Facilitated by Catherine and Rob
This was written by York High School music educator and Maine Arts Assessment Initiative leadership team member Rob Westerberg as a follow-up to the webinar held on March 5.
On Wednesday March 5th, Catherine Ring and I facilitated the first of four MAAI sponsored Webinars for 2014. This one was on “Outreach and Arts Education Leadership”. We were joined by guests Shannon Campell, visual arts educator from Ellsworth High School, Pam Kinsey, music educator for the Easton schools, and by Argy Nestor, Director of Arts Education from the Maine Arts Commission. After tying up a few technology blips, we ended up having a great fifty minute dialogue around the primary topics of the day:
- What is “outreach” as it pertains to the arts?
- What does “leadership” in the arts look like?
- How has the Maine Arts Assessment Initiative worked to develop both outreach and leadership?
- Why are outreach and leadership essential?
- Implications and next steps for Maine’s Arts educators
Takeaways were many, but the essence of the broad message is that we have to be proactive, not reactive as we move forward in Arts Education in Maine, and many ideas, strategies and approaches are at our fingertips for doing so. Along those lines, we have put together a pair of meeting plans that you can implement with your colleagues during professional development days in your own schools and districts. Be sure to utilize these if you are looking for professional development ideas or an alternate agenda item for your own district’s Inservice Day; bring your colleagues together and use the webinar archive and the meeting plan to help lead the discussion.
To access the webinar archive: http://mainearts.maine.gov/Pages/Education/MAAI-Webinars
To access the meeting plan for this session:
The next Webinar will take place on Tuesday, April 8th from 3:30 to 4:30 as Catherine and I dig deeper into “Visual and Performing Arts and the Common Core”. More details and instructions on how to log in will be made available shortly. Please be sure to join us if you can for a topic that certainly impacts us all.
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