me arts ed

Elementary Art teacher, Anne Kofler, shares a lesson

Whistler's Mother

Anne Kofler often connects with other content areas. She believes in the importance of connecting content areas and often incorporates other content into the art lessons she does with her K-6 students at Union Elementary, Prescott Memorial (in Washington) and Friendship Village Schools.

The Scream

This 4th grade lesson was inspired by MASTER the Art of READING, a set of posters from the school library. Anne selected 4 major pieces of art, with figures as the central focus. Students had a choice of one of four portraits and created their own versions. They selected from: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vince, Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough, The Scream by Edvard Munch, Whistler’s Mother by James Whistler.

First, students imagine the scenes without the figures filling 12″X18″ white drawing paper with tempera paint. On oak tag, students drew the figures (changing the position of arms so they would be free to hold books) and used marker for the color. Finally, students created mini-books, based on their favorite story, using cloth, cardboard and lightweight paper. When displayed, the low relief is very effective as the figures hold the tiny books. They look great on display.

Mona Lisa

What a great lesson this would be for a collaboration with a classroom teacher. Students could create the contents of the book related to any number of topics in Social Studies or Science. In their class time students could create the contents for the books. This lesson connects with the VPA standards as well as ELA. The artwork could be accompanied with an audio of students reading or with a musical selection. Students could also create a theatrical piece and the artwork could be an integral part of the performance. Students could work in small or large groups.

What other artworks do you think would be good to use with this lesson? And what other ways do you think would be ways to connect?

Maine Department of Education and iTunes

There are many resources including video clips, articles, and downloads to inspire and teach on a variety of topics at iTunes. There is an icon for the Maine Department of Education that includes an icon for Visual and Performing Arts.

Periodically, I add files and recently added one on “Creativity” that was created by my counter part in Wisconsin. He also sent me a file on “Arts Education and the 21st Century Skills”. Now that summer is here I hope you will take rainy days to catch up on reading and professional development opportunities. I hope you enjoy accessing these without leaving the comfort of your home.

Please click here to get to the iTunes page. This might lead you to a drop down window that says “External Protocol Request”. If so, click on “Launch Application” and you will get to a page that says Maine Department of Education. Scroll down and you will see an icon on the right for VPA.

By all means look at the other offerings on the MDOE iTunes page. I suggest one called “How-Tos… Not Why-Tos” and click on the icon called “What’s on Your MacBook?” Click there and you will find many podcasts on all kinds of topics. And of course, all of these resources are FREE.

HAPPY READING and please let us know (in a comment) of other podcasts, websites and other links to information that you find worthwhile to improve teaching and learning in arts education!

Beautiful horses

While attending and presenting at the Adult Education conference last week  a participant told me about a sculptor that she finds interesting. A couple days later I received an email with the link to the website.  Please click here to check out Heather Jansch’s  work.

“Concepts of Creativity” unveiled in MSAD 44

Artist Randy Fein glueing mural

Randy Fein is a familiar name in many Maine schools. Randy is a ceramic sculptor, potter and art instructor who works in schools across Maine creating clay murals. This Spring MSAD 44 fourth and fifth graders had the opportunity to work with Fein as part of the Mahoosuc Arts Council’s annual artist-in-residence program.

Student work on three separate murals has been permanently installed in Andover, Woodstock and Crescent Park Elementary Schools in the Bethel area. Art teacher Tera Ingraham worked for over a year putting the program together for the 70 elementary students.

“Concepts of Creativity” is the theme Fein chose to inspire the students. Two of the works are created out of self-hardening clay and the third from a clay that needed the firing/kiln process. Each piece has been hand-painted by the students using acrylics.

Andover Elementary School mural

Along with residencies in schools, Fein teaches ceramic art at Unity College and owns Mountain Studios in Lincolnville and is part of Art Space Gallery in Rockland. She has been awarded more than 18 public art commissions to create mixed media and ceramic tile murals for libraries, colleges and other public gathering places.

