me arts ed

Let’s put this in perspective

Recently I have received emails asking about our role as arts educators and the Common Core Standards for ELA and Math. My colleague from Arizona, Lynn Tuttle, was asked to write a blog post for ARTSblog, Sept. 10, 2012. Lynn is not only the Director of Arts Education for the Arizona Department of Education but she is also the President of my national organization called SEADAE (State Education Agency Directors for Arts Education). Her post was so fabulous that we reprinted it on our SEADAE blog. The blog post is called Common Core is Here – Don’t Panic. It provides an overview and how and where the arts connect. Lynn also reminds us of the importance of the each states arts standards. Of course in Maine we have the 2007 document Maine Learning Results: Parameters for Essential Instruction that are our responsibility to teach.

My colleague, Joyce Huser, the Fine Arts Education Consultant from Kansas conducted a webinar last year for SEADAE called The Arts, Common Core, and 21st Century Connections. She collaborated with her ELA and Math colleagues to develop the webinar that is available for you on the Maine Department of Education site.

Also underway are the re-writing the national arts standards. You can keep abreast of that work at the wiki National Coalition for Core Arts Standards. I will be traveling to Washington DC next week to meet with my colleagues from SEADAE and the chairs of each of the National Core Arts Standards writing teams. At this point the new standards are due out during the summer of 2013. I will provide a blog post on my return to share what I have learned.