Congratulations to the Dream Catchers

The Dreamcatcher awards are the Oscars of arts education in San Francisco. The Visual and Performing Arts Department of the San Francisco Unified School District is proud to recognize arts education leaders from various parts of the community, including arts teachers, school arts coordinators, principals, administrators and community arts partners.

 

They began presenting the awards in 2007, the same year that the Arts Education Master Plan was released. The 2018 awards were presented on March 15 at the community reception for the SFUSD Arts Festival in the glamorous grand hall of the Asian Art Museum.

 

Sketchnotes by Todd Berman, marker on paper.

Tutorials as Cultural Exchange, Merav Tzur

Merav Tzur is an accomplished contemporary artist who works in a variety of media, including video. Her practice was transformed when she discovered amateur tutorial videos online - see below for her video about how to create the tree of knowledge. Watch the video of her presentation to find out why she finds the medium so meaningful for her media students at Ohlone college. 

Read More

Creating Narratives of Youth of Color, SoMapagmahal Photography Mentorship Program

SoMapagmahal Photography teachers Erina C. Alejo and Dara Katrina brought their young artists, David, Dayzsha, and Julianna, on stage with them because the whole purpose of their program is to give youth of color the power to tell their own stories. Their goal is to reactivate brown joy, and they are clearly successful.

Read More

For Students, By Students: How to Build the High School Survival Kit, Sierra Reading

As a fashion instructor for teenagers at Youth Art Exchange, Sierra Reading wants to make sure her students understand that they have the power to drive the fashion industry. She helped here students work together to design a backpack that would serve their needs.

Watch the video of her March 16, 2017 presentation as part of the "Student Voice. Community Power." Curriculum Slam. Apply by March 12 to present at the 2018 show.

Read More

The Challenges of Partnerships :: an Arts Education Policy Roundtable recap

Every two months, we hold a gathering of arts educators for an arts education policy roundtable. On December 1, 2017, we met underneath Peter Ilyin's 1938 oil paintings of San Francisco's waterfront in room 125 of the Veteran's Building to discuss what makes for successful partnerships with public schools.

This post was created with significant assistance from notes by Nicole Sumner of Artways Playways. Email sumnernicole@gmail.com to learn about her workshop, "Hard Wired to Play: A Course Exploring the Specturm of Play as if Your Leanring and Mental Health Depended on it."

Don't miss Honor Your pARTner :: an Arts Education Partnership Showcase on Thursday, February 15, 2018.

Read More

A first dive into our survey data

At our October 6, 2017 Arts Education Policy Roundtable, we took a first look at data from our survey about teaching artist pay rates and employment structure. We decided to take on this survey project after our discussion at the April 2017 Policy Roundtable about how we can work together to address a local teaching artist shortage.

This post outlines our initial reactions, findings, and first steps. We will continue the conversation on October 25 in Oakland at That Teaching Artist Life…Taking Action to Support Teaching Artist Sustainability.

Read More

Working together on the Teaching Artist Shortage

Who here has noticed a teaching artist shortage? 

Everyone raises their hand.

We met for our bi-monthly Arts Education Policy Roundtable meeting on April 7. On our agenda: The teaching artist shortage and advocacy issues. The discussion about the teaching artist shortage had such momentum that we went ahead and spent most of the meeting discussing that. Some of the ideas raised are captured below in three sections:

  1. Teaching Artist Shortage: sharing experiences,

  2. Teaching Artist Shortage: ideas for solutions,

  3. Advocacy

Read More

Arts Ed Data was Unveiled at AEABA Roundtable Meeting

Kathy Fleming of the Public Education Enrichment Fund (PEEF) office chose our February 3 convening of Arts Education Policy Roundtable as the venue to unveil data from a study of what arts education was offered at elementary schools in San Francisco for the 2015-16 school year. The PEEF office has created a profile for each elementary school in the city.

For the data file, you'll need to use the "filter views" feature - look for the funnel-shaped icon.

For the data file, you'll need to use the "filter views" feature - look for the funnel-shaped icon.

You can look at the Report, Searchable Data File,  and Instructions for the Searchable Data File.  This data represents all arts programs funded through the Public Education Enrichment Fund, DCYF, and the Elementary Arts Program. Arts programs that are funded in other ways will be included in data for 2016-17 which will be released in October.

Not included in the data are arts programs that were provided by organizations or funded through other means. We will be working with Ms. Fleming to figure out how our members can best provide the data to fill in those gaps for this year and last year.

Data for middle and high schools can be found via the California Arts Education Data Project.

The SFUSD elementary school arts education data was presented to the San Francisco Board of Education on March 14, 2017 and the PEEF budget for 2017-18 was approved the following week.

Slam! Notes from the 2016 Creative Practice Exchange

On March 3, 2016, the Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area, with support from Leap Arts in Education, held the 2016 Creative Practice Exchange. Nine teachers stepped up to the stage in the Rueff at ACT’s Strand theater to each share a story about their classroom arts education practice in 7 minutes with 14 slides...

Read More