The Mahoosuc Arts Council is a nonprofit organization that works to support and advance the arts and humanities in the adult communities and school systems of the Greater Bethel Area with the support of SAD 44, Gould Academy and local businesses and individuals. FMI please click here.

Visit and learn more about River Arts

I stopped in to River Arts and had a delightful conversation with Executive Director Linda Morkeski. River Arts has grown out of Round Top Center for the Arts just a year ago and is housed in a white building beside the Skidompha Public Library. The River Arts sign is very attractive, simple, yet striking. The mission of River Arts is to nurture appreciation, encourage participation and provide opportunity in the arts. And that they do very well!

River Arts is a non-profit arts organization located in downtown Damariscotta, at 170 Maine Street, just across from the post office. You can become a member and can submit up to three pieces for each juried show. The art exhibits are in place for five weeks. During the 6th week the staff and volunteers are scurrying around to arrange the work for the juror to select the next show and then hanging.

On display now is a show called “Driven to Abstraction” and will be taken down June 26th. The annual member show is opening on July 3, 2009. Work is being accepted for that show on June 26 and 27th, 10-4.

Not only does the building have exhibit space but also space for lecture and classes. On June 11th, Douglas Preston (click here) who has written for National Geographic, Natural History, The New Yorker, Harper’s and Travel & Leisure and author of several books including “Monster of Florence” was the evenings presenter. On June 25th, landscape and interior painter Lois Dodd (click here) will be lecturing and on June 28th Janet Fish (click here) will speak on her vivid and engaging explorations into life-giving actions of light.

Focus is not just on visual arts. Music and theater are part of their plans. River Arts has summer concerts for children planned with Shana Barry on July 15th and August 18th at 4PM. You can learn more about musician and artist Shana and her Fofers by clicking here. If you have children I suggest you check out her website. River Arts is also offering over 20 summer classes and workshops for children and adults in printmaking, sculpture, photography, animation, bookmaking, watercolor, oil and drawing.

Open life drawing and life sculpture studios on Tuesday and Wednesday’s. For more details on any of the information listed above please click here.

If you are wondering what to do on a rainy or sunny day this summer I suggest you stop in at River Arts and learn more about their programs first hand. They have many wonderful artistic plans for the future!

Composer/music educator, Jake Sturtevant, shares a special moment

Recently I was chatting with Jake Sturtevant online when he shared this special story and link. In Jake’s own words…

Bella

Here Comes Me! was inspired by a phrase my then 2 year old daughter, Bella, would say in almost every circumstance when presenting herself. I enjoyed the uniqueness of the phrase. It wasn’t quite “here I come” but we got the point. It was similar to her take on the phrase “ready or not here I come” when we were playing hide and seek. She would say “here I not, here I come”. I wanted to capture this innocence and word play through a piece of music.

I had always wanted a chance to write a piece for chorus that utilized beat boxing in some capacity. While commuting by car to a USM summer course I started playing around with the words, and found that I could use the phonetic ideas within the phrase to create the beat boxing sounds. Thus began the piece.

Knowing my chorus at Washington Academy would have fun with the pieces, I also wrote in a short beat boxing solo part for a student I didn’t even have in the music program. I taught the piece to chorus mostly by rote, and though there were many giggles along the way, the students responded passionately.

On the first day I began teaching it, one student said: “why can’t chorus class always be like this?” Later I had Bella record a short video clip for the chorus, telling them “thanks, you guys rock, Here Comes Me”. The students really appreciated the personal connection they had to the piece. Knowing they would be premiering the piece not only for their families and community, but also for Bella, really made the students anxious to perform the piece.

On the night of the Spring Concert we premiered it and the students received a standing ovation. The soloist thanked me many times for letting him be part of the performance, and every person I talked to after the concert commented on the pieces, and told me how much they enjoyed it, and how much they had heard their son/daughter talking about it before the concert. One musician/composer said: “this is how to keep the music program growing”.

