PAE Postcard January 2007

What’s Happening at CommonGround
New York State Conference for the Arts in Education
“AIE 3-D: The Arts in Three Dimensions”
March 28-30, Rochester Hyatt Regency
Come to our website and see the complete schedule and descriptions of workshops .

You can also see bios of our keynoters:
- Arnold Aprill of Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education,
- Tara M. Brown of University of Maryland’s Minority and Urban Education Unit, and
- composer Glenn McClure and Mt. Morris Middle School’s Strong as Steel.

Together we will explore the essential question: “How do the arts in education in NYS engage and empower our next generation?”

Workshops will pertain to one of three aspects of arts in education:
- Core Knowledge (how does the field of NYS arts in education work?),

- Curriculum and Assessment (How do we design deep and relevant opportunities for students and adults for sustainable curriculum design?), and

- Education Reform (How can education policy and practice transform our global community?). Teachers, artists, administrators, cultural organizations, community members, old hands and neophytes – everyone has something to learn and something to share at CommonGround.

You’ll also find the link to special hotel rates at the Hyatt for conference-goers. The deadline for the special hotel rate is March 1st, and rooms often go quickly, so don’t delay!  Registration for the conference will open Monday, January 29th.

Community, Culture, and Education Research Initiative
In November 2006, PAE embarked on an exciting journey to research and observe the connections between CNY cultural organizations and our schools – the CCE Research Initiative.  With funding from the Gifford Foundation and in partnership with the Syracuse City School District, we have invited six of this year’s art$TART grant recipient partnerships to meet with a team of evaluators and advisory committee members monthly between January and May.  All project teams are collaborations between area cultural organizations (including at least one teaching artist) and a team of teachers. 

Through observation and discussion among the project teams we hope to meet our objectives:

1. to strengthen the relationship between our cultural organizations and area schools;
2. to identify the best practices for arts education partnerships in CNY;
3. to help to strengthen the education of our cultural organizations;
4. to provide data that makes the case for more equitable distribution of resources; and
5. to confirm the value of the arts and the positive impact upon learning in our classrooms.

PAE has been studying other communities that have increased communication and created strength among their cultural and educational organizations, including Dallas “Big Thought” and the San Francisco Arts in Education Master Plan of the SF School District.  For more information about our partners and the scope of our research project, please visit the PAE website.

PAE Lending Library
Looking for inspiration, information, ideas? In our efforts to provide learning opportunities and resources to the CNY AIE community, we have catalogued the books on our shelves for a lending library.  With titles such as Yardsticks, Putting the Arts in the Picture, Changing Schools through the Arts, Beyond Enrichment, Cultural Diversity in Our Schools, and Bridges Out of Poverty, we have a broad spectrum of literature that investigates the arts as well as applications in classrooms and community. 

If you have an interest in looking at our inventory to select reading material for your own growth, you are welcome to stop into the PAE office and check out any of the books available.  We will lend the books for a month.  We will remind you if you have the book longer than a month and if you decide that you want to keep it, we will invoice you so we can replace it.  A simple system but we want the information available to you.  Please look for our complete listing on our web site in February.  If you have any questions, feel free to call us, as always – 234.9911!

March 6 - Arts Action Day in Albany
With the change in administration in Albany, this year is a particularly critical one for making artistic voices heard in the halls of state government.  Arts Action Day is an annual event that puts the arts front and center on the legislative agenda at the State Capitol.  If you have a message for your state legislator about support for the arts in New York State, Tuesday, March 6th is the day to deliver it. For more information about Arts Actions Day, contact The Alliance for NYS Arts Organizations.

Resources
Recommended Reading
Bridges Out of Poverty: Strategies for Professionals and Communities  by Ruby K. Payne, Philip DeVol, Terie Dreussi Smith.  Published by aha! Process, Inc., 2001.
What happens when individuals do not understand the hidden rules, characteristics, and language structures that shape the behavior of each other’s cultures? Bridges Out of Poverty takes the concepts of hidden rules of economic class and uses them to educate about the unique and sometimes hidden obstacles that individuals from poverty face. If you work with people from poverty, a deeper understanding of their challenges and strengths will help you partner with them to create opportunities for success.

National Online Discussion On Arts In Education Launched
ArtsTeach announced the launch of ArtsBLOG, a national online discussion area designed for educators, teaching artists and anyone who has something important to say about current issues and trends related to arts education and arts in education. Its first guest moderator is noted teaching artist and internationally renowned consultant on arts education programs, Eric Booth, and may be accessed through the organization’s website, www.artsteach.org.

ArtsTeach and Booth hope this tool will lead to a dialogue on a local, regional and national level that encourages practitioners to share their perspectives and best practices. Another goal of ArtsBLOG is to enable readers to get a better sense of what is taking place in the field and how we can work together to make it better.

Booth, a professional actor and teaching artist, is known nationally and internationally for his work with several outstanding arts and arts education programs such as those at the Kennedy Center, Tanglewood and the Julliard School. Booth’s most recent projects look for innovative ways to advance the field, which led to his role as Founding Editor of the Teaching Artist Journal. 
Eric has launched ArtsBLOG with a discussion of “creativity”—not only its role in a child’s education but also how it shapes individuals to be active participants in the world. ArtsBLOG will rotate discussion topics on a quarterly basis in its beginning stages and will search to identify other leaders in the field to moderate the conversations.

______________________________

Partners for Arts Education
Delavan Center Suite 221  501 W. Fayette St.  Syracuse, NY  13202
315.234.9911  info@arts4ed.org  www.arts4ed.org

State of the Arts

NYSCA