• Define the profession of teaching artists and standards of compensation (including benefits), and communicate those definitions to the field.
• Offer ongoing professional development for teaching artists -- conferences, training, and mentoring.
• Train teaching artists to work with learning standards, articulate arts activities in terms of the standards, and use the standards to protect the integrity of the arts as disciplines in themselves.
• Provide for advance planning between teachers and artists and have arts organization staff facilitate planning and reflection meetings.
• Involve teachers in arts activities and help them sustain arts activities in their classrooms.
• Build partnerships incrementally
• Include professional performances and demonstrations as part of every residency, to provide audience experience for students and a "real-world" context for arts learning.
• Integrate standards-based assessment into all projects.
  

Class Acts 99 was supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Cultural Challenge Program and matching gifts from private sources.

• how to relate their work to the curriculum and the goals of a school
• how to work with, and often train, classroom teachers
• how to create new project designs
• how to assess student learning
• how to relate their work to learning standards and teaching frameworks in the arts and other areas
• how to understand the major initiatives driving arts education locally and nationally
  

The conference was built around questions teaching artists were asking:

• What is the role of today’s professional teaching artist?
• How can I articulate my artistic processes in ways that teachers understand and value?
• How can I link what I do to the curriculum and still maintain artistic integrity?
• What skills can I teach to others, and what can’t be taught?
• How can I help teachers and students construct their own meaning through artistic processes?

Participants took part in four days of activities and also received the Class Acts 99 Handbook -- information on major initiatives, directories, national goals and state learning standards, and a glossary of terms for teaching artists.

Setting the Stage
Plenary Session at ArtsConnection
February 9, 4:30-7:00 p.m.

Opening Remarks

Welcome
Dr. Patricia Morris Carey, Deputy Chancellor, New York University; Board Member, ArtsConnection, and Chair of the Program Committee
The Honorable Schuyler Chapin, Commissioner, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs

Carol Morgan, Deputy Director for Programs, ArtsConnection, Conference Introduction

Theodore Wiprud, Class Acts 99 Coordinator, Conference Overview

Panel: What do we expect of teaching artists today, and how have our expectations changed over the last five years? What do artists need in order to accomplish what is being asked of them? (To read panelists’ opening statements, please click on their name)

Sharon Dunn, Special Assistant for the Arts, New York City Board of Education
Madeleine Holzer, Director, Arts Education Program, New York State Council on the Arts
Hollis Headrick, Executive Director, Center for Arts Education/Annenberg Challenge
Thomas Cahill, Executive Director, Studio in a School
Steven Tennen, Executive Director, ArtsConnection
Amy Chin, Dancer, Teaching Artist
Janet Braun-Reinitz, Muralist, Teaching Artist

Moderator, Barry Oreck, Director of Special Initiatives, ArtsConnection

The Classroom Experience
Breakout sessions in New York City Public Schools
February 10-11, 1:00-5:00 p.m.

In breakout sessions at ArtsConnection partnership schools, conference participants observed classes taught by outstanding teaching artists on ArtsConnection’s roster. Following the classes, principals and teachers talked about their partnerships with artists, then joined conference participants in facilitated roundtable discussions on the final day of the conference.

Participating schools and artists
PS 6, Manhattan, Grade 1
Carmen Fariña, principal
Teaching artist, Phyllis Bethel, percussionist, vocalist, and composer

CES 53, Bronx, Grade 2
David Van Nuñes, principal
Teaching artist, Ron Sopyla, storyteller

PS 130, Brooklyn, Grade 5
Margarita Nell, principal
Teaching artist, Rochelle Shicoff, muralist

PS 155, Manhattan, Grade 3
Alejandrina Hendrick, principal
Teaching artist, Jessica Nicoll, choreographer and dancer

PS 296, Brooklyn, Grade 1
Tina Volpe, principal
Teaching artist, Branice McKenzie, vocalist and composer

High School of Fashion Industries, Manhattan, Grade 12
Charles Bonicci, principal
Teaching artist, Janet Braun-Reinitz, muralist

The Artist’s Voice
Plenary Session at ArtsConnection
February 13, 9:30 am to 4:00 p.m.

The issues facing teaching artists as identified in the in-school, breakout sessions were later compiled by the discussion facilitators under six topic headings. On the final day of the conference, participants found these topics and a number of discussion questions posted. They signed up to participate in the session that most interested them, and were free to move to other roundtables where they felt they could contribute. Each facilitated roundtable was charged with formulating recommendations to the field.

• What is your mission as a teaching artist?
  
• Why are you doing this?
  
• How much does a teaching artist want to be an educator?
  
• What are the elements that make teaching artists different from non-teaching artists?
  
• What is the artist’s relationship to the classroom teacher?
  
• What is the arts organization’s role for artists and schools? What is needed as a support system?
  
  

Recommendations

• "Teaching artist" should be defined as a profession with specific roles and responsibilities and the arts and education fields should be informed of the definition.
  
• Standards for compensation including benefits should be established.
  
• Meetings and conferences should be convened to inform and involve teaching artists in the development of the arts education field.
  
