Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, February 27, 2008

February 27, 2008 at 3:20 pm | In Minutes |

Summary:

We spent most of the time discussing our needs for semester courses and some of the issues involved. We will discuss Vicky and Lisa’s conversation around enrollment in Dance during the next meeting.

Next meeting: Wednesday, March 5th at 1:10 in Room 320

Agenda:

1. Discuss Dance program (20 minutes)
2. Possible subgroups for semester courses (30 minutes)
3. Possible subgroups for Dance enrollment conversation (30 minutes)
4. Check PATHSFEST timeline (10 minutes)

Present:

• Phil Divinsky
• Diane Manzi
• Valerie Green
• Vicky Stubbs
• Dave Beane

We’re going to talk about Vicky and Lisa’s discussion about enrollment and the Dance program next week, since we have a lot to discuss today.

AARAT Timeline work: we put up the old timeline to see whether we’ve missed any of the Spring work. What we noticed was that there is almost nothing on the timeline for 2008. Some of those goals are things like “Break ground for new building”. Time to update the timeline a bit.

One thing we wanted to get done was something to present to Central Office. We’re still working on our model. It’s good work…we’re not ready to present it yet, though. If we want to present our model by June, we need to figure out whether it’s more important than other things on our plate.

Do we put AARAT issues aside for the moment, to discuss more pressing issues such as Lisa’s enrollment, PATHSFEST, and semester classes? That’s the current feeling. Especially because semester classes are something we were talking about for AARAT anyway.

After PATHSFEST we will look at our timeline again and make a reasonable one for 2008-2009.

Semester Curriculum Work

Phil handed out a sheet that had our questions about semester courses from work we did last year.

What do we need to make semester courses happen for our programs? Not every program can be modified to be split into semesters. Many of our students can only come for 1 year anyway, so in that sense it could be better to have semester classes. Some classes could most easily offer a semester course in September only.

With a student entering mid-year, even if a student has a prerequisite, it’s not clean… we need to figure out what is linear and what can be chunked into a semester class. And really know what the prerequisites are.

Class culture can also be very different when a group of students enter a class in January. Right now the word is that if you can only offer a semester class in September.

Kids aren’t going to get as much with semester courses–they’ll get an introduction. They won’t be prepared for a certificate or a career with a semester course.

Also: how do teachers split themselves into a teacher of a 2-year course AND simultaneously a semester teacher? It’s hard to make sure you’re paying attention to everyone when you’re splitting yourself between different groups of students in the same class.

One of the AARAT models we had was a college model: Music Theory 101, then 201 with prerequisites.

What happens when a student can’t get the semester s/he wants? Maybe we can teach 2 semester courses at once? It’s harder to manage–sometimes easier when there’s another adult to supervise one group (Music class has an Ed. Tech. one day a week, and that makes 2 levels working simultaneously possible).

We need: sequence mapping, categorizing, reorganizing curriculum, an Ed. Tech. at least once a week.

Springtime is a time when we have lower numbers (kids dropping, etc.), but that’s not the time when some of us want to offer a semester course.

Some students have alternating days at their high schools–will they even be able to make it for a semester?

This discussion about semester issues might make us look at alternatives that we could consider a 4-year Arts Academy.