Partnership Awards 11 Arts Grants
The Portland Education Partnership recently awarded 11 Arts in Education classroom grants totalling $5,400 to Portland teachers. The projects funded will bring together 11 local artists with 900 students and 21 teachers to enhance teaching and learning.
“Portland teachers and artists are creating innovative strategies to integrate art into the core curriculum as a learning strategy,” said Susan Steele, Portland Education Partnership’s director. ”It’s another way to ensure that we are providing learning opportunities for all our students’ and meeting their unique learning needs.”
The funded projects involve various art media, students at all levels and integrated curriculum. For example, Riverton Elementary School teacher Carol Gallagher, artist Christopher Strickland and 22 second-graders will work together to create poetic mandalas that express their life experiences, culture and family traditions.
Students at Nathan Clifford and Peaks Island Elementary Schools will create a Freedom Quilt with art teacher Mary Jane Johnston and fiber artist Susan Hellier. The students will learn about the historical significance of quilts in early America and how they were used in the Underground Railroad guiding slaves to the North. They will create their own quilt blocks using early secret codes from pre-Civil War quilts.
At King Middle School, eighth-graders will explore the art of engineering. Teacher Gus Goodwin and local artist Jill Dalton will work with students to create, design and build kinetic sculptures as part of a larger study of the “Wide World of Engineering.”
The Portland Education Partnership funds the Arts in Education program with the generous support of the Maine Arts Commission.
For over 30 years, the Maine Arts Commission has been helping artists and arts organizations bring more music, dance, poetry, painting and other arts activities into the lives of people in Maine. It is an independent state agency funded by the Maine State Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Portland Education Partnership (www.portlandeducation.org) is a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Portland Public Schools and works to enrich student learning and build support for the Portland public schools by promoting opportunities for parent, business and community involvement.
