A Vision and Mission for a Fine Arts Academy

For our spring cohort sessions, we focused on forming a vision and mission for our fine arts programs.

Jerry Foster, the leader of the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, presented to our cohort in March on the development and expansion of their fine arts academy.  Their academy started from very little and has now recently added its own music recording studio.  They also offer multiple levels of choral and instrumental music, dance, visual arts, theatre, and other innovative courses.  Foster’s expertise was very helpful in providing guidance on ways to expand fine arts programs in relation to using online academic courses as an avenue for allowing students to take more fine arts electives, using adjunct instructors, and finding financial resources.

For our programs, we decided to form a vision and mission as we continue to expand our programs and course offerings and begin to see and market the fine arts programs as an academy.  We also wanted our vision and mission to reveal the long-term unlimited possibilities in relation to establishing a fine arts academy.

For our April session, we used all of our professional development experiences throughout the year to brainstorm and form our vision and mission for a fine arts academy.

We developed these program-defining statements:

The Sylacauga Fine Arts Academy Vision:  Cultivating excellence through artistic expressions.

The Sylacauga Fine Arts Academy Mission Statement:  The mission of the SHS Fine Arts Academy is to engage students in the arts community, promote independent thinking and self- discipline, and foster lifelong artistic appreciation and development.

These will help provide focus and purpose as we continue development of fine arts at SHS and throughout Sylacauga City Schools.

Fine Arts: Engaging Students in Content

The fine arts provide the original template for differentiated instruction and addressing the different learning styles for students.  A focus of our state arts grant is turning around professional development related to using the arts as an instructional tool in all content areas.  For our January cohort meeting, the fine arts cohort presented and modeled engaging fine arts instructional strategies to the secondary literacy cohort.  These strategies involved engaging students in content and informational texts.

             
Shelly Bailey modeled a “Tiny Toy Tale” lesson.  Using artistically modified dollar store toys and other manipulatives, she told a three-dimensional and very animated story that presented and explained the colors of the color wheel and their relationships with each other.  While this was an example of a fine arts strategy with the content of visual arts, as Bailey explained, this strategy could be used to engage students in content and informational texts in any subject.  While the teacher could model a “Tiny Toy Tale” with any content-related information, students could then create and present their own three-dimensional animated tales to engage in and retain important content information.

            
Chad Littleton modeled a lesson utilizing tableau drama (a motionless dramatic representation of a scene) that addressed the context of the Gettysburg Address in 10^th grade literature.  After reading online texts and viewing online videos through blendspace.com, participating teachers used the information from the online materials to plan tableau scenes representing the beginning, middle, and end of the action at Gettysburg.  Again, this strategy could be used to engage students in content and informational texts in all subject areas.

              
The goal of this session and the modeled lessons was to show that the fine arts should not be an extra responsibility for the classroom teacher, but they should provide necessary tools for allowing the students to access the content in a fun and engaging way.

SCS Fine Arts Through Social Media

Sylacauga Children's Choir Facebook Page
Aggie Art Facebook Page
SHS Aggie Theatre Facebook Page
Sylacauga City Schools Choral Department Facebook Page
Sylacauga High School Aggie Band Facebook Page

Developing a Vision for the Arts

As we look for innovative ways to offer various arts programs to our students, we are looking for ideas from other successful programs. For our October fine arts cohort session, we were able to visit Opelika City Schools. The visit provided an opportunity to sharpen our vision in relation to the organization of our programs and with possibilities within each arts discipline.

Our initial meeting with the superintendent and central office administrators gave insight to the development of the Opelika arts programs over many years. The system leaders showcased the district-wide leadership and financial support to arts education. They also highlighted the high-quality expectations for all of the arts from the community, parents, students, and faculty.  This culture has evidently been built over many years as their programs have grown and produced award-winning products in choral music, theatre, visual arts, and band.

As we observed across most of their schools, we were able to get ideas and affirmation in relation to our own programs. While visual arts and music in the elementary schools were organized very similarly to ours, their secondary arts courses were numerous. Even though we are smaller in size, we were still able to see ways that we could collaborate between arts disciplines, with other departments, and with community groups to possibly offer more programs for our secondary students.

Our observations also provided some examples of great instructional practices. The middle school choral music teacher displayed very efficient use of class time and excellent classroom management with strong energy and positive teacher-student interactions. Seeing a diverse group of middle school students energetically performing show choir