News

Alaska one of five states to participate in first round of Education Leaders Institute

The Alaska State Council on the Arts has learned that it has been chosen one of five state teams to participate in the first national Education Leaders Institute sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council.   The other states chosen to participate are Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina and Wisconsin. The Education Leaders Institute will be held in March, 2008 in Chicago.

The Alaska team is comprised of Carol Comeau, Superintendent of the Anchorage School District; Esther Cox, Chair, Alaska State Board of Education; Annie Calkins, former Assistant Superintendent of Juneau School District; Reggie Joule, Kotzebue, Alaska State Representative and education advocate; Scott McAdams, Sitka, President of the Alaska Association of School Boards, and Charlotte Fox, Executive Director of the Alaska State Council on the Arts.

While there is increasing support for arts education in the K-12 curriculum, it remains on the margins in many schools.  To help put more muscle behind the mandates for arts education, these five multidisciplinary teams from states across the country will receive NEA support to discuss arts education challenges and jointly develop strategies to strengthen their state’s arts education policies and programs.  

The five teams were selected by a panel convened by the Arts Endowment in partnership with the Illinois Arts Council.  These state teams will discuss a shared arts education challenge, such as assessment, leadership in arts education, curriculum development, and access to arts learning.  As participants exchange ideas, plans for innovative partnerships and programs are expected to emerge, coupled with renewed commitment to arts education at the school-district level.  A professional evaluation firm will conduct an independent assessment of the workshop, and an executive summary of the evaluation findings will be available to the public. 

AAEC awarded America/Alaskan Masterpieces Grant

The Alaska State Council on the Arts awarded AAEC $7500 to fund an Alaska Masterpieces Poster Series designed for Alaskan schools.

Background:
The National Endowment for the Arts recently launched a major new initiative entitled “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius”.  This program is designed to honor American master artists and masterworks and to acquaint Americans with the best of their cultural and artistic legacy.  This initiative highlights the very best of American or Alaskan artists, exhibits or productions.  The Alaska State Council on the Arts launched an American Masterpieces grant program last spring.

Poster Project:
The AAEC project will produce a series of three high quality, visually appealing Art Education Posters celebrating Alaskan Masters in the visual, performing and cultural arts. Subjects for the posters will be selected by an invited panel of experts and the AAEC board. The posters will be 18 x 24" wall size posters, printed on both sides - color images on the front and essential arts instruction information, artist biographies and lesson plans on the back.

The poster project fills an unmet need of Alaskan teachers who frequently report the lack of high quality art images that are Alaskan in nature, and the lack of useful visual arts lesson plans. The posters will be distributed through direct contact to AAECs growing network of over 200 trained and enthusiastic teachers, and to all AAEC member districts.

For more details contact Cristine Crooks at ccrooks1@mac.com

Learning Brain Expo, January 2007, San Francisco

Report by Jeanne Kitayama, AAEC Vice-Chair

The message throughout all of the sessions at the Expo was loud and clear – the arts are key to brain compatible learning and teaching!

Teachers, administrators, public and private staff developers were among the 840 attendees learning about the latest in brain research, during 90 minute sessions in practical and research tracks. There were some tough choices during concurrent sessions, but I chose:

• 8-hour pre-conference: Martha Kaufeldt’s Assessment Strategies to Maximize Brain-Compatible Learning: Helping Students Demonstrate What They KNOW and CAN DO

• Howard Berg’s How to Learn Anything – Faster & Better
• Rich Allen’s The Rock ‘n Roll Classroom
• Kimberli Boyd’s Reaching the Kinesthetic Learner through Creative Movement
• Spence Roger’s Brain Compatible Questioning Techniques
• Larry Stott’s Strategies for Teaching Math the Way the Brain Learns Best
• Porter Elementary Staff’s Putting the Best Practices into Practice – Meeting the Needs of the Whole Child
• Craig Carson’s The 3 Rs Meet the 3 Ms (movement, melody, meter)

Sessions were active and memorable, as many presenters modeled the teaching practices necessary for ideas to “stick.” Martha Kaufeldt’s dramatic interpretation of the section of the brain called the amygdala stays etched in my mind – in a panicked state she’s bent over flailing her arms to pass incoming information through without any thought. The thalamus continues to take in information, but in a stressed state the amygdala, the brain’s emotional center, kicks into action. In other words, if we want students to think about and remember information, they need to be less stressed and have memorable anchors (associations) to that information.

With her stately grace from professional dancing, Arts Integration Specialist, Kimberli Boyd, modeled how teachers can use movement to engage students in learning and remembering academic concepts. Not only did she put action to nouns, verbs, and vocabulary, she showed us how counting through the dancer’s standard eight count beats can help us blend those movements to flow. That flow can turn the mechanical moves into dances that students can get caught up in.

Craig Carson gave us practical ideas about using music to teach patterns of language, following directions, math concepts, and as a motivational tool. Younger students can add action and sounds to emphasize words and fluency through poems and songs. Particularly for older students, using popular song lyrics can be a backdoor entrance to creative writing and higher level reading comprehension strategies. A sample activity was to listen to the radio and write four similes found within a song of choice. This encourages students to be individualistic, creative, and show their personalities. Carson also reminded us that people have different sensitivities, so to respectfully provide sound-free and smell-free zones.

