me arts ed

First day

The last week has been crazy, busy getting ready for the summer institute which starts this morning. The Maine Department of Education’s second summer institute of the Maine Arts Assessment Institute gets underway today at Maine College of Art Thirty five teacher leaders started arriving in Portland yesterday to be ready for the early start at Maine College of Art. The leadership team met to go over the details of the daily schedule and participants continued to communicate electronically.

Over the past six weeks the 20 phase 2 teacher leaders have been communicating on the initiative wiki by responding to questions and having conversations on assessment, leadership, and technology. The standards based, student centered institute will continue to ask questions and provide the time for participants to discuss ideas, share practice, and explore options. Two essential ideas identified by Stiggins in Classroom Assessment for Student Learning:

1. Teachers must be masters of the five standards of assessment quality in order to communicate accurate, dependable assessment information to any audience or assessment user.
2. Students are the key users of assessment information and one of the best practices for teachers to improve student use of assessment information is to involve them directly in classroom assessment in appropriate ways as much as possible. 

   Throughout the week I will blog on the institute and keep you posted on the progress. I am excited about the possibilities and opportunities this provides, not only directly for the institute’s participants but for all Maine arts teachers and arts classes this could reach. One outcome of the week is that the teacher leaders will put together a workshop to present at the regional level. This allows the initiative to come to your region of the state! This work aligns with the Department’s strategic plan Education Evolving.