Student photos to appear on 70,000 laptops
Read the article from The Portland Press Herald on the screen saver photographs that will be on the Maine Learning Technology Initiative MacBook laptops during the 2010-11 school year.
Golden Umbrella by Mark Lightbody
CONGRATULATIONS!CONGRATULATIONS!CONGRATULATIONS!
The following Maine arts educators are retiring this year.
A HEARTFELT CONGRATULATIONS for their dedication and commitment to providing arts education to students throughout the state. Please join me in wishing them a WONDERFUL retirement!
Barbara Packales
If you know of other visual or performing arts teachers retiring please email me so I can add their name(s) to the list!
A gift!
Even though it has been over 3 weeks since the All State Music conference and festival I keep thinking about what I felt during the day I was able to attend. After Rob Westerberg and I held our session I wondered over to watch and listen to the band, orchestra, and chorus rehearsals. Truth be known I really love visiting the rehearsals. If I could become one of the seats or a music stand or an instrument I would be happy.
I am usually impressed with the teaching skills of the conductors and the dedication of the students. Each has their part, all are intensely focused and considering the schedule, they are enjoying their work. I must say that when I went into the Minski Auditorium where the chorus was practicing I had a difficult time leaving. It was probably a good thing there was a break so I could get some much needed lunch.
When I returned I was moved even more. So, what was it that was so unique?! The conductor, Dr. Jonathan Talberg, from California State University at Long Beach. We all know that a good teacher has a presence and brings out the best in every single student. Not just a handful are successful, but every student feels connected to the work and the teacher. Now, we’re talking about a room filled with high school young men and women, not just a few, but 240 of them from 72 school districts. The schedule is intense, rehearsal starts on Thursday morning at 10AM and continues with breaks for meals and sleep. Saturday morning is dress rehearsal. And, oh yes, an opportunity to attend a performance one evening.
So, back to this conductor, who from what I could tell, really made this experience awesome. I heard from more than one music teacher that he and the chorus were the best in over 10 years. I googled Jonathan Talberg at the university site and this is some of what I learned.
Dr. Jonathan Talberg serves as Director of Choral, Vocal, and Opera Studies at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University, Long Beach, where he is music director of the University and Chamber Choirs, and he oversees one of the finest—and the largest—undergraduate voice programs in the state of California. Ensembles under his baton have toured the United States and the world. He has twice conducted at the Music Educator’s National Conference regional honor choir, at the 2008 ACDA Western Convention, at numerous All-State choir concerts, and in various venues throughout Europe and Asia, including the Sistine Chapel and St. Mark’s Cathedral in Italy, the Karlskirche in Vienna, the Matyas Templom in Budapest, and at the Great Wall of China. In constant demand as a guest conductor, he has worked with all levels of singers—from elementary to professional—throughout the United States and Europe. He has prepared choirs for the Cincinnati Symphony, the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Pacific Symphony and the Pasadena Pops. Dr. Talberg is Music Director of First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, where he also serves as director of the Los Angeles Bach Festival, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2008.
Imagine singing in the Sisteen Chapel, let alone conducting a chorus there?! He is in great demand and how awesome that he not only came to Maine to work with our students but he and they were awesome! I so enjoyed hearing him say to them that they had the sound of a university chorus! What a impact that must have made on Maine students.
As I drove south that day I couldn’t help but wish that every student in Maine could have the chance to work with such a gifted music educator and wonderful person. I was also sad knowing that I could not attend the performance that these students had worked so hard to participate in. I understand it was AWESOME! Who knows what seeds Dr. Talberg planted?!
Port-Au-Prince, Haiti
Seems like we haven’t seen or heard much about Haiti lately. I wonder if it is because of the other news that is dominating the press or because we become immune to the difficulty that people continue to face day to day.
The story below was printed in March in the New York Times and written by Lawrence Downes. A friend of mine sent it to me and I came across it today while sorting through a pile in my work space. I re-read it and couldn’t think about how handmade items can bring joy to such a devastated environment. It caused me to pause and know that I had to share these words with you.
The Haitian boy’s kite starts with thin sticks – woody reeds or straight twigs scraped smooth with a razor blade and cut to equal length, about eight inches. These are lashed in the middle to make stars of six or eight points, sometimes more. Thin plastic, ideally the wispy kind from dry-cleaning bags, is stretched over the frome and secured with thread. Rag strips are knotted for the tail, then tied with thread to two of the star’s lower points: a Y with a long, long stem. More thread is tied to the kite’s taut chest, the rest spooled on a can or bottle.