Bella and Jake

Though it is hard to keep my composing going on top of full time teaching and being a full time Dad, I will always have this passion, and I think it broke some barriers between student and teacher, and I know it resulted in a better learning environment. Both student and teacher composition became an integral part of my classroom this year, and I hope to see many fruitful results through the coming years.

Below you can view the premiere of Here Comes Me! What stories can you share that touches on a similar experience you’ve had as a teacher?

For 50 years PCA has been PCA

Since 1931 PCA Great Performances, which stood for Portland Concert Association, has been responsible for bringing outstanding performance opportunities to Maine. Their new name is Portland Ovations.

You can go to their fabulous website by clicking here and see their offerings for the upcoming months. In August everyone on their mailing list will be entered into a drawing for a pair of season passes to all 26b performances in the 2009-10 season.

Some of the performances they’ve brought in the recent past are YoYo Ma, Sweet Honey In the Rock, and Hairspray. Many of their performances take place in beautiful Merrill Auditorium. They have an outstanding video that tells more about them. You can view it by clicking here. Congratulations Portland Ovations!

Arts Appear to Play Role in Brain Development

The following article was written by Liz Bowie and printed in the Baltimore Sun during the Spring of 2009. Permission from the writer has been granted to reprint the article here. It is a bit long for a blog post but well worth the read. Research on the impact of an arts education on the brain is being looked at closely. Be sure and read to the end since the researchers comment on the impact an arts education could have on the student dropout rate as well. Let us know what you think!

For years, school systems across the nation dropped the arts to concentrate on getting struggling students to pass tests in reading and math. Yet now, a growing body of brain research suggests that teaching the arts may be good for students across all disciplines.

Scientists are now looking at, for instance, whether students at an arts high school who study music or drawing have brains that allow them to focus more intensely or do better in the classroom. Washington County schools Superintendent Betty Morgan would have liked to have had some of that basic research in her hands when she began building a coalition for an arts high school in Hagerstown. The business community and school principals worked together, and the school will open this summer, but even at its groundbreaking a man objecting to the money spent on the school held up a sign of protest reading “Big Note$ Wrong Music.”

Scientists and educators aware of the gap between basic research and the school systems are beginning to share findings, such as at this month’s seminar on the brain and the arts held at Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum.

The event was sponsored by the new Neuro-Education Initiative at the John Hopkins University, a center designed to bridge that gap.

Brain research in the past several years is just beginning to uncover some startling ideas about how students learn. First came the proof, some years ago, that our brains do not lose brain cells as we get older, but are always capable of growing.

Now neuroscientists are investigating how training students in the arts may change the structure of their brains and the way they think. They are asking: Does putting a violin in the hands of an elementary school student help him to do math better? Will learning to dance or paint improve a child’s spacial ability or ability to learn to read?

Research in those areas, Harvard professor Jerome Kagan said, is “as deserving of a clinical trial as a drug for cancer that has not yet been shown to be effective.”

There aren’t many conclusions yet that can be translated into the classroom, but there is an emerging interdisciplinary field between education and neuroscience. Like Hopkins, Harvard also has created a center to study learning and the brain.

Much of the research into the arts has centered on music and the brain. One researcher studying students who go to an arts high school found a correlation between those who were trained in music and their ability to do geometry. Yet another four-year study, being conducted by Ellen Winner of Boston College and Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard, is looking at the effects playing the piano or the violin has on students who are in elementary school.

Winner said she was quite skeptical of claims that schools that had introduced the arts had seen an increase in test scores and a generally better school climate. She had previously looked at those claims and found they couldn’t be backed up by research.

However, she is in the midst of a four-year study of elementary students that has shown some effects: One group is learning an instrument and another is not. “It is the first study to demonstrate brain plasticity in young children related to music playing,” Schlaug said.

