Last week I had the opportunity to join retired art teachers in Portland. We visited galleries, had lunch together and most importantly we spent time catching up and had conversations on many topics. It was a treat to learn about the art they’re making, what art organizations they are affiliated with, and how they spend time appreciating life after teaching.
I realize readers of this blog are at different places in their career. Some of you are retired, some veteran teachers, others at the beginning and some in the middle of your careers. I have learned from substitute teaching that teaching today is different. The challenges are different; from curriculum to learners to community, both local and beyond. I also know that the arts classrooms are still safe places for many and in some cases the only room and sometimes the only teacher in school who are open and supportive to all learners. Striving to maintain this can be a challenge in itself. However, what you do is critical and I appreciate your work.
What the arts teach us is impactful throughout a person’s life. I’ve been working on a community project that has dragged on. I know its my skills as a teacher and an artist that have helped me continue working on the project and seeing it to fruition. Working collaboratively is not easy and what I’ve learned over the years collaborative work doesn’t come easy to most. Again, it is critical, especially in this era of political battles. I am reminded over and over that quality arts education programs and access to it for all learners is absolutely necessary.
If you’re in the classroom think about what a retired arts educator could do to support your important work. And, if you’re retired reach out to an arts teacher and offer your assistance. Together you can be strong advocates for arts education. After all, we know that ‘none of us is as smart as all of us’. Let’s continue to work together for the excellent arts programs to be at the heart of schools.
If you’re a retired art teacher and are not on the email list to learn about gatherings please email me at meartsed@gmail.com.
Recently students, educators, community members and decision makers participated in Arts Education Advocacy Day at the State House in Augusta, Maine. The Belfast Area High School students who spoke that day were very articulate about the value and importance of the arts and arts education on a personal level and beyond themselves. Heidi O’Donnell is their teacher who worked with her honor society students to create clay pins.
Heidi O’Donnell with pins that the Belfast Area High School Honor Society students created
Below are two of the speakers talks.
The first one was written by Jillian Webster who unfortunately was unable to attend due to illness. It was read by Gracie Moore and Katience Parenteau.
Hello fellow students, teachers, and anyone else who believes in the importance of creativity and learning,
I believe everyone here knows the importance of a strong academic foundation. However, today I want to talk about something I find just as crucial: the importance of arts education. It’s easy to see art as just an elective, a fun break from the core subjects. But I believe it’s much more than that.
Art allows us to express ourselves in ways words sometimes can’t. It has the power to connect us, make us feel, and challenge our perspectives. It allows us to see the world through different eyes.
Beyond personal growth, arts education teaches us valuable skills. Such as being creative, thinking outside the box, and viewing problems from different angles. It expands our communication and collaboration skills, as we work together to create something meaningful. These are skills that are crucial for success, not just in the arts, but in any field you choose to pursue.
Through art, we learn to see the world differently, express ourselves authentically, and to connect with others on a deeper level. We develop critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills.
Moreover, arts education improves our lives. It fosters empathy and understanding of different cultures and perspectives. It provides a healthy expression of emotions and a space for personal growth.
So, the next time someone tells you art class is unimportant, remember: it’s not just about the final product, it’s about the process, skills, and experiences that shape who we become. Let’s fight to keep arts education alive, not just for our own personal growth, but for a more creative, expressive, and understanding world. Thank you.
Gracie Moore and Katience Parenteau reading for Jillian Webster
Below was presented by Liliana Cortez.
Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests,
My name is Liliana Cortez and I’m a member of the Belfast Area High School National Art Honor Society.
Today, I stand before you to celebrate the power of art given to the youth of Maine.
In a world that often rushes by, consumed by technology and daily routines, it’s easy to forget the profound impact of art. But we must take a moment to acknowledge its importance in shaping our lives and communities.
Art isn’t just about entertainment or decoration; it’s a way to speak to the soul. It’s a language that goes beyond words, connecting us deeper.
And with this, It brings me immense joy to witness the encouragement given to our young artists to immerse themselves in the world of art and to express themselves fully, particularly during this special month.
Art has a unique power to transcend boundaries, to evoke emotions, and to spark conversations. It serves as a vessel through which our youth can explore their innermost thoughts, dreams, and aspirations. And here in Maine, we are fortunate to see our young minds embracing this opportunity with enthusiasm and passion.