The kites are beautiful: some have layers of black and clear plastic forming diamonds and stars. Some have decorative edges, the plastic razor-sliced into pinatia fringe. But they work, catching the breeze and jack-rabbiting into the smoky air. Small kites are notoriously hard to fly, but these are perfectly engineered. A boy I met in a camp down the block from the ruins of the Catholic cathedral in Port-au-Prince pointed to the sky. Blinking into the sun, I took forever to find his kite: a darting black dot far above the shattered steeples.
Making do with next to nothing is the way of life in Haiti, though many earthquake survivors now have less than that. But while Port-au-Prince has been knocked flat, it hums day and night. There is too much work to do, and too many things to make. People are still collecting the dead. Some are clearing rubble. Others are collecting aluminum or lumber, like the silent man I saw picking his way through the cathedral loft. I saw a man using hand-cranked bellows in a forge to straighten pretzeled rebar. Another spooled copper wire to rebuild an engine. Others sharpened chisels, framed shelters, piled bricks.
Relief agences gave out the tarps that now house tens of thowsands of families, but they didn’t frame them. Ingenious Haitians did that, making things like the door hinge I saw at the Petionville Club camp: the torn sole of a plastic sandal, fastened by nails through bottle caps, which act as washers.
The Petionville Club, once the capital’s only golf course, has clinics, toilets, tents and classrooms, gifts of outside charity. But it also has a homemade cinema, a market district, nail salons, barbershops and a disco. This disaster rewards those with skills, strength and luck. Not everybody has those. The old and the sick, single mothers with babies – the helpless=- live in shelters whose fragility can leave you sick with unease. Even a short rain here makes mud that clings so hard to boots it feels as if the earth were desperate to pull you back into it.
One way to resist is to fly. The kite makers dance through the camps with rubbery exuberance, trailed by younger children, all lost in the moment, the most important in the world. Kites battle kites, their makers yanking their linesto cut each other’s, as the kites whirl and spin. When one kite wins, the jubilation is explosive. It’s one of the few signs of you you see in Haiti, entirely handmade.
Grocery Store Musical
Below is just one of several videos you can view by clicking here. “Improv Everywhere” billed as “We Cause Scenes” perform what seems like spontaneous musicals. Agents Anthony King and Scott Brown write original songs for these missions and they cast undercover agents who can sing and dance. If nothing else they will bring a smile to your face. “They turn life into a musical.”
Arundel
Written by David Greenham, Producing Director, The Theater at Monmouth and member of the IIC visiting team to Arunde. Photographs by David Greenham and Gail Scott.
There are, of course, real positives and negatives of the state’s consolidation efforts. Some of them we know about already, and many are still imagined. The Imagination Intensive Visiting Team had the opportunity late last month to get a first hand look at the excitement and fear of consolidation when we visited the Mildred L. Day School in Arundel, which is now part of RSU 21.
As a performing artist and producer of touring shows on behalf of The Theater At Monmouth, I’m well aware of the Mildred L. Day School’s reputation for embracing the creative arts, so it was no surprise to me to see them among the six exemplary schools and districts that were included in this first round of the Imagination Intensive program.
Our visit to the school on May 20th was delightful. We had the opportunity to see the wonderful and creative projects at the school, along with a glimpse of the kind of creative partnerships that I hope the future will have in store for the children of Arundel and their teachers.
The morning started with a meeting with the Unified Arts Team and others. The Mildred Day School, which has been its own school district, is bursting with creative energy, and certainly living up to its reputation.
Students arrive at Heartwood College of Art
But, thanks to the innovative Kennebunk Education Foundation, which each year raises tens of thousands of dollars for programs at the RSU 21 schools, the fifth graders jumped on a bus and rode about 10 minutes down Route 1 to go to the Heartwood College of Art. RSU 21 art teacher Darlene Nein arranged a day of creating. Students had visited a few days earlier to experience drawing, printmaking, charcoal drawing, watercolor, cartooning, ceramics, femo, photography, and jewelry making, and now returned to spend the day trying their hand at one of them.
Hot off the press! Monotype printing at Heartwood
As the day long visit ended, the sense of change hit home for the staff and Imagination Intensive team. Will the terrific spirit of the Mildred Day School be compromised or lost by its joining in with the much larger RSU? Already change is evident. MLD first year Music Teacher Jeanne MacDonald’s contact was lost in budget cuts, and other Unified Arts Team teachers, Audrey Grumbling, Jon Woodcock will be splitting time at other schools, tripling the number of students they serve. The district hopes they will bring their creative energies to the other schools, while they and the MLD staff worry about how much will be lost by more split focus and less one on one time with students.
