Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, Dec. 18, 2006

December 18, 2006 at 2:40 pm | In Minutes |

Summary:

Next meeting: Thursday, December 21st @ 1:40 p.m. in the Music room.

This meeting focused on planning for a combined themed project around the idea of "home", with Lisa DiFranza. We would like it to culminate with a presentation at PATHSFest. We’re looking at roughly 100 students participating in each session.

Lisa will write a description of the project and talk to Portland Stage about funding options.

We will look at the online Learning Results and decide which standards students will meet during the project. Each of us will also decide what our students should be able to know and do in our specific disciplines as part of the project. We need to make sure to build in a "reflection" component at the end, when students can think back on what they did and show how it relates to learning standards.

It is our hope that we can make Wednesdays be "project days" and also use planning time on Wednesdays, whenever possible, to meet with Lisa about the project throughout the semester.

Present:

• Vicky Stubbs
• Phil Divinsky
• Tom Lafavore
• Valerie Green
• Diane Manzi
• Elizabeth Watson
• Lisa Hicks
• Lisa DiFranza

Full Notes (paraphrased):

Vicky started with a brief overview of the AARAT for Lisa D, and gave the basics of the "home" project idea:

• tying in literacy work with existing programs
• project could be displayed at PATHSFest
• integrated project with arts cluster classes

Lisa is excited about the "home" theme for an integrated project, and noted that we’re developing the model for future group projects.

Vicky asked about Lisa’s previous projects, how they’ve gone, and how Lisa has gone about it. Lisa has done a lot of drawing and theater stuff, and stressed the necessity of keeping the project open-ended enough to generate creative thought, but with enough structure to get everyone to stick to the theme. Once an amount of creative expression has happened, it will be possible to start organizing it. In addition to individual expression, Lisa would like to see students interacting with other students’ visions and responding to them/communicating about them.

We need to plan what kids should get out of this. How do we know what literacy standards we need to meet during this project?

Some objectives for the project:

• literacy
• unification of arts cluster classes
• strengthening written communication skills (Lisa is surprised that her students at UNE have lower writing skills than she expected).
• exploring/teaching what the creative process is and what creative education means in a variety of curricula

How much weekly planning time do we need? How much class time will be devoted to project? We could start in February with Fridays, and then in May devote more time up to PATHSFest.

We would want Lisa to be with students and with teachers to plan and work through goals, exercises, lesson planning. Could we use Wednesdays as the project day? And sometimes meet with Lisa during that planning time?

Funding: Lisa D. will check to see what Portland Stage resources there are — can they count this as "outreach" and help with funds? Do they have the funds? Are there other resources?

Lisa is very interested in the theme and excited to work on the project. Now we need to hammer out logistics.

Tom was very clear that we need to make this "legitimate". ?Wee need to make sure that we plan to meet standards and have a way to assess that. We should start by using the Learning Results online as a guideline.

Lisa D. will write a description of the project and talk to Portland stage.

Our next steps are: looking at learning results, and deciding what each program wants kids to be able to know and to do in their discipline.

Tom: kids need to be able to show how they met the standards.

Lisa D: part of the project should be to reflect on it and talk about it.

Lisa’s e-mail will be added to the AARAT meeting notes list. We will also give Lisa a list of the participating courses and e-mail addresses of the AARAT members.