Dana funding enabled (Out)Laws & Justice to offer 60 hours of Professional Training for theatre-teaching artists and classroom teachers. The training built upon the existing theatre, history and language arts curriculum in schools and was combined with a yearlong in-school residency. The training workshops incorporated drama pedagogy based on recent neuroscience research findings on learning and emotional/social intelligence. During the residency, teams comprised of the teaching theatre artist and classroom teacher guided eighth grade students to create dramas based on what they learn about the American frontier and what they know about life on the urban frontier. Concurrent with the residency was continued training and evaluation of the program.
(Out)Laws & Justice is a grade eight interdisciplinary curriculum integrating the multiple subjects of history/social studies, language arts and drama. The curriculum is framed in such a way that compels students to critically reflect on westward expansion, to discover the mythic hegemonies of the Wild West on contemporary culture, public policies and their individual lives.
Funding from The Dana Foundation grant supports a multi-phased Professional Training Institute in Los Angeles and New York City, which will be followed by implementation of the OLJ/NYU curricula and drama strategies in public middle schools in both cities. The training will build upon what has been learned from the teacher artist training program funded by Dana in 2007.
The New York City training is to be conducted in partnership with New York University Steinhardt School’s Program of Educational Drama. Faculty from the Program along with selected teaching artists in Los Angeles and New York will provide a colloquium of instruction for approximately twenty NYU Steinhardt students. Colloquium students will learn how to integrate language arts, social studies, and using the process of drama to help middle school students connect the ethical consequences of historic and current events.
The Dana grant will continue support of the artist training component of SMARTS in the Schools, a three-year old collaboration among 18th Street Arts Center, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) and the Cultural Affairs Division of the City of Santa Monica. The ultimate goal of SMARTS is to provide young people with hands-on experience in the arts. 18th Street achieves this goal by training local professional artists in the California Core Curriculum Standards and the Visual and Performing Arts Standards, equipping them with the expertise necessary to work collaboratively with classroom teachers to provide integrated curriculum-based arts education in local public schools.
The A+ Schools Program received funding to conduct comprehensive training for 44 teaching artists in two rural regions (11 counties) of North Carolina. The purpose of the training is to increase the capacity of Teaching Artists to conduct residency programs that integrate their art form with state-mandated curriculum in PK-12 public schools. The project will impact approximately 4,000 students and 340 teachers in 13 A+ Schools.
In each region, 22 teaching artists will be recruited in collaboration with local arts councils. After attending a four-day training Institute, participants will work with facilitators to develop their own three-day integrated residency plan. They then pilot that residency in a regional A+ school. While piloting their residency, TAs are paired with another Institute participant, each serving as process observer for the other. A one-day follow-up meeting will be held in each region for participants to review and reflect upon their residencies. The ultimate goal of the project is to build the capacity for the creation of a sustainable network of arts professionals and educators in rural areas of North Carolina.
The Dana grant will enable The AAC to implement a pilot project providing professional development in the performing arts for artists and select personnel working in schools. The concept is a two-year, four-part project that includes a workshop designed to give teaching artists and arts specialists in schools experience teaching in dance, theatre, and music. It will also give participants and presenters an opportunity to identify and problem-solve issues related to teaching the performing arts in the largely rural schools. Part IV of the program will involve teaching artists in a series of professional development workshops led by Kennedy Center Partners in Education Master Artists. The goal is to have the participating artists, after completing the program, become mentors to other arts educators and continue the cycle of teaching and mentoring.
With Dana Foundation funding, the Actor's Fund will export its five year-old New York City teaching artist training course, the Actors' Work Program, to Los Angeles. While structurally the program will mirror its New York activities, it will be customized to the needs of the LA arts education community. Goals of the project include increasing opportunities for LA performing artists to become teaching artists, providing a new training and referral source for the LA arts in education community and establishing new organizational partnerships.
Dana renewed funding for the Teaching Artist Training Project for Alabama artists to work as teaching artists in the “Black Belt” of Alabama. The goals of the project are to 1) provide basic arts education opportunities to students in Black Belt schools; 2) develop a cadre of trained local teaching artists who can effectively connect their art disciplines to the other content areas; and 3) provide teachers in Black Belt schools with professional development opportunities so they can effectively implement Course of Study arts standards in their classrooms.
Eight new teaching artists, along with the fifteen artists trained as a result of the 2007 Dana grant, will attend a series of workshops designed and taught by nationally recognized teaching artist trainers. Local schools interested in hosting the trainees for residencies must send classroom teachers and administrators to one of the workshops to involve them in the training as well. The veteran teaching artists will then spend four-week residencies in several schools and the new artists in two-week residencies. The veteran artists will mentor the new artists. All trainees will receive follow-up training and evaluation of their residencies.
Dana funds will help AIEA train 10-12 Alabama artists to work as Teaching Artists in Alabama's Black Belt. The goals of the proposed project are to provide basic arts education opportunities to students in Black Belt schools; develop a cadre of trained local teaching artists who can effectively connect their art disciplines to the other content areas; and provide teachers in Black Belt schools with professional development opportunities so they can effectively implement Course of Study arts standards in their classrooms.
Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation supports the activities of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, The Ailey School, and Ailey II, all of which contribute to the Ailey's extensive Arts in Education and Community Outreach programs. Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation traditionally serves an exceptionally diverse population, including people of all races, socio-economic backgrounds, ages, physical abilities, and languages. The Dana Foundation grant will support the implementation of enhanced training workshops that address the professional development of the teaching artists and classroom teachers who conduct Ailey's arts-in-education residencies in New York City and across the country, with a particular focus on the Revelations: An Interdisciplinary Approach program. Created in 1999, Revelations: An Interdisciplinary Approach is an innovative, curriculum-based initiative that enables teachers and students to examine Alvin Ailey's signature work, Revelations, through social, cultural, historical, and aesthetic lenses, connecting it to classroom curricula in language arts and social studies.