Jeanne MacDonald, music teacher
The Kennebunk Education Foundation has embraced the newest school in the district and will clearly bring additional funding for special programs to the school. So there is certainly sadness and concern, but also excitement about what the collaborative nature of the MLD school can bring to the district, and what the expanded resources that come with a larger student, teacher and parent base can bring to the MLD school.
As Shakespeare’s shipwrecked Viola says as she tries to understand her predicament: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I, it is too hard a knot for me to untie.” Like Twelfth Night, it will be great fun to watch. My money is always on creative energy winning the day!
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.
This is the last post describing our first round of Imagination Intensive Communities. If you are interested in learning more and how to nominate your community next year please contact me at argy.nestor@maine.gov
I love to get these emails…
This week I received emails from two art teachers who are using technology to showcase student artwork.
Skateboarder, Henry Owens
Camden Hills Regional High School art teacher Carolyn Brown is using wikispaces that includes photographs from their June 3rd Fine Arts Night and from the student show at Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Other pages include student work with gallery’s from her photo classes. It is an outstanding example of a great use for wikis! You can access it by clicking here.
The second email I received was from elementary art teacher Tera Ingraham from SAD 44 (Andover, Bethel, Bryant Pond) who has created a blog to incorporate technology into her classroom. She is finding it to be a lot of fun and a great way to let parents and families see student art work on a daily basis. Please click here to see this wordpress blog site. Along with teaching art Tera is the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Mahoosuc Arts Council.
Thanks to both Carolyn and Tera for sharing this work, both GREAT examples of the use of technology! If you have a wiki, blog or some other technology tool you are using that you’d like to share so we can all learn from you, please email me with the information.
Early Care Education
Recently a question came up about the arts certification at PreK level. This came through my email so I thought it might be useful to some of you. If you are searching for opportunity to learn more about preschool there might be something here for you.
The Maine Early Care and Education Training Calendar is up online. At this time there are 31 courses listed that meet requirements for the Early Childhood 081 endorsement, which is required of all public preschool teachers.
Intended Audience: All public preschool teachers and Ed Techs working with young children. Any others wanting specific coursework or training in early childhood education.
Happy Graduation!
During my 30 years in the classroom this time of year was ALWAYS bitter sweet. I was racing to complete work with students, enjoying the end of year out of the routine activities and reflecting on the accomplishments and achievements.
Some students would graduate or go on to the next grade level happy and some with regrets. Some ready to end the year and others kicking and screaming about leaving. It was always easy for me to be excited about the accomplishments of students, whether great or small. At this time of year I can’t help but take some time and think about my past students.
This year is a special one for my family, my older son graduated this past weekend from College of the Atlantic (COA). As the rain paused and I watched the 74 members of the graduating class follow the bagpipers into the large tent I couldn’t help but think about my sons’ successes and struggles during the last four years. My husband and I are, of course, very proud of him. My son has changed and grown in so many ways that we don’t measure. He has climbed mountains that seemed unpassable. He certainly has learned but I must say my son and his brother are my greatest teachers! I have learned much more from them then I could ever teach.
COA’s graduates all receive degrees in Human Ecology. This provides an opportunity for them to learn about themselves and their interconnectedness with people, the environment and the world. When I think about the successes and challenges students have in school I wish they had more opportunities to learn these skills to help them deal. If they believe in themselves and have an understanding of how their actions and behaviors impact those around them it might just make a difference for them which in turn impacts the world.
As students leave your classrooms and schools this June my hope for them is to take the learning opportunities they’ve had and use it to make a difference in the world.
Damp day but warm greeting
Not to long ago on a very rainy I had the opportunity to visit the RSU 25 schools of Bucksport Middle and High School, Miles Lane, and Orland Consolidated. Like many other school districts they have consolidated and are struggling with changes due to the economy.
In spite of the struggles I was impressed with the work of the art and music teachers and had the chance to visit several classrooms. Students were engaged in the elementary art classrooms of Margaret Jones and Linda Babb. They were engaged and excited to be creating and to share their work.
I was right at home in Leah Olson’s middle school art classroom and found the students delightful! Once again they were willing to share with me about their new knowledge.
And was so impressed when I visited music classrooms of Andria Chase. It reminded me of how much veteran teachers can learn from young teachers! The 6th grade was collaborating to create music with Andria while she nagivigated using the LCD and her laptop.
I had a chance to stop in at the high school and say hi to music teacher Mark Neslusan and art teacher Holly Bertrand. The rain finally stopped and the sky filled with the vibrant end of day colors as I returned to the high school for their spring music concert with performances by several ensembles and the full band and chorus. The perfect end to a delightful day in RSU25.
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