriculum packet we develop counts in our growing body of work, we need to constantly adjust, re-invent, re-create each experience from school to school and classroom to classroom. In fact, this adaptability and our willingness to respond to the unique needs of the teachers and students in front of us is what makes teaching artists different from the "one-sized-fits-all" approach to education in the last decade. This presents a problem when we approach training from a "one-sized" viewpoint. As Americans, we tend to look for systemic solutions. The replaceable parts of the Industrial Revolution have found their way into many aspects of our culture. What about those chunks of the human experience that are not, and cannot be standardized?

The mentor/apprentice relationship continues to be a successful model for teaching artists. I have used this in my business for many years, and it continues to be effective. While we strive for a common educational language across schools, states, disciplines, and philosophies, we need to constantly renew our commitment to flexibility and critical thinking. We need to develop skills that allow us to take a well planned lesson and adapt it to the individual needs, goals, and resources of the individuals in our classrooms. This is done best, by observing master teaching artists, working side-by-side with them, and eventually flying solo. I find that the master/apprentice relation works between veteran and new teaching artists, but it also can work between veterans that want to learn something new. This approach encourages those of us who have been in the field for a long time, to refresh our skills and our imaginations by sharing our effective tools with other teaching aritsts.

I encourage teaching artists to work with their cultural organizations to develop and support mentor/apprentice relationships. If a cultural organization is not available, start informal groups of regional teaching artists that can work on convenient schedules and workable deadlines.

I believe that there is a place for sequential training of training artists, but it cannot replace this powerful experience of the mentor and the apprentice.

Glenn McClure

Mentors Needed

I think Teaching Artists need mentor relationships to fill in the gaps and help them improve their game. Mentoring should be built into training programs and peer-to-peer mentoring should be a part of the culture at the organizations that do the hiring. 

There are so many questions only a person with experience can help you grapple with.

This year, I've facilitated workshops for people of all ethnic/economic/social backgrounds in wildly different contexts. I have worked with individuals ranging in age from 6 to 80. I have facilitated workshops on a swelteringly hot church parking lot, in Central Park, on stages, in classrooms, gymnasiums. I have urged people to sit in a nice circle on carpets of many colors, on mats, on linoleum and on wooden floors with splinters and without. I have worked to help people get ready to see plays, talk about plays after they've seen them, dialogue around issues, write poetry, act, experience stories and make art they can share with somebody else.  I've worked on lesson plans and curricula to explore Shakespeare, musical theater, mad puppets, classroom management and (my favorite) a workshop series to help younger humans learn about all their various parts..."These are my hands,with my hands I can_____" 

Question: How did my training prepare me for all of that?

Answer: I don't think it did. I think I might be one of those who learned by doing. In the best situations, like where I work now, I have a teaching partner and I learn from and with them. 

This is a craft and, unless you are in a staff position with a set curriculum and an unchanging student population, nearly every day brings something different.

Teaching Artists need mentors. 

Is that practical? Is that doable?

Anyway, if you are looking for a place, there are some great training programs out there. I will post these 4 to start:

American Place Theater

Lincoln Center Institute

Arts Horizons

VSA Arts

How Do We Think about our Craft?

"To ask how we think about our craft is not to ask what we know about it. "

That's a quote from MAXINE GREENE. She's a giant of thought so we type her name in all caps.

In How Do We Think about Our Craft?, Ms. Greene writes:

"To speak of craft is to presume a knowledge of a certain range of skills and proficiencies. It is to imagine an educated capacity to attain a desired end-in-view or to bring about a desired result...We differ considerably among ourselves, of course, on the ends we actually have in mind and on the degree to which they can be predefined. Some of us focus on measurable competencies; others, on the process of coming to know, or on “knowing how” rather than “knowing that.” Some of us confine our attention to the cognitive domain; others try to cultivate imaginative capacities as well as cognitive ones; still others place equal stress on the affective domain. Many of us are uncertain about how much of our craft we have learned and about how much “comes naturally."

We wonder how much of our understanding can be put into words."

MAXINE GREENE on the Muse (youtube video)

Arts For All Teaching Artist Training Video

Los Angeles County has an initiative called Arts for All.

 

The Dana Foundation funds the work and The Music Center is a partner. 

 

Here's a cool video of their work.

Notice the Parenthetical

We are always figuring out new ways to talk about what we do.

By email, Dale writes, "Re: definition of Teaching Artist...It has always been interesting to me there is not a standard across the board definition."

Another take from Eric Booth is below. Notice the parentheses.

“A teaching artist (artist–educator) is a practicing professional artist with the complementary skills and sensibilities of an educator, who engages people in learning experiences in, through, and about the arts.”

Maxine Greene

Maxine Greene.

Effective Training Programs?

Question: What are some of the most effective training programs you have seen?

Short Answer: Effective training is ongoing, dynamic training that fits into the life of the artist.

Longer Answer: This morning, at a panel set up by Arts Education Resource for college students, Russell Granet shared a definition of the term "Teaching Artist" that he solicited from Eric Booth.

Paraphrasing, Booth’s definition contained the idea that:

“ The Teaching Artist is an artist who chooses to develop their skills as an educator…”

The most effective training for Teaching Artists that I have experienced is ongoing professional development that aligns with my belief that we are artists first. For me, the professional educator identity is a set of skills and concepts coalescing around my identity as a professional artist, not the other way around. 