This month, as we highlight the importance of art in our communities, we also recognize the invaluable role it plays in shaping the identity of our youth. Through various forms of artistic expression – whether it be painting, drawing, photography, music, or dance – our young artists can find their voice, tell their stories, and connect with others in meaningful ways.
But beyond the canvas or the stage, engaging in art fosters a sense of belonging and empowerment. It cultivates confidence, resilience, and empathy, nurturing individuals who are not only skilled in their craft but also compassionate towards others and the world around them.
In this special month, I’m among many other young individuals who feel empowered by art. When we create and we express ourselves, our voices reach far beyond just words, art is a global language, a language anyone can speak.
In Maine, the land of rugged coastlines and breathtaking landscapes, let us continue to cultivate a culture where the arts thrive and the youth is free to be creative.
Thank you for letting us be creative. Thank you for letting us be seen.
In 2010 Congress passed the House Resolution 275 which designates the week beginning with the second Sunday in September as National Arts in Education Week. This is a week to shed extra light on the power of arts education. Young people and adults come together to tell the story of why the arts are essential for all ages and share the benefits of engagement in the arts.
Suggestions on how to PARTNER with others to celebrate.
Come up with a plan to ADVOCATE with your colleagues.
Create a SOCIAL MEDIA campaign to pass the word on about the value of arts education.
This week is an opportunity for you, your students and your community to recognize the importance of arts education. Celebrate in your classroom, your school, and beyond!
I know what you’re doing is amazing! Take a moment to let others know and THANKSSSS for your great work. YOU ROCK!
Arts educators need to, and do, advocate for Arts Education in many different ways. Hopefully, at the end of the day, the advocacy efforts change the access and equity to high quality Visual and/or Performing Arts Education for all students. Advocacy can heighten awareness of the ‘why’ of Arts Education. Efforts may relate to curriculum or assessment or scheduling or numerous other topics that impact an education in the arts. Sometimes we need to seek opportunities and sometimes we’re forced to advocate. And, other times an opportunity unfolds in front of us. Like the time I was on a 2 hours flight sitting next to my superintendent. I had the ear of the person who could make a huge difference in the arts education program. You betcha, I took advantage of the chance to have a conversation that included promoting arts education.
Two amazing arts educators recently had the opportunity to present about their programs. One a theatre teacher, the other, a music teacher. They had an audience that was filled with not only educators, Pre-K through higher education, but people from the business sector as well. I sat in the audience listening to them and chills ran up my arm and I could feel the pride fill my heart and brought tears to my eyes. I often think about how fortunate so many learners are for excellent arts education programs. It takes all of us to bring this magic to schools and school districts but without outstanding and qualified teachers in classrooms, goals fall short.
Congratulations to Rebecca Edmondson and Debra Susi for using your voices and representing all that is ‘right’ and ‘good’ about education. Rebecca is the K-6 classroom music teacher at Conners-Emerson School in Bar Harbor and the 2022 Hancock County Teacher of the Year and Debra is the theatre teacher at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield and the 2022 Somerset County Teacher of the Year. I am so proud and grateful for what each teacher is doing to represent all Maine arts educators. Both were selected as semi finalists for the 2023 Maine Teacher of the Year.
ARE Campaign – Arts Are Education – The National Core Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) is the sponsoring organization of the ARE campaign. Founded in 2011, NCCAS is an alliance of leading national arts and arts education organizations, dedicated to the work of creating and supporting national arts standards. The leadership organizations include:
American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE)
Arts Education Partnership
Educational Theatre Association (EdTA)
National Association for Music Education
National Art Education Association (NAEA)
National Dance Education Organization (NDEO)
State Education Agency for Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE)
Media Arts Committee of the NCCAS
Young Audiences Arts for Learning
Arts ARE Education is a new national campaign in support of arts education for all students
Looking Ahead to the 2021-2022 School Year
All PreK-12 students have the right to a high-quality school-based arts education in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts taught by certified professional arts educators in partnership with community arts providers. As a well-rounded subject area under federal education law, the Every Students Succeeds Act, music and the arts support the social and emotional well-being of students, foster a welcoming and safe school environment, and encourage inclusivity through multiple pathways for every child’s creative voice.
