Sunday, August 9, 2009

A New Academic Year

As August unfolds we face a new academic year. With it a realization that we have to continue to explore ways to bring the arts into classrooms. The promise of a new administration with a different agenda that may help us in classrooms has dissipated. We are faced again with the fact that most of the publi wants the arts in school but consider them secondary to everything else. They are a great addition but also the first thing to go when budgets and time need to be allocated carefully. Thus, we are left in a constant effort to maintain and expand our efforts to teach in and through the Arts.
On our home front in the project we still have a group of teachers that are as committed as ever. All of our indicators show that working on this project empowered teachers as true professionals and helped teachers develop as professionals. We are working on a book highlighting the connected units that our teachers created. As this is a second hand report I will ask Nancy A. to post a little more about it.
The most important thing is that in our last year of funding we are not losing steam, in fact we are gaining momentum.

A thought: We create art to amplify the memory trace of our emotions and to share them with others.

1 comment:

NancyA said...

It often seems so odd that we are constantly pushing for something that most everyone believes is good for children. The concept that the arts are a frill would not make sense to John Dewey or to the children to whom the arts are their life blood. I can remember when my old middle school was named An Excellence in the Arts Middle School. The reviewers interviewed the students and asked them: "What would you do if this school lost the arts?" Resoundingly they replied, we would leave. In reality the students could not physically leave-- but over the year the program was been eroded until it is a shadow of what it was when I was there. Now the students leave by tuning out.
I believe that the parents who want the arts for their children must step up and demand the arts. Secondarily they must be willing to pay for the program either through taxes or donations. In Santa Cruz county in California, voters added a small amount to their property taxes for arts education.
Meanwhile the classroom teacher will have to do the best they can. It is projects like ours that offer viable strategies for arts integration that will need to provide a whole education for the elementary student.