Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, September 19, 2007

September 19, 2007 at 3:17 pm | In Minutes |

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.

Present:

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

Full Notes

Do we have CBHS here next year? Does it matter? Do we get space back after they move? We will wait to talk about space until the CBHS task force finishes its work.

We began by working on our mission and vision. The big question is “why is arts-centered learning a good idea for students?” We spent some time later on discussing this in more detail. Is Schooling By Design a good book for us? Tom says yes, it’s definitely worthwhile, though it is a little dense.

We reviewed and updated our mission statement. Discussion that went into the changes was:

• (Tom) mission statements should have “learning” in them, rather than “study”.
• our dream is to have kids learn everything through the arts. Is that our mission? Lisa: a good political move, and we need to start thinking about how to do it.
• maybe add something about a “comprehensive approach to learning”. But we want our mission to remain short and clear. “Comprehensive” is a tough word to use, since it means a lot of different things depending on context.

We ultimately decided to leave out the part about a “comprehensive” high school idea, and put that into our vision instead. Our vision is that we will accomplish the goals in our mission in a comprehensive schooling environment.

The last part of the meeting centered around developing our vision. Our homework for next time is to think about / write about what our vision is. Each person might think of a vision for the academy (top-down) or a vision for a single program and then generalize from the program-specific vision (bottom-up).

Questions:

• 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?

Right now in education, art and artists are not seen as important parts of society. Some people mentioned that education through the arts is important because it concentrates on the whole person and how that person contributes to the world. Also, there is a connection between art and “real life”, reacting to your political and economical world through art. Lisa mentioned a video she recently showed to her class about Kandinsky (and other artists of that age) and how he and other artists had groups of other artists and supporters who used art to react to their economical and political climate.

Vicky is in touch with the coordinator of the C.A.S.T. project at UNE (Center for the Arts and Social Transformation). He could be an interesting connection for us.

Further homework: if you have seen a good example of a vision statement, please bring it next time.