I'll post more on this later. In the meantime, what do you think?

What are some of the most effective training programs you have seen?

Are We Ready?

Hi Glenn:

The weekend is long gone and I’ve had lots of time to consider your questions over cranberries and pie.  Since my answers will obviously be limited by my specific set of experiences, I hope other TAs will use our dialogue as a springboard to join the conversation. 

I feel quite close to your list of the critical issues, Glenn. I think it's important for the community of Teaching Artists to have some agreement about what our priorities are. I'll post my list and invite others to post theirs in the comments section. 

Critical Issues for Teaching Artists

1.       Professionalization

• Training emerging TA's to enter the field.
• Providing Professional Development opportunities for experienced TA's.
• Managing the risks and rewards of professionalization for the Teaching Artist– standardization, certification and job security versus the more flexible freelance arrangements.

2.      Healthcare

• How do I get it?
• How do I keep it?
• How does not having it affect the quality of my work?

3.      Pay Scale and Structure

• Explaining to those who do the hiring that $25/hour is not enough money since I am paying rent in New York City and who’s paying for my healthcare again? Oh, I am? Well, then $25/hr is definitely not enough money.
• Am I freelancer or am I on staff? This affects my tax liability, my ability to get unemployment compensation, my ability to afford the aforementioned health insurance and my ability to plan for retirement.

4.      Developing a Community of Teaching Artists/Educators:

• Developing a common vocabulary for our work.
• Developing a common understanding of our role and responsibilities;
• Developing Core Values and Habits of Mind.
• Teaching Artist to Teaching Artist communication and networking.
• Peer to peer learning and mentoring.
• Advocacy Network – getting TAs involved in setting the agenda and lobbying.

Dale's earlier post of the conference report from Class Acts 99, which I reference below, gave me serious pause. It's a reminder that this kind of discussion must be directed toward taking action steps. Great minds have already grappled with these issues and drafted some powerful calls for change. The hard work is in pushing for that change day by day--advocacy. That's the work that ATA and others are doing on our behalf and we need to step up as advocates for ourselves.

Dale asked it last week and it's worth asking again.

Are we ready?

Are we?

How Far Have We Come In Ten Years?

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for the invitation to have a public conversation around these issues and for setting up a framework. You've posed some challenging questions and I'm afraid I'm going to have to use your own Dale Davis, Executive Director of ATA, as one of my lifelines right off the bat.

Dale posted an interesting historical document on ATA's yahoo list serve last week under the heading "Are We As Teaching Artists Ready?". Since the holiday is upon us, I'm going to let that post serve as my doorstop of an answer until I get back to my laptop on Monday.

Here's a quote and the link.

Class Acts 99: The Artist’s Voice in Arts Education, was a four-day participatory, professional conference for teaching artists. Produced by ArtsConnection, and held at ArtsConnection’s Center and public schools throughout New York City, Class Acts 99 gave participants a chance to focus on the skills teaching artists need to address today’s issues of pedagogy, partnership, and standards, and provided a forum for teaching artists to respond to changes in the field. A panel of policy makers, arts administrators, and teaching artists set the stage by addressing the question, "What do you expect of a teaching artist today?

The conference attendees produced a set of recommendations for addressing critical issues that reads like a roadmap. Dale prefaces her post with another provocative question "How far have we come in almost ten years?"

There's a good question to ponder over the weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Michael

Developing a Professional Community of Teaching Artists

Dear Teaching Artists,

In recent emails sent to ATA staff, Michael Wiggins, a NYC-based teaching artist identified some of the hottest issues facing the profession of teaching artistry. With increasing economic pressures on our work, teaching artists need to carefully assess our challenges and needs in order to build a more sustainable profession in the coming years. Over the next week or so, I will be blogging with Michael on several of these key issues. My hope is to crystallize these issues for our readers so that we may work together on surviving the current economic downturn and raising our profession. This week we start our conversation with Michael on topics surrounding the training of teaching artists.

Dear Michael,

You outlined several key areas of professionalization that must be addressed by teaching artists. In our first conversation, I would like to explore some of your ideas on the training of teaching artists.

Training emerging TA's to enter the field- Cultural organizations have internal training programs. They range from occasional, topic-based training, to multi-week programs that may also include mentor/apprentice relationships. What are some of the most effective training programs you have seen? What are the unique challenges of new TA's?

Providing Professional Development opportunities for experienced TA's-We also see cultural organizations offering professional development for experienced TA's in the form of workshop sessions, supporting conference attendence, peer-to-peer support, etc. How can we best train and inspire those teaching artists that are already working in the field?

Managing the Risks and Rewards of Professionalization for the Teaching Artist– TA's have enjoyed a great deal of automony in the development of our work. This has been one of the defining elements of our profession, especially as K12 education has become increasingly standardized. However, this does not come without a price. Without certification, accreditation, and other trappings of the education field, TA's are vulnerable to a host of threats to their livelihood. Clearly, a move toward professionalization of teaching artistry must include sequential training of some kind. We see some universities experimenting with various training schemes that combine Arts Learning with other fields. This is a pivotal step toward building the necessary labor structures and protections enjoyed by workers in other professions. How can we balance the emerging needs of standardization, certification and job security versus the more flexible freelance arrangements?

Sincerely,
Glenn McClure
Association of Teaching Artists