February 17 plenary session
If you missed the plenary session provided by the Maine Alliance for Arts Education (MAAE) for Arts Education Advocacy Day you are in luck! The session was recorded and available below. A HUGE THANK YOU to the MAAE partners in the ABC Arts are Basic Coalition MAEA – the Maine Art Education Association, MMEA – Maine Music Educators Association, MaineEdTA – Maine Educational Theatre Association, and the Maine dance educators. It is the first time they’ve presented together and they sent a collective message about the importance of quality arts education programming for every Maine student. Along with the leaders of the state professional organizations Governor Mills recorded message was included in the program. Others who spoke in addition to the professional organization leaders were: Commissioner of Education Pender Makin, Martha Piscuskas, Maine Arts Commission Education Director Martha Piscuskas, Maine Department of Education (MDOE) VPA Specialist Jason Anderson, and MDOE Social/Emotional Learning and Trauma Informed Practices Kellie Bailey.
Most importantly students voices were an integral part of the day. Be sure and catch them towards the end of the video. From the MAAE website:
What we may remember most vividly about Advocacy Day this year was the voices of the students – not only the individual students expressing their feelings about the arts in the videos accompanying the ABC reports, but also the live panel of arts students who are forming advocacy teams in their schools, part of a statewide new ABC initiative directed by MAAE. Coming at the end of the program, the students’ rich discussion about local advocacy and what their teams could mean for the arts in their schools not only brought together the separate themes of the four earlier reports, but made it very clear that Maine arts students can and should be a part of any future efforts to advance the cause of arts education in our state.
On Thursday, March 24 the State House in Augusta was mobbed with students articulating what the arts mean to them, individually and collectively. Their messages were clear and legislators from all regions of Maine were listening.
After the legislators themselves came downstairs a formal program included remarks by Acting Commissioner of the Department of Education, William Beardsley; Maine Arts Commission Arts Education Director, Argy Nestor; Farnsworth Museum Education Director, Roger Dell; Maine Resilience Building Network Co-facilitator, Sue Mackey Andrews; and Arts Education Program Manager at Americans for the Arts, Jeff Poulin. There were also student performances by the Biddeford Intermediate School Select Chorus, conducted by Andrea Wollstadt, by a Bangor High School English class working with teaching artist Katenia Keller, that had choreographed a piece collaboratively, and an art advocacy group speaking piece performed by SLAM! from SAD 33 in Aroostook County, directed by Theresa Cerceo.
me arts ed 