Multi-Arts
MAGNET SCHOOLS
The Southeast Center is providing ongoing consultation and services to Hamilton County Schools. The entire faculties of three arts magnet schools (elementary, middle, high school) and four elementary schools receiving special funding from Allied Arts have attended summer Institutes learning about comprehensive arts education. Plans are in progress for the faculties of four new elementary arts magnet schools to attend the 2002 summer institutes with on-site follow-up and mentoring extending throughout the academic year.
EARLY CHILDHOOD
We are expanding the scope of our work to include early childhood as we explore connections between the arts and literacy in the pre-school setting. The SCEA staff is in the process of designing professional development for early childhood specialists linking the National Standards for Arts Education with current trends in reading for pre-kindergarten children. Our goal is to connect the best practices in arts education with those professionals working with our youngest students, to bring them the best in arts education while strengthening the literacy connections that are so important to their educational growth.
ARTIST TRAINING
The Center provides training in comprehensive arts education for artists who have residencies in area schools. Workshops have been developed for Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga, the Georgia Council for the Arts, and Young Audiences of Atlanta. Docents and artists connected with local museums, symphonies, opera companies, and theatres are welcome and encouraged to attend the summer institutes.
MUSEUM-BASED WORKSHOPS
The Visual Art Institute conducts it's summer institutes at the Hunter Museum of American Art in order to work with original works of art. An annual highlight is studying special exhibitions which have included Andy Warhol, the Gilded Age (artworks made during the late 1800s to early 1900s from the collection of the National Gallery) and Millennium Glass (an exhibit of works of glass organized by the Kentucky Crafts Council).
The 2001 summer Music Institute explored ways in which cultural context influences musical expression. A goal was connecting music instruction with regional resources and utilizing local museums as curricular assets. Instruction was conducted at the Chattanooga Regional History Museum, Creative Discovery Museum, Chattanooga African American Museum, and Red Clay Historical State Park.
LEADERSHIP ACADEMY
The five-year Transforming Education Through the Arts Challenge (TETAC) required schools to continually examine and reflect on their professional practice. A series of summer Leadership Academies was designed to enable teachers and administrators from the six partner schools to discuss dilemmas inherent in teaching, to gain insight from peer observations and assessment, and to work collaboratively.
The first week-long Leadership Academy in 1997 was a rewarding endeavor in bonding, thinking out of the box, and consensus building. Arts specialists convened for a week in 1998 to consider their role as resource experts and instructional mentors. The 1999 one-day Academy was conducted by Paula Evans, director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Strategies for making teaching practice public were demonstrated as participants dealt with personal dilemmas learning protocols to ensure balanced and respected dialogue among peers. During the three-day 2000 retreat, school teams compared the results of their own mid-point project check-in with ratings by TETAC evaluators and brainstormed strategies to achieve redefined objectives. At the 2001 Academy, participants reflected on achievements during the past five years and developed plans to sustain their comprehensive arts program. Culminating performance art pieces were designed to inspire colleagues back home to celebrate the conclusion of the TEATC project.
ADMINISTRATORS RETREAT
SCEA initiated an annual retreat with the principals from the six TETAC partner schools. Each meeting was combined with a site visit to two of the partner schools. The two-day agenda included an overview of the school's arts program, observation of DBAE lessons, a meeting with district personnel, conversations with arts specialists, and discussions of current issues in the community with parents and representatives of community arts organizations. These meetings and visits were very popular with the administrators and teachers. The two schools being visited had an opportunity to showcase their work, and the principals discovered ideas and strategies to take back to their schools. The fellowship served to initiate new administrators into the project and develop camaraderie among all the schools.
NEW YORK! NEW YORK!
The Public Education Foundation funded a SCEA intellectual enrichment tour to New York City for teachers from Chattanooga City Schools and Hamilton County Schools. The aim was to give teachers who had never been to NYC before access to art forms with which they were unfamiliar. SCEA provided seminars, readings, discussion forums, travel, lodging, and tickets to museums, theatres and performances in New York.
TELLING STORIES THROUGH THE ARTS
In this pilot project with the Community Outreach Partnership Center, SCEA staff worked with children from the Martin Luther King inner city neighborhood. There were late afternoon sessions on video, photography, and music where the children created works of art in each media centered on a personal story. To conclude the project, the children lead a group of adults from the neighborhood through the process of creating story-based works of art.
UTC PERSPECTIVES SERIES
The Center designed and conducted multi-arts workshops for university students and faculty participating in UTC's annual Perspectives series. Analogies and Differentials In Space and Time explored shared qualities between the elements of dance and music. Character Attack: Performance Artists Use Role-Playing was a participatory workshop exploring performance art through the work of theatre artists Anna Deavere Smith and visual artist Cindy Sherman.