• The Board of Education should develop certification for teaching artists.
  
• Professional performances should be an integral part of artists’ work with schools.
  
  

Professional Development for Teaching Artists
Topics

• What do you need to know?
  
• Where can professional development cross disciplines?
  
• Can we deconstruct the artistic process and make connections with the teaching process?
  
• What support does the artist need to become a teaching artist?
  
• How can arts organizations better meet your needs?
  
  

Recommendations

• Arts organizations should:
  - devote staff to professional development of teaching artists;
  - draw on experienced teaching artists to design training and as mentors;
  - share training ideas and materials.
  
• Funders should support professional development for teaching artists.
• Professional development for teaching artists should include educational ideas and vocabulary, learning standards, and assessment methods.
  
  

School Partnership
Topics

• In school partnerships, what should be the responsibilities of artists, schools, and arts organizations?
  
• In what ways can we use planning to create more effective partnerships?
  
• What role does professional development (for artists, teachers, administrators) play in creating effective partnerships?
  
• What are the barriers to good partnerships?
  
• In what ways can we nurture and develop collaboration?
  
• What methods have been most successful; what can arts organizations do to promote best practice?
  
• As "outsiders," what is necessary to enable artists to break through barriers?
  
  

Recommendations

• Arts organization should:
  - define roles and responsibilities of each partner;
  - match teaching artists’ expertise to schools’ needs;
  - facilitate partnership meetings.
  
• Artists should:
  - develop a vocabulary of education and standards;
  - develop lesson plans together with teachers;
  - find appropriate instructional roles for teachers in arts activities and help them build skills to continue in those roles.
  
• Artists should only be assigned to work with teachers who want to work with them.
  
• Teachers should be provided with professional development that will facilitate their own aesthetic development.
  
• An effective partnership should include the greater educational community: school staff, school districts, parents, and community groups.
  
  

Program Design
Topics

• What does a successful partnership look like from the artist’s perspective? From the teacher’s or school’s perspective?
  
• What are possible balances of discipline-based and curriculum-integration teaching? Who does the integrating?
  
• Can processes and vocabulary be shared across curricula?
  
• What is a healthy balance of audience and participatory experience?
  
• How can successes be shared with policymakers and stakeholders?
  
  

Recommendations

• Arts organizations should:
  - clearly articulate their arts education philosophy to all constituencies;
  - carefully structure each residency;
  - facilitate planning and reflection meetings with artists and teachers;
  - provide artists with profiles of their schools, and schools with profiles of their artists.
  
• Artists should:
  - present hands-on workshops/orientations for teachers before each residency;
  - observe each class before the first teaching session.
  
• Arts performances and demonstrations should be part of every residency to provide an audience experience for students and a "real-world" context for arts learning.
  
• Partnerships should build incrementally and not try to accomplish too much too soon.
  
  

Assessment and Standards
Topics

• What do you look for?
  
• How do you look for it?
  
• Should teaching artists learn and use the language of education reform in order to be included in the discussion?
  
• How is the teaching artist valuable to the assessment process?
  
• What role can/do the standards play?
  
• How can we use the standards (especially the language of the standards) to talk to schools/teachers in more productive ways?
  
• What is the teaching artist’s role when the classroom teacher is unfamiliar with the arts (or language arts, math, etc.) standards?
  
  

Recommendations

• Teaching artists and others in the field should know the difference between assessment (which refers to student learning) and evaluation (which refers to the value and effectiveness of a project).
  
• Teaching artists need to be able to define and understand the role of assessment in their work.
  
• Teaching artists need to learn how to design their instruction around desired outcomes and the evidence required to show that knowledge, understanding, and skills have been gained.
  
• Teaching artists should be able to articulate how the artwork they do embodies many, if not all, of the New York State Learning Standards in the Arts.
  
• Teaching artists need to use state learning standards in the arts in their dialogue with teachers, and help establish a common language with educators.
  
• Arts organizations and teaching artists should use the learning standards in the arts to protect the integrity of the arts as disciplines in themselves.
  
• Arts organizations, schools, and teaching artists should build standards-based assessment into all projects to foster better partnerships and build a body of knowledge.
  
• Funders should support longitudinal studies to document results and identify factors for success.
  
  

Sustainability
Topics

• What do you think is reasonable to expect teachers to know and be able to do after working with you over a period of 1, 2, 3,... years?
  
• What kind of infrastructure can you help to build in the schools that will support the arts when you are gone?
  
• What are realistic expectations of you as a teaching artist?
  
• Is there life after Annenberg?
  
• How can artists become part of the discussion on sustainability in the broader arts education community?
  
  

Recommendations
Although the above questions were raised by conference participants, no teaching artists attended the roundtable on sustainability. Clearly artists are not presently concerned with this question, perhaps feeling that sustaining the current level of activity is in the domain of arts organizations and politicians, or they are so busy because of the current level of available work, that they haven’t given any thought to the possibility of it ending. ArtsConnection recommends that teaching artists should involve themselves in policy discussions and join in efforts to make those in the arts and education fields, as well as the general public, aware of the value of arts education.