On June 25, 2005, after 25 years of bringing the arts alive for students throughout the greater Rochester area, Aesthetic Education Institute (AEI) was closing its doors. To celebrate those dedicated years of service the founders, directors, board, staff, teachers, and Teaching Artists gathered for an evening of bittersweet memories and hopeful…

Partnerships between established music performing organizations and public schools are becoming more widely used and are gaining recognition as an effective means of increasing exposure to music for underfunded public school music programs. However, as financial shortages deepen in public school, and there is an increased emphasis on testing,…

Arts education was a component of the systemic change efforts of education reform of the last 15 years. What was learned? This article is an effort to give some shape to issues fundamental to the work of teachers in arts and learning. The author starts by discussing the definitions and purposes of arts education. He also discusses the evolving…

A leading TA and writer speaks to the human importance of art making in schools, prisons, and beyond. This article attempts to demonstrate that, as human beings and as artists, we should speak up for nourishing the art-making instinct at its core, and not only for placing this gift in the service of other laudable goals.

Trained as a studio painter, the author, describes the challenges he faced as circumstances forced him to make the transition from studio artist to teacher. For many years he believed that there was no way to get anywhere as an artist If he was not working exclusively in the studio. He felt that if he stopped painting or even dedicated less time…

In this article, the author reflects on his experience developing and running The Ark, a Cultural Center for Children in Dublin, Ireland. The author describes the practice and ten guiding principles behind the center. While acknowledging that arts education and arts practice for and with young people is a rich and varied landscape, within which a…

The focus of this article is on the learning and teaching processes of six teacher candidates, made possible by the study of a work of art in their internship placement. The interns observed and worked closely with two Lincoln Center Institute (LCI) music Teaching Artists (TAs) and six classroom teachers to provide students in kindergarten through…

Genuine artistic activity in any medium provides a lens through which to examine the world as well as to express a reaction to it. Opening a wide variety of subjects to artistic explorations also opens the door of learning, specially to students with varied levels of ability. It was with these thoughts in mind that the two authors met to revise a…

Project AIM, a Schools Partnerships program of the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago, partners Teaching Artists with classroom teachers in eight Chicago public schools. Funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund to Improve Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), the project has an ambitious…

This article presents an interview with four seasoned Teaching Artists: Keith Terry, Kimberly de Caires, Ruth Bossieux, and Jeff Raz. The TAs reflect on the importance and complexity of intellectual property issues. They also shed new light on the views and experiences of TAs around this issue and encourages a broader dialog in the TA community.

In schools across the United States, an increasingly familiar sight is that of professional artists coming together with students and teachers for the purpose of learning in and through the arts. Musicians, dancers, visual artists, actors, storytellers, and others are finding exciting new professional opportunities as more and more schools are…

During Winter/Spring of 2004, Danielle Cione, a 5th grade classroom teacher at New York City's PS 199, and Tanya Witek, a Teaching Artist for the New York Philharmonic School Partnership Program, planned and implemented a series of lessons exploring the relationship of the Writer's Workshop as taught in the schools and the process used by…

This article presents the Arts Residency Communication Checklist. This checklist is designed to be used in an initial planning meeting or conversation between teaching artists and collaborating teachers. Its purpose is to provide a comprehensive list of helpful points to discuss and useful information to provide. The checklist is divided into…

This article describes a method of constructivist pedagogy resembling the quilting process. Inspired by the work of Faith Ringgold, a story quilt was created in two sections of a teacher training social studies methods class. Each class created a story quilt to demonstrate the connection between the power of story, research, and technology--the…

Most everyone involved professionally in the non-profit arts comes in contact with a state arts agency. A person may be on the Teaching Artist roster, works for a grantee organization, or has directly received a grant or fellowship. The work that one does in the school is probably funded by the state arts agency. Or, at a more basic level, the…