CCA News

Art in Education Teaching Institute Launches

Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007, by Kim Lessard

In June of last year, while Bay Area grade-school students were just settling into the bliss of summer vacation, more than one hundred of their teachers were in classrooms at California College of the Arts. For three days—unusually balmy ones for San Francisco—they listened carefully to instructions; shared paste, colored pencils, and construction paper; and worked thoughtfully together to complete assignments.

In one of their many workshops, the teachers were asked to consider circles—the numerous ways they exist in nature, for instance, and how humans have used them for centuries to solve problems. From seats on the floor, they offered up examples round-robin style. Once they had exhausted simple ones such as the wheel, doughnut, and compact disc, they had to delve deeper and think harder about the world around them. The red blood cell, ball bearing, and Hubble telescope lens kept the last few players in the game. Afterward, the group created artworks based on circles.

In another workshop, the teachers looked at slides of propaganda art. They compared Nazi recruitment posters with United States army posters from World War II to understand how composition, color, and other visual components made their respective messages effective. Then they took on the challenge of communicating messages to one another—at first using only words, then only images.

These activities were all part of the VALUES Project Summer Teaching Institute, organized by CCA's Center for Art and Public Life. Its purpose was to help teachers better understand how to teach art as a subject and how to successfully integrate it into general subject courses.

In fall 2007, due to a growing need for this kind of specialized instruction, CCA will begin offering an expanded version of the program, the Art in Education Teaching Institute. A comprehensive, year-round development program, the AIE Teaching Institute will be open to K–12 generalist teachers as well as teaching artists. It will feature classes that accommodate a variety of schedules as well as an Arts Learning Specialist Certification option for Alameda County teachers and teaching artists.

Those outside the art and education communities might not perceive the difference between teaching artist and art teacher. But there is a difference. Art teachers, like their colleagues in more traditional subjects, receive training through a teacher credentialing program. Teaching artists, however, are professionally trained artists who receive full or partial funding from third-party organizations to teach art in K–12 schools. They often present a solution for schools in which budget constraints, as well as administrative pressure to prioritize resources for traditional subjects, have resulted in a lack of adequate art programming.

According to Ann Wettrich, associate director of arts education for the Center for Art and Public Life, teaching artists are playing an even more crucial role today. Although there are schools who have managed to keep full-time art teacher positions in their budgets, there is currently a shortage of credentialed art teachers nationwide, so teaching artists are able to fill this gap as well. And now, with the recent decision by the California governor and state legislature to allocate $105 million in new annual funding to restore arts education to California's public schools, there is going to be even more demand for qualified individuals.

"The Art in Education Teaching Institute will give teaching artists the insight, understanding, and skills they need to collaborate successfully with schools, providing engaging art and art-integrated lessons that promote learning across all areas of the curriculum," says Wettrich.

For teachers of traditional subjects, the program will help them develop a deeper understanding of the kind of learning that takes place in the context of art education. Integrating these processes into math or science coursework, for instance, can help students (especially in schools without other kinds of art programming) develop skill sets that they might not otherwise. It can also affect how students learn traditional subjects. Consider, for instance, the exercise on circles as part of an introduction to high-school geometry. For some students, learning to connect math to the world at large in such a conceptual and tactile way is exactly what is needed to awaken their interest in the subject.

Jennifer Stuart, program manager for arts education at the Center for Art and Public Life, says, "The Art in Education Teaching Institute will give teaching artists and K–12 educators the tools they need to deliver an outstanding curriculum, but the overall goal is to foster an understanding of how ideas originating in contemporary art and progressive education can be used to create dynamic and effective learning experiences for all students."

The Art in Education Teaching Institute was developed by the Center for Art and Public Life in collaboration with the Alameda County Office of Education. For more information about the courses or to register for classes, see AIE Teaching Institute.

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