The study Winner is working on has shown that children who receive a small amount of training – as little as half an hour of lessons a week and 10 minutes of practice a day – do have structural changes in their brains that can be measured. And those students, Winner said, were better at tests that required them to use their fingers with dexterity.

About 15 months after the study began, students who played the instrument were not better at math or reading, although the researchers are questioning whether they have assessments that are sensitive enough to measure the changes. They will continue the study for several more years.

Charles Limb, a Johns Hopkins doctor and a jazz musician, studied jazz musicians by using imaging technology to take pictures of their brains as they improvised. He found that they allowed their creativity to flow by shutting down areas that regulated inhibition and self-control. So are the most creative people able to shut down those areas of the brain?

Most of the new research is focusing on the networks of the brain that are involved in specific tasks, said Michael Posner, a researcher at the University of Oregon. Posner has studied the effects of music on attention. What he found, he said, was that in those students who showed motivation and creativity, training in the arts helped develop their attention and their intelligence. The next great focus in this area, he said, is on proving the connection that most scientists believe exists between the study of music and math ability.

The imaging is now so advanced that scientists can already see the difference in the brain networks of those who study a string instrument and those who study the piano intensely.

The brain research, while moving quickly by some measures, is still painfully slow for educators who would like answers today. Morgan, the Washington County schools chief, said some research did help her support the drive to build the Barbara Ingram School for the Arts in Hagerstown.

Mariale Hardiman, the former principal of Roland Park Elementary/Middle School, was once one of those principals who focused a lot of attention on reading and math scores. But she saw what integrating the arts into classrooms could do for students, she said, and she then began her own research into the subject.

She is now the co-director of the Hopkins Neuro-Education Initiative. She said there are a myriad of questions that could be answered in the research that is just starting, but there are two she would like to see approached: Do children who learn academic content through the arts tend to hold onto that knowledge longer? And are schools squeezing creativity out of children by controlling so much of
their school day?

Even without research though, Kagan of Harvard said there is ample evidence of the value of an arts education because so many children who aren’t good at academics can gain self-confidence through the arts.

“The argument for an arts education is based not on sentimentality but on pragmatism,” he said. “If an arts program only helped the 7 million children in the bottom quartile, the dropout rate would drop.”

MLTI Summer Institute

The Maine Learning Technology Institute will be held on the beautiful Maine Maritime Academy Campus in Castine, ME on July 29-31, 2009. Three days of professional development that is fun and you will have the opportunity to have your brain pushed.

The keynote will be given by Chris Lehmann, founding principal of the Science Leadership Academy. You can watch Chris in action by clicking here. And if you do, you will certainly want to attend just to hear and see Chris live and in action.

The major focus: grades 7-12 educators, but all are welcome. You do need to bring a laptop, preferably a Mac, with the middle or high school MLTI image. If you need contact hours, you can be awarded 12 for your attendance. Bring a colleague and plan a connected unit together or attend alone. FMI please click here.

Just out today… if you are a high school that will have 1:1 in the fall 2009, MLTI is offering a scholarship for up to 2 teachers per 1:1 high school. Includes overnight stays, meals, materials and registration fees! There should be no excuses if you are eligible for this. To apply for the scholarship, please click here.

Don’t miss this FABULOUS opportunity!

Maine Learning Technology Initiative

Here is the update on the MLTI efforts:

• The contract with Apple is signed and official
• 355 schools have ordered networks, laptop computers, and other equipment and services
• 28,830 7 and 8th graders and 22,614 high school students will have a laptop computer to aid with their learning next year (at this point)
• Nearly 12,000 Maine educators including 800 teachers in grades K-6 will have a laptop computer to aid with their professional growth and instruction
• Over 70,000 student and teachers anticipated to be involved in the program next year

Efforts are in place to make this a successful transition for all those school districts participating. Please take advantage of any professional development opportunities that are provided. And high school teachers please look to your middle school colleagues for ideas on how they have been using laptops with students to improve teaching and learning in the arts.