Arnold Aprill

INREACH

Posted by Arnold Aprill, Sep 23, 2009


Arnold Aprill

Worried about our young people getting enough access to the arts in our schools in a era of economic downturn? Wondering where the resources will come from? Even in challenging times, there are unexpected allies all around us - resources hidden in plain site:
• Local and state arts councils that fund visiting artists
• Local and state arts alliances and advocacy organizations
• Arts organizations that fund school visits to their sites, and fund visiting artists going into schools
• Artist parents and community members ready to contribute their expertise to schools

It takes some leadership, planning, and organizing to track down these resources. It’s fun detective work. The resources are there – ready and anxious to serve your school.

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David Flatley

Critical First Steps for Ensuring Strong Parental Engagement in Schools

Posted by David Flatley, Sep 22, 2009


David Flatley

As a member of the Arts Education Council, I’m pleased to be participating in this blog this week.  I run an outreach unit at Columbia College Chicago called the Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP) that supports and facilitates reciprocal networks and collaborations among schools, community based arts organizations and Columbia…the nation’s largest arts, media, and communications college.  Our primary focus is learning in and through the arts, and our programs runs the gamut between community schools, college readiness, arts integration, service learning, and parental engagement initiatives.

As one of the focal points for this blog is to address the issue of what parents should know about, or what’s important for them to do in support of, arts education…I’ll point to something that we like to encourage within our parental involvement work: develop parent leadership within the school.  Scores of public schools across the nation desperately need a jolt of increased parental involvement, and one of the best ways to deliver on that is for school communities to focus on how to cultivate parental leadership.  This may emerge through external partners working on programs in the school (such as CCAP); it may be supported or initiated by principals or teacher leaders in the school who are dedicated to cultivating more parental engagement.  Some schools are lucky enough to have a savvy, committed parent who self-initiates an active parent group through his or her own organizing (in conjunction with school leadership ideally).

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Victoria J. Plettner-Saunders

Who Should Advocate for Arts Education?

Posted by Victoria J. Plettner-Saunders, Sep 24, 2009


Victoria J. Plettner-Saunders

I just read Donna Collins’ blogpost and found myself stunned by a quote. She stated “One music teacher said, “I’m old school.  You teach what kids need to learn and you should not spend time writing letters to policy makers, pleading your case in front of the school board, or parading your kids down the street at levy time.”

If it is not our responsibility to advocate for what we want for our children, then whose is it? How does an art teacher “teach what kids need to learn” if he or she no longer has a job because the program is cut, and how does the general classroom teacher “teach what kids need to learn” in art if it is no longer considered part of the curriculum? We can no longer assume that arts education will always be in our schools.

In San Diego last spring we learned quickly that without a strong advocacy campaign we would lose the Visual and Performing Arts Department at the San Diego Unified School District. Had our teachers, parents, Facebook fans, arts organizations and others not spent time writing letters, pleading our case in front of the school board or creating a media event on the Board of Education’s lawn, we might not have a department to speak of today. Now I understand that she was probably speaking from the teacher’s standpoint and many educators in the school system do not feel comfortable advocating for their own programs, but in San Diego, the teacher’s voices became critical to the effort.

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Arnold Aprill

Color Unblind

Posted by Arnold Aprill, Sep 25, 2009


Arnold Aprill

Biologists have been excited by a recent experiment that reversed color blindness in monkeys. Male squirrel monkeys do not see color (females do). After six months of gene therapy, the monkeys in the experiment (Dalton and Sam) enthusiastically began indentifying red and green dots on a computer screen in order to receive grape juice. They appear to be as pleased by their new visual acuity as they are by their increased access to beverages.

This experiment has amazed scientists, who assumed that the introduction of color receptors into male monkey optic nerves would have no effect on brains that had not been genetically programmed to see more than white, black, and grey.

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Steven Spielberg Voices Support for Arts Funding

Posted by , Oct 20, 2009



In his recent acceptance speech for the 2009 Liberty Medal in Philadelphia, Steven Spielberg described the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the writings of leaders like Jefferson and Lincoln as not only the eloquent expression of incredible ideas, but great works of art.  With this in mind, Speilberg emphasized the importance of the arts and arts funding in America:

"The commercial success of some of my films have made it possible for me to create foundations, build organizations, to try to have an effect on the world. But I’ve never believed that all art must prove itself in the marketplace; or that the marketplace is a congenial environment for all artists. Poetry, theater, serious fiction, symphony orchestras, dance companies and museums require the material support of the society to which they make a vital contribution, or they won’t exist.

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Merryl Goldberg

Arts Education: Make Congress Sing and Act!

Posted by Merryl Goldberg, Feb 23, 2010


Merryl Goldberg

This month is proving to be one heck of a roller coaster ride for arts education advocates. On the up side, a U.S. Department of Education “stakeholders” meeting on the reauthorization of the Elementary & Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was ground breaking in that it was the first time that the national arts education community had been invited to specifically address the reauthorization policy efforts. On the other hand, on the heels of that meeting, the White House unveiled an education budget that eliminated the 40 million that was allocated specifically to arts education.

While it will be argued that arts education is not eliminated from the budget, just reassigned under other programs, we cannot let this pass by without pause. Reassigning arts education to broader categories and taking the words “arts education” off the budget pages, effectively is a signal of importance–or rather lack of importance in the minds of the officials who have oversight of the budget. This is a terrible move, and one which cannot no go unaddressed. Arts education is core to NCLB, and thus must remain core to the budget and how the budget is outlined in print. But beyond rhetoric, arts education is truly core to how we are as a people in society and how our children will learn to be engaged citizens. 

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