Sunday, March 9, 2008

Art Makes All Things Better: Tolerance.org

Guest artists in Tucson, AZ work with refugee students in an ESL classroom to use photography to explore the concept of "home."

Kimi Eisele talks not only about the success of the program, but also about the challenges of funding--particularly in the face of No Child Left Behind which has shifted focus away from the arts in order to keep up with standards. Eisele poses- "The irony is that arts programming may be exactly what such schools most need to improve student achievement."

Reminds me of Augusto Boal's description of Peru's 1973 government campaign for literacy - Operacion Alfabetizacion Integral - to wipe out illiteracy within the country over four years. The variety of languages has often posed hurdles to addressing this problem - but ALFIN took the approach that "the illiterate are not people who are unable to express themselves; they are simply people unable to express themselves in a particular language" (Theatre of the Oppressed, 2006, 121).

The educators at ALFIN used photography with the literacy education participants-- asking questions in the language Spanish and seeking answers in the language of photography. Participants would be asked Where do you live? in Spanish and asked to respond using photography.

Boal summarizes one man's photographic answer:

"One day a man, in answer to the same question, took a picture of a child's face. Of couse everyone thought that the man had made a mistake and repeated the question to him: 'You didn't understand; what we want is that you show us where you live...

"Here is my answer. Here is where I live."

"But it's a child..."

"Look at his face: there is blood on it. This child, as all the others who live here, have their lives threatened by the rats that infest the whole bank of the river Rimac....A few days ago, when you asked me where I lived, the rats had come while the child was sleeping and had eaten part of his nose. This is why there's so much blood on his face. Look at the picture; it is my answer. I live in a place where things like this still happen." (Theatre of the Oppressed, 2007, 124)



NYC Schools Don't Meet Arts Standards

Less than 5% of NYC schools are meeting state arts standards.

Elementary students are supposed to be exposed to dance, music, theatre, and visual arts education each year. City schools are not required to report their arts programming to the state, though the announced in July that schools will receive a report card on the arts.

Wondering if a lack of certified teachers in the arts--particularly dance and theatre--contributes to this problem. I think we should have alternative routes or programs for teaching artists and artists to become teachers. As far as I know, organizations like Teach for America and NYC Teaching Fellows don't recruit teachers to the arts or don't define the arts as a high-need subject area or eligible subject area. Why not?

Yet, the Shubert Teaching Fellows program within the NYC Department of Education recruits certified teachers within the system (who are not certified in theater) to become theater teachers. The site claims "there is a need for licensed theater teachers." Why not broaden this to outside artists and show a commitment to recruiting highly qualified individuals to arts education?

Not sure the arts will ever receive its due focus while we continue to focus on banking models of education and positivist approaches to learning. How can we make a shift?

$125,000 Salaries for Teachers

A new charter school, The Equity Project (TEP), to open in Washington Heights this fall is offering $125,000 salaries fo its teachers. NY Times reports.

Teachers will take on extra responsibilities with regard to attendance, discipline, and after-school programming. The principal's salary will be $90,000. There will only be two social workers employed by the school.

I can't disagree about upping the teacher salary. I think it will be really interesting to see the ramifications of this and whether this is a sustainable model for a school.

A couple "challenges" that stood out to me:

  • In addition to the "core" subject areas (not that I agree that they are the "cores"), the school will offer Latin as its only language and Music as the only arts course. Visual arts will be integrated into ESL and Social Studies. Not sure I agree with this. Though it looks like some after school programming could include exposure to other "electives."
  • The school is only accepting teacher applicants who score in the 90th percentile on the GRE, GMAT, or LSAT. What is this saying?
  • I don't see much about the educational philosophy on the website. What are the pedagogical beliefs? Yes, teacher quality is important. But how do you define that? High standardized test scores?