ARTS ED NOW – This video below was created by Arts Ed New Jersey but its message is universal. It is 2 minutes and 30 seconds long that you may find useful in your advocacy.
The Arts are Basic Coalition (ABC), led by the MAAE, is an advocacy partnership made up of representatives of Maine’s professional teachers’ associations in art, music, theater and dance (see individual members and contact information below). ABC’s mission is “to advocate with a common strong voice for the visual and performing arts for all students in Maine.” ABC was created when the Maine Arts Commission and the Maine Alliance for Arts Education in the summer of 2000 convened a large group of Maine arts education organizations and supporters to investigate ways in which we could collaborate for the cause of “arts every day for every child.” Out of that meeting grew ABC.
To: Maine School Superintendents, Principals, and School Board Chairs
From:The Arts are Basic Coalition (ABC): Maine Alliance for Arts Education (MAAE), Maine Art Education Association (MAEA), Maine Music Educators Association (MMEA), Maine Educational Theatre Association (MEdTA) and Maine Dance Educators.
As the leaders of the five Maine organizations that collectively represent the Visual and Performing Arts in Maine schools, we are writing to let you know that in this time of anticipated changes in schools and heightened concern about school funding reductions we are putting our creative and collaborative skills to work to respond to the artistic and social needs of our students and using our advocacy experience to help preserve state funding levels in Maine schools.
Advocacy has long been a strong suit of Maine arts education leadership. For more than 20 years our five statewide professional organizations have been united in the Arts are Basic Coalition (ABC) for federal and statewide advocacy. Led by the Maine Alliance for Arts Education, our coalition’s members, from all around the state, go beyond arts educators and include parents, students, community arts organizations and individual arts supporters – all eager to send a message about the importance of arts education and education in general.
Last fall our coalition created a new ABC Student Leadership Group that was inducted at the Blaine House, with the Governor as signatory. This group of 11 exemplary arts students from around the state is eager to add their advocacy voice and to create a wider network of student advocates. The current threat to school funding is putting all of us to the test, and we have already joined with our state partners, the Maine Education Association, to advocate for additional federal aid that will offset anticipated state and local budget reductions.
Maine arts educators are also developing innovative ideas to adjust their work to the new school safety guidelines. These include ideas that draw on the ways that the arts connect to social and emotional learning, such as giving students more opportunities to express the experiences they are living through and to connect meaningfully to others. They also draw on the arts’ connection to community economic development, giving arts students the tools to contribute to the creative economy of their communities, and involving them in initiatives that develop the potential of their community’s natural resources.
Education is the lifeblood of our young people’s and our state’s future. We as arts educators are excited about the ways that we can offer our positive energy and creative problem solving to Maine schools in this challenging time, and share ideas that can give us all hope. We look forward to staying in contact with you as we go into the summer months, and to continuing to work with you in the fall. You can reach us by contacting Susan Potters at spotters@maineartsed.orgor 207 439-3169. Thank you!
What’s happening this week? If you missed the last three blog posts and wondering about the history of Arts in Education Week: Starting in 2010 Arts in Education Week was designated by Congress with the House Resolution 275. The resolution names the week beginning with the second Sunday in September as National Arts in Education Week.
Here are some of Jeff Poulin’s favorite #ArtsEdWeek and #BecauseOfArtsEd social media posts that were shared this week:
We also began out blog salon on the topic of Broadening and Diversifying the Arts Education Leadership Pipeline. See below for links to the posts which have been posted so far:
What’s it all about? If you missed the last two blog posts and wondering where and how this week got started: Starting in 2010 Arts in Education Week was designated by Congress with the House Resolution 275. The resolution names the week beginning with the second Sunday in September as National Arts in Education Week.
Here are some of Jeff Poulin’s favorite #ArtsEdWeek and #BecauseOfArtsEd social media posts that were shared yesterday (great for RT!!):
Blog salon started on the topic of Broadening and Diversifying the Arts Education Leadership Pipeline. See below for links to the posts which have been posted so far:
At Point Lookout in Northport on a beautiful day in February the Maine Arts Commission provided an opportunity to hear about Maine’s most recent arts and cultural economic impact data from two studies. SpeakerRandy Cohen, Vice President for Research and Policy at Americans for the Arts (AFTA) shared the national Arts and Economic Prosperity 5(AEP5). Dee Schneidman from the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) shared the highlights of The Jobs in New England’s Creative Economy and Why They Matter.