Keynote speaker and Expo host, Eric Jensen, brought out some of the main ideas in his latest book, Enriching the Brain: How to Maximize Every Learner’s Potential. As educators we can positively influence a student’s potential with skills/exercises, keeping stress minimal by assuring emotional and physical safety, motivating with challenging and novel learning opportunities, providing rest/settling time, and giving regular feedback. Additionally, he sited how giving students hope is such a very powerful influence on their motivation to push themselves to their full potential.

The revolution of brain research applied to education marks the recognition that children of the new millennium are wired differently. Environment, nutrition, and social structure have changed radically since our childhood. Martha Kaufeldt noted that in planning lessons teachers need to realize that children are not coming to school with as many hands-on learning experiences (i.e. digging holes, coloring). She emphasized three key elements for brain-compatible teaching and learning: less stress, real life/multi-sensory experiences, and multiple opportunities to actively process new learning in a variety of ways.

Many thanks to AAEC for paying my tuition for the Learning Brain Expo. I came away with a wealth of information to expand my teaching skills, and the motivation and confidence to put these ideas into practice. Please feel free to contact me for more information, jeannek@aptalaska.net.

Kennedy Center Education Newsletter Update

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AAEC is a Kennedy Center Alliance Network member

In September, 2006 the Alaska Arts Education Consortium was officially accepted as a member of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network. 
            The Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network (KCAAEN), a program of the Kennedy Center Education Department, is a coalition of statewide non-profit Alliances for Arts Education working with the Kennedy Center to support policies, practices and partnerships that ensure that the arts are an essential part of American K-12 education.
            The mission of the KCAAEN is to promote learning in and through the arts for all students.
Objectives of the KCAAEN:

• Build Collaborations:  Develop and support innovative collaborations between schools, community partners and cultural institutions that sustain arts education.
• Position the Arts: Speak out on behalf of arts education to citizens, policy makers, state agencies and others about the value and benefits of arts education.
• Generate Resources: Develop, publish, and/or disseminate resources for arts education leaders and practitioners.
• Provide Professional Development: Implement professional development through educational programs, training and resources.
• Recognize Innovation and Achievement: provide awards and recognition to individuals, organizations and schools that demonstrate outstanding support for arts education.

History of the Alliance in Alaska

The Alaska Alliance for Arts Education (AAE) was established in or before1980. Over the last 26 years it has at times been active in advocating and promoting art education. It has also been dormant at times, for a variety of reasons including lack of leadership and/or funding.  Most recently Alliance leadership was anchored on the Kenai, with  Lance Petersen and Debbie Harris working to maintain the mission, vision and goals for the national and state Alliances. The chief activity of the Alliance in recent years was a two week arts education academy held in Kenai in June and promoted through the Alaska Staff Development Network.

In 2005 the Alaskan leaders of the Alliance deemed that the organization did not have the statewide support to continue and, in consultation with the Director of the KCAAEN, registered Alaska’s Alliance as dormant.

In 2006 Alaska State Council on the Arts Executive Director Charlotte Fox and ASCA Arts Education Director Susan Olson, consulted with the KCAAEN Director about the possibility of re-activating the Alliance under the auspices and leadership of the Alaska Arts Education Consortium (AAEC). In July, 2006 the Kennedy Center directly encouraged the AAEC to assume leadership and pursue membership in the KCAAEN.

A proposal was prepared, submitted, and accepted by the Kennedy Center in early September. The Board of the AAEC is pleased to have Alaska once again a member of the Alliance Network and looks forward to expanding connections on behalf of arts education for all Alaskan - and American - students.

Federal Support for Arts Education

A September 18, 2006 press release announcing the launch of the US Education Department showcase of artwork by Scholastic Art & Writing Award recipients included the following:

“Art adds color to education, and America is fortunate to have such a rich palette of talent in our schools,” said U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. “Art, dance, music, and theater are as much a part of education as reading, math, and science. They enrich our lives, and research shows they enhance student learning. I am proud to showcase these fine pieces to a much wider audience. These students deserve it.”

A September 19, 2006 letter signed by US Education Department Director for Student Achievement and School Accountability Programs Jacquelyn Jackson and Arts Education Partnership Director Dick Deasy was sent to all state Title I directors. The letter highlights the AEP report, Third Space: When Learning Matters, and includes the following quote:

This past July, in a report by the Education Commission of the States on its arts-in-education initiative, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings clarified the role of the arts in NCLB. “They’re an important part of a well-rounded, complete education for every student,” with knowledge and skills that uniquely equip young persons for life, she noted. “What’s more,” she continued, “combining music, art, dance, and drama with subjects such as math, reading, and language can be highly effective, enhancing student engagement and increasing academic achievement.”

State Board Approves Art Endorsement

At a 2007 State Board of Education Meeting they formally approved an expansion of the current teacher education program in art education from grades 7-12 to kindergarten through 12. This program now leads to an endorsement on a teacher's certification in art education.

Alaska Content Standards in the Arts

http://www.eed.state.ak.us/contentstandards/Arts.html

For more information on the Alaska Arts Education Consortium, contact Cristine Crooks (907-364-2290 • ccrooks@gci.net)

© 2008 Alaska Arts Education Consortium