A Conversation in Washington DC about Californians Working Together

Name	Louise Music
Date of conversation	Friday, April 13, 2012
Conversation Participants
On April 13, participants at the Arts Education Partnership Spring Forum in Washington DC, met for a lunchtime conversation to discuss opportunities and challenges unique to California. 14 leaders gathered at lunchtime. They were: Anthony Cantrell from CSU Northridge, Julie Fry – Program Officer at the Hewlett Foundation, Martha McKenna, Michael McCarthy and Lisa Donavon from Lesley University, Eric Engdahl from Cal State East Bay, Browning Neddeau from University of San Francisco, Julia Marshal from San Francisco State, Jessica Mele from Performing Arts Workshop, Oren Slozberg from Visual Thinking Strategies, Lauren Stevenson, researcher and writer, Sharon Herpin from West Ed, Linda Johnson from Streetside Stories and Louise Music from the Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership
Meeting Topics?	The conversation was framed around benchmark opportunities in California such as Create CA (the statewide effort by the California Department of Education and California Arts Council to bring arts into every school), planning for the Bay Area National Arts in Education Week in September, legislation to create a Creativity Index to assure access to opportunities for creativity in schools, and the November ballot initiatives to raise money for schools (the millionaire tax sponsored by the CTA and the governor’s office, and Our Children, Our Future sponsored by the CA PTA.
Photo: courtesy students at the Arts and Humanities Academy at Berkeley High School, from the RADIATE project – an interdisciplinary study of radiation, issues of power, language and visual arts
Where are we now? Share key takeaways
The group brainstormed ideas about how to demonstrate the intrinsic value of the arts for individual and collective solution finding: a. Connect to Linked Learning b. Get out of the arts education silo c. Connect Lesley University cohorts to local networking and learning opportunities by creating and distributing a packet of resources d. “Tagging” resources and compiling them into resources that make them easily accessible e. Connect with CAAE’s local advocacy networks to schools, districts, higher education and each other f. Connect and mobilize teachers g. Convene arts teachers to name their value and their new leadership role in helping all teachers learn to teach in and through the arts h. Host a ShoM-apalooza for dance, music, visual, media arts and drama teachers i. Dance and theater credential
Where should we go, and why? Share key takeaways
Next Steps: Think about Pollinators in Teacher preparation, Pre- Service and In-service- Work together to eliminate access to arts learning through inequitable zip code predictability -Focus on schools in most need and directly confront issues of poverty, race and trauma through the arts.- Prepare teachers for reality and change making – Define role of teachers – Define role of teaching artists – All educators creating deep and important learning toward valuable purposes – Connect to common core movement – Move from a stance of hoping to be included to bringing arts educators as resources that can help
How Should we get there? Share key takeaways	Connect to Systemic Strategies and Systems 1. CORE – 7 school districts in California 2. CSUs / Bob Bullwinkle Fresno COE 3. CCSESA Define the knowledge, skills and dispositions that every child should develop through our California public education experienceDefine what we can imagine that children can develop into and become – Dream, Design, and Critique – Diane Ravitch “Will California lead the Nation?” YES
Next Steps?
Assemble a committee to review the CDE’s Education Blueprint in order to: o Connect arts as solutions to Blueprint goals o Include non-arts educators o Revisit the goals and make sure they are the right ones o Assure content integrity in all disciplines o Professional development in eco-literacy o here’s how arts educators can help complete the Blueprint and what needs to be added  Draw on Lauren Stevenson’s Ethnographic study of Destiny Arts as a means to craft the language to emerge from boundaries and to describe: – How we live – Social lives – Artistic lives – Make wordles of Destiny kids experiences: Involve Destiny Kids and others

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