Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, September 26, 2007

Summary:

Meeting adjourned at 2:40. Next meeting: Wednesday, Oct. 11 at 1:40 in Room 140.

We began a discussion of the questions:

• Why is Art important to teach/study/learn?
• Why is an Arts Academy a good idea?
• What makes an Arts Academy student different from another student?

We discussed the word “art” vs. “creativity”, the difficulty of assessing creativity but of its importance in the curriculum. We talked about teaching other subjects in the context of the arts. (See full notes for details).

Tom left us with 4 questions for creating our vision statement:

1. To what extent do we (our team, school, district, community) share a common vision?
2. What educational beliefs about teaching and learning do we all hold, if any? What do the answers imply?
3. What assumptions about learning guide our instructional and assessment practices? To what extent do our policies, priorities, and actions reflect these beliefs?
4. How might we better actualize our beliefs?

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Arts Academy Meeting Notes, September 19, 2007

Summary:

We updated our mission statement and started talking about our vision.

Homework #1 for next meeting: think / write about a vision for the arts academy. Questions to think about:

• What does a student look like when s/he graduates from the academy?
• What is unique about this student? What makes this student different from, say, a Portland High School graduate?
• What has this student gained from studying comprehensively in an arts-based curriculum?
• How has being an artist affected each one of us personally? Why is it important to us?
• Why is art important to society?

Homework #2: if you have seen a good example of a vision statement, please bring it next time.

Meeting adjourned at 2:30 p.m. Next meeting is Wednesday, 9/26 at 1:40 in Room 140.

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Arts Academy Meeting Notes, September 12, 2007

Summary:

We discussed where we are now and what work we want to do this year. We had a short discussion about bottom-up vs. top-down design and the merits of working at different levels of design (top-level ideas vs. implementation). Next Wednesday we will continue to address our mission and vision.

Meeting adjourned at 2:20 p.m.

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Book: Schooling by Design

This book came up during our initial cluster meeting, but I don’t remember the author. Who is it?

Update: authors are Wiggins & McTigh.