Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, June 11, 2007

June 11, 2007 at 1:40 pm | In Minutes |

Summary:

If anyone has comments about the HOME project to share with the staff in our Friday presentation, please e-mail them to Lisa.

Planning for next year around shared curricula has already begun between Video Tech, Web Programming, Graphic Arts, and Commercial Art. We need to start coming up with a "common language" for our courses so that students can move between our classes and understand how they’re connected.

For next year, we will use our debriefing from the HOME project to help plan a better group project experience. We need to teach creative AND critical thinking skills.

Where do our kids go after they graduate? Some of our kids are dropping out of community college because they’re bored, but they’re not ready for 4-year college. Internships? Other?

In August we will meet for 2 days (8-noon or 8:00-1:00p.m.) to plan for next year. In September we will present our vision to Mary Jo. Please be thinking about dates in August.

Please see the full notes for some interesting links to Web sites that came up in our discussions.

Meeting adjourned at 2:40 p.m.

Present:

• Vicky Stubbs
• Diane Manzi
• Valerie Green
• Phil Divinsky
• Lisa Hicks
• Dave Nichols
• Dave Beane
• Tom Lafavore
• Jane Krasnow

Full Notes (paraphrased):

Vicky had our timeline up on the whiteboard. It was nice to see that we’ve done a lot of the things that are on the timeline. One thing we haven’t done is presented our work. Should the presentation happen after our development of the academy model? And while we’re thinking about the academy model, are semester courses going to become a reality at PATHS? (probably not until January). Currently there’s some push to offer Fall minicourses, but there is little in the way of schedule details and examples of successful minicoure curricula to serve as a guide (or to show that a minicourse would be feasible for a particular class).

We agreed that we know each other and each other’s programs much better now after a year of working together, and it will be fun to develop the academy model. Commercial Art, Web Programming, Graphic Arts, and Video Tech are already talking about ways to share curricula. When Diane outlined some of the Art principles being discussed, Vicky mentioned that Music shares some of the same ideas. It would be great for kids to develop the ability to relate visual art comcepts to music. The Kennedy Center has a curriculum for combining visual art and music, (also dance). You can find it online at artsedge.kennedy-center.org.

If students are going to move between courses, we should start to use common language for concepts that are common to our courses. This year’s literacy seminars stressed the need for common language in all classes (around literacy strategies) so students would absorb it better. The same is true for our shared curricula. Diane has an "ArtTalk" book. Jane: maybe a project: "which ‘element of art’ are you?"

Phil: this sounds like a desire to get together. When do we start?

A combined PhotoShop course, taught by Bob Betencourt and involving students in Video Tech, Web Programming, Graphic Arts, and Commercial Art, is already being planned for next year. Diane is buying posters on elements of art for Valerie and Dave N. to hang up in their classrooms (she has the same set hanging in hers). More discussion to come this week in those same courses about how to combine curricula for next year.

We need to remember what kind of opportunities we offer here and what kids do here. Vicky’s students, it seems, learn more in 4 months of class about recording and editing than USM graduates do. In Video Tech, many graduates are dropping out of community college because they’re required to repeat classes in material they already know. Same for Web Programming: SMCC isn’t a good fit for students interested in programming because the curriculum is almost what PATHS offers. But some PATHS graduates aren’t ready for a 4-year college. How do we fill the gap?

Internships: we need to be more connected around opportunities to get kids working in the community. Maybe we need to have conversations w/ USM about our kids not being served. Articulation agreements can allow kids to place out of courses at community colleges, and tha might help stop the "dropout due to boredom" problem. Unfortunately, many community colleges have dropped articulation agreements for different reasons–one reason is that they want students to pay to take those courses at community college rather than getting them free in high school.

Tom suggested doing something in September around our vision, going to Mary Jo, and telling her what we’d like to do and what our plan is for the year. We should tell her what we did, what we want to do, and our plan, so that any policy/budget requirements can be put into motion as we plan.

Also, we should have something to show the staff on Friday.

Do we want to do more with the HOME project? Most of us said we want to do some kind of group project in September.

Tom suggested looking at the past 2 issues of Educational Leadership. There are articles about "whole child" education. Phil will get AARAT a subscription to Educational Leadership (online at ascd.org). Also, take a look at King Middle School’s Web site. They did an expedition on Norman Rockwell’s "Four Freedoms".

It’s necessary to increase students’ critical and creative thinking skills. Do we listen to students who say "this is a tech school; I’m here to learn a skill…"? Some of that might have been a reaction to discomfort with the HOME project topic. But an admissions officer at MECA will tell you that students need to have allof the skills, not just technical skills. The "voc myth" that voc isn’t "that kind of learning" needs to be challenged. We can take our debriefing of the home project and learn from it: kids need structure, need to be taught to be independent. We need to take students’ responses from this year and implement the next project differently. We can get students these skills in an environment they like! This year kids are saying "we don’t do that here", but if we start it next year in September, we do do it here.

In August, we could meet and get contact hours for lane changes. Can we do 2 days of planning, 8-noon or 8-1:00? Think about dates (later in August seemed to be the consensus).

On Friday, we will give a short report to the staff. If anyone has comments about the HOME project to share, please e-mail them to Lisa.

Todo for Val: make a blog for AARAT. She will start by putting these minutes into blog format, and then will give everyone the ability to log into the blog and post entries so that we can add ideas over the summer as we think of them.

We did some great work this year! Huzzah!

Meeting adjourned at 2:40 p.m.