In addition, Arts EngageME was introduced, the nonprofit support and advocacy organization. The organization is building an environment that engages all sectors, public and private, across Maine to promote the awareness and value of the creative and cultural sectors, and to invest in their sustainability. We envision a state that values the impact of arts and culture on Maine’s livability, vitality, and prosperity.
We were honored to have beautiful center pieces created by students from the Art Honor Society at Belfast High School. Thanks to art teachers Caitlin Algers and Heidi O’Donnell. Music teacher David Coffey brought four musicians from his Modern Band class. The students learn to play and sing, perform, improvise and compose using the popular styles that they know (and don’t know) and love (and might come to love) including rock, pop, reggae, hip hop, country and other modern styles. Modern band utilizes guitar, bass, keyboard, drums, vocals, and technology. They were awesome. The students included Jesse Kulbe, guitar and vocals, Macartney Wyatt, keyboard and vocals, Taylor Kinney, bass, and Jesse Perry, drums. All four students are seniors at Belfast High School. Thank you all for your contributions to remind those who attended what the reports are really all about – students and the future!
The Northeast Educational Theatre Festival at USM, Gorham, January 19-20, will offer a full slate of professional development workshops for teachers with some useful and exciting programs. Professional development workshops will be offered in all five sessions of the weekend, two sessions in the afternoon of Friday, January 19 and three in the morning and afternoon of Saturday, January 20.
Check out the workshop descriptions below and visit the Northeast Website for more information about the Festival, or contact Rick Osann, rosann@bonnyeagle.org for more information.. Bring your students or come on your own!
REGISTRATION DEADLINE IS 5 JANUARY!!
Teacher Professional Development Workshops
Jim Palmarini
Advocating for Advocacy: Strategies for Achieving Positive Change Presenter: Jim Palmarini, Educational Theatre Association
Join EdTA Director of Educational Policy James Palmarini for a discussion about the state and local policies, issues, and legislation that impact theatre education in New England and how you can build relationships with the key stakeholders and organizations that can help you effect positive change. We’ll move into a roundtable dialogue in which attendees can share their specific advocacy challenges and successes and wrap up with a “next steps for change” brainstorming exercise.
Rick Osann
Writing Meaningful Standards for Performance Presenter: Rick Osann, Bonny Eagle High School
Having trouble writing meaningful standards that really get to the heart of what you want your students to learn? We’ll review the language in a variety of standards, performance indicators and rubrics (tasks), then observe a student performance and try to write our own language to identify what we wanted the student to learn. We’ll also try to find clear language to identify what differentiates “Meets” (3) from “Partially Meets” (the dreaded 2 or 2.5). We hope you will come out of this with some practical assessments you can use in your classroom.
Hannah Cordes
The Play’s The Thing: Acting Shakespeare Presenter: Hannah Cordes, Portland Stage
The focus of this workshop will be activating Shakespeare’s language through play and on-your-feet activities. We will explore the use of language, status, group play, rhetoric, physical storytelling, and more!
Ovations Offstage: Tableaus of Courage: How to Help Students Engage with Complex Content through Theater
Presenter: Catherine Anderson, Portland Ovations
Catherine Anderson
Ovations Offstage Director Catherine Anderson will introduce workshop participants to Ovations Dynamic School-Time Performance Series for 2018-19, and model for teachers how to help students engage with any story, or content (fictional or not) through the use of the “tableau”. Tableau is a wordless theater activity for small groups of students that can be adapted for any age group. Participants will leave with a lesson plan with clear learning targets, and assessment criteria. Most recently Catherine presented this workshop to over three hundred eight graders at Scarborough Middle School to help students integrate and grapple with concepts of discrimination and segregation as part of their unit on Japanese Internment Camps.
Argy Nestor
Arts Educator, Blogger, Artist, Connector meartsed@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/view/anestor/
Argy’s Blog
The purpose of this blog is to share stories about people and places; and to celebrate the amazing work (and play) that students, educators, and organizations are doing in and for arts education. In addition, the blog has a plethora of resources and innovative ideas. This forum gives blog readers the opportunity to learn from each other. It is essential that we listen, learn, and collaborate in order to build on teaching practices for the benefit of every learner in Maine and beyond.
