BCCLA Professional Developent Updates

UPCOMING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTS!

FPAMCP/CAPE will host a series of summer sessions, designed as provocative, stimulating, and fun curriculum-building activities to continue the tremendous progress made by MCLTs during the 2005-2006 school year. Sessions are free, and MCLTs are paid to attend. MCLTs may sign up for an unlimited number of sessions, but space is limited and admission will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis. To sign up or for questions, email Mario Rossero (please rank selections in order of preference). The following are the “mini-courses” to be offered:

“Fine Art Fridays”

MCLTs are invited to participate in five different Fridays over the course of the summer, in which MCLTs, FPAMCP/CAPE staff, artists, and members of local communities will explore “Big Idea” themes. These tours will be part of the larger curriculum and community goals for the BCCLA project.

June 30: “Ways of Seeing”. Kicking off at the Museum of Surgical Science, our exploration of perception will go from the technical aspects of vision with a cornea surgeon to the abstract concepts of perception with a performing artist.

July 14: “Symbiosis: Collaboration in Nature”. Beginning at the Garfield Park Conservatory, we will explore community and school gardens with Architreasures and the Center for Green Technology.

July 21: “Structure and De-Structure.” Look at the building blocks of creativity with a sound artist on an exploration of the Loop and Millennium Park.

July 28: “Migration & Transformation”. Focusing on the Uptown community and a tour of the Cambodian genocide museum, we’ll examine themes of social change and cause and effect in society.

Aug 11: “In Process and in Progress”. Explore the process of change through history on an historic South side neighborhood tour.

“Week Day Workshops”

Weekday workshops are multiple day intensives. Each specifically focuses on the MCLT as artist in the areas of visual art, music, drama, or dance.

July 5-7: Drama: Second City
Investigate the fundamentals of improvisation and its integration into the curriculum of any subject.

July 18-20: Dance: Hubbard Street
Explore a world of dance through active engagement in perception, research, reflection, and discussion.

July 25-27: Visual Art: Art Making
Meaning and Message: By creating visual work, dissecting your process, and discussing approaches you will answer the question, “What does my art work say?”

August 1-3: Music: Experimental Sound Studio
Found Sound! Learn how to compose a symphony from a cacophony of everyday sound-making objects.

August 7-9: Drama: Goat Island
Performance and Response: combine and explore arts disciplines through conversation, collaboration, communication, and construction.

August 15-17: Classroom Management
The nitty-gritty on managing an arts classroom with role-playing, de-escalation techniques, and strategies for balancing discipline with creative freedom.

BCCLA Professional Development 2005-2006

Curriculum Workshops

All MCLTs received 5 hours of professional development on Curriculum planning and development in a Fine and Performing Arts Magnet Cluster School. In these sessions, we considered the following questions:

1. What are the categories for a model framework?

2. What would be evidence of change within the schools' curricula?

3. What are some ways to document these successes?

4. What are the criteria for a provocative curriculum?

5. Why would you work with provocative themes?

We also worked with the Arts Integration Checklist. This instrument helps teachers to assess if arts integration is working in their schools by defining the characteristics of an arts-integrated learning environment.

Finally, each MCLT reflected on the Three-Year Goals of the program. Based on these goals, MCLTs worked to develop their curriculum goals for the year, and began to look ahead to their overarching goals for the BCCLA project. Over the course of the next three years, project coordinators will work with MCLTs to implement strategies to achieve the goals defined during these sessions.

Community Workshops

During the community workshops, MCLTs worked with CAPE, FPAMCP and each other on issues surrounding how to improve community within their schools. Several guest principals and teachers addressed the group on how community has been built within their communities. As a whole, we considered the following questions:

1. What is your definition of community?

2. What is community as it is related to schools?

3. What kind of leadership builds community?

4. What do you need to feel like part of a community?

5. Why is/isn't community important to schools?

6. What is the value of community to teachers?

7. What is the value of community for students?

8. What is the value of the school being connected to parents?

9. What activities, ideas, support is building community in your schools?

MCLTs then reflected, once again, on the Three-Year Goals of the BCCLA project. Teachers discussed what aspects of these goals they found exciting, what they had questions about, and what might need to be added or changed. Finally, MCLTs chose their community goals for the year, which will form the basis for their work with the project coordinators over the next three years.

Leadership Workshops

The BCCLA Leadership Workshops addressed many of the major issues that MCLTs face as leaders within their schools, such as:

o scheduling
o lesson planning
o forming arts committees
o creating long-range professional development within the school

Several guest speakers, including a panel of experts, focused on common leadership issues and MCLTs subsequently broke out into smaller groups to problem-solve around this subject. Finally, teachers selected their leadership goals for the year, based on the Three-Year Goals of the BCCLA project.

Additional Workshops

FPAMCP/CAPE also hosted the following professional developments:

Technical Assistance and Grant Writing Full-Day Workshop
January 20th
National Louis University

Arts and Literacy Full-Day Workshop
February 10th
Second City

Technology in the Arts
April 7th
Agassiz Elementary School

Documentation Workshop
May 9th & 10th and
May 17th & 18th
Agassiz Elementary School

FPAMCP Principal Workshops
May 9th (Hampton Elementary)
May 10th (Clark Elementary)
May 16th (Cassell Elementary)
May 17th (Pulaski Elementary)

BCCLA Three-Year Goals

Curriculum:
o Schools are engaged in an inquiry based approach, whether the curriculum is art instruction or arts integration
o Schools document their work throughout the process in more than one media, and the documentation is accessible to students, other classrooms, other schools and visitors
o Schools have a demonstrated capacity to create thematic curriculum
o Schools look at and incorporate contemporary practice in art forms, whether music, visual, dance, or theatre
o Schools engage new technologies in their curriculum
o Curriculum emerges from student interest

Community:
o “Big Idea” curriculum is explored by several teachers in different subjects working together as a team
o Students engage in a stimulating mix of group and individual learning across all classes
o Parents are part of arts learning
o Students and teachers regularly engage their neighborhood (sites, people who live there, relatives, shops, businesses) as subject matter for learning or as support resources for their learning
o Schools have their walls covered with vibrant documentation and works of art
o Schools develop at least one partnership with a community organization
o Teachers regularly mentor other teachers (including in other schools), lead professional development for their school and other FPAMCP schools, and collaborate with other teachers in other FPAMCP schools
o Principals do the same
o There is a FPAMCP website that teachers regularly contribute to and use to share information

Leadership:
o Principals clearly are engaged in all concepts of curriculum, community, and leadership, support the MCLTs in these goals, and develop long-term strategies in the arts to support these goals
o MCLTs and principal have agreed on vision and 5-year plan
o MCLTs are heading up leadership team with art as the main focus
o MCLTs are planning professional development each year with their team at their schools
o MCLTs have full support of school faculty
o Professional development consistently includes teachers as leaders
o MCLTs also lead professional development at other schools
o MCLTs are clearly recognized as the school's curriculum leader, but leadership is also apparent in other teachers and staff as well
o Principals set inquiry-based curriculum and documentation as a standard for their arts learning (whether “pure” art or arts integration)
o Student leadership is also understood; students are seen as artists, researchers, and documenters