Arts Education Network News September 2006

In this Issue:

· Welcome back . . . · Funding o School Arts Partnership Grants · Technical Assistance o CommonGround 2007 o TAP Grants · Resources o Websites of the Month · News o Nilaja Sun’s No Child. . . Going Strong Off-Broadway

Students at JHS 131 Albert Einstein Science and Technology Academy use architectural concepts to students gain mastery of math and visual arts concepts.

Welcome back . . .
to a new year for learning in and through the arts.
Partners for Arts Education is poised to support your excitement and challenges as you work toward increasing the love of learning through creative endeavors with your students. With the national and local spotlights on research and data as a way to tell the arts-in-education story, we are harvesting resources that bring us a spectrum of information that goes from compelling to conclusive. Please check out the Arts Education Partnership forum reports and book “Third Space” for compelling information and the Guggenheim Museum “Learning Through Art” website for conclusive information.

Our staff and board have been gathering enthusiasm from the 10th year anniversary of the New York State Council on the Arts Empire State Partnerships program, the national focus on arts education that has come from the Arts Education Partnership, and from the anecdotes and evidence that come from classrooms all over New York State through our CommonGround Conference, School Arts Partnerships and Technical Assistance programs.

YOU SHOULD KNOW:
Empire State Partnerships is gaining momentum as ten years of collective wisdom reveals the power of peer-to-peer professional development. The educators, artists, cultural organization staff, and administrators in attendance exchanged critical insights on re-culturing schools through curriculum design with two specific backward mapping strategies: Understanding by Design – an approach created by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, and Curriculum Mapping – an approach advocated by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.

The Arts Education Partnership met first in June to explore partnerships with higher education, then again in September to exchange national findings on research and data in arts education. With Third Space: When Learning Matters (see Website of the Month) as a central text for answering the question, "How do the arts contribute to the improvement of schools?" participants from all over the United States explored the uses of funding, hard data vs. interesting data, arts education vs. arts-in-education, qualitative criteria for professional development, and more.

CommonGround, School Arts Partnerships, and Technical Assistance for the 2006-07 year promise to be as flexible-yet-critical as possible to meet your arts-in-education needs. We are finding that various degrees of action research are being conducted through many of our partnerships; we are increasing the diversity of funding that meets the match for NYS Council on the Arts grants and encouraging you to look to Title One as a way to balance the impact of No Child Left Behind on the curriculum; and finally, we are fine-tuning our technical assistance to "scale-up" the role of deeper planning, distributed leadership, realistic research, and targeted assessments in your partnerships.

Laura Reeder , Executive Director

Funding
School Arts Partnership Grants
You can read abstracts of all of this year’s SAP granted projects on our website. Seventeen projects received funding this year, selected from over 40 applicants.  Congratulations to all our new SAP partners!

Technical Assistance
CommonGround 2007
Save the Date! The 2007 CommonGround conference will be held Wednesday - Friday March 28 - 30 at the Hyatt Regency in Rochester. Mark your calendars!

TAP Grants
Technical Assistance Program grants area awarded five times a year. The first of the Technical Assistance Grant applications for 2006-07 are currently under review by our panel. The next deadline is November 1, 2006.

Technical Assistance Program grants provide support for projects that develop, enhance, and/or evaluate arts education programs benefiting children pre-K to 12th grade. The grant is for projects that involve planning, professional development, evaluation and sustainability. Awards range from $100 to $1,000. NYS schools, school districts, and non-profit cultural organizations, and NYS teaching artists are eligible to apply. TAP is not meant to support artist residency activities.

If you would like more information about these grants, visit our website, or email RJ.

Resources
Website of the Month
The Guggenheim Museum this summer published preliminary findings of research that shows that the combination of looking at art and hands-on art making helps students build important critical-thinking, art, and literacy skills. You can read more about the research and find resources at their website, http://www.learningthroughart.org/.

Arts Education Partnership’s Third Space: When Learning Matters tells the riveting story of the profound changes in the lives of kids, teachers, and parents in ten economically disadvantaged communities across the country that place their bets on the arts as a way to create great schools. You can read excerpts of the book and find more resources at http://www.aep-arts.org/ThirdSpacehome.htm.

News
Nilaja Sun’s No Child. . . Going Strong Off-Broadway
Nilaja Sun’s show No Child…, which many of you saw a preview of at CommonGround 06, has transferred to an Off-Broadway house and is going as strong as ever. The Barrow Street Theatre is now accepting school/student and educator group bookings for the show through the fall/winter 2006. When educators book directly they are always given priority seating, with generous discounts given off the top ticket price. And for many performances it’s possible to arrange a post-show talk back with Nilaja Sun. For more information, you can contact:
John C. Hume, Box Office Manager and Group Sales Coordinator
The Barrow Street Theatre
212.243.6565
NOCHILDTHEPLAY@GMAIL.COM

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Our staff is always available to help you!