me arts ed

Second in a series of visits to the IIC communities

Written by Carol Trimble, Maine Alliance for Arts Education Executive Director and member of the planning committee for the IIC’s

On Thursday, the Imaginative Intensive Communities Visiting Team had the opportunity to spend a wonderful and inspiring day visiting the Deer Isle- Stonington Schools and surrounding communities. We were very warmly welcomed by teachers, principals, and students, as well as representatives from community organizations like Haystack, Opera House Arts, and SeaMark. There was so much to see that we split into two teams, one to visit the elementary and one to the high school.

At the high school, I saw students fully engaged in project-based learning that integrated components such as creative problem solving, community service, research, design, as well as specific arts skills: Dennis Saindon’s wood shop students designing and making their own original “sumo-bots;” Lee Lehto’s creative writing students workshopping their poems and planning a trip to Isle au Haut; and Kimberley Larsen and Tom Duym’s CREST class where students are engaged in fascinating projects that incorporate GPS, GIS, 3-D modeling, and local historical research—take a look at their amazing “Deer Isle Boys” project at http://www.dishslinks.org/crest/index.html !

Downtown in Stonington, we got to view the exhibit of Katy Helman’s art students’ work in the Watson Gallery on Main Street—textiles, paintings, design—a delight! At the Stonington Opera House, we spoke with the House Manager, a high-school senior who has a variety of responsibilities at the Opera House and who has just completed a senior project examining this island’s culture.  We concluded our day at the winter office and exhibit space of Haystack where we got to sit and talk with many community and school representatives.

This visit gave us the opportunity to see some terrific work and to have great conversations with students, school personnel, and with representatives from the community organizations that work so closely with the schools. I came away from Deer Isle feeling inspired by the sense of effective and on-going work between the school and community organizations. This is true collaboration among individuals and groups that share a strong commitment to providing programs that nurture the creativity of their students.

The project is being conducted by the Maine Alliance for Arts Education and the Maine Department of Education. The project is supported in part by a grant from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Betterment Foundation and the Maine Arts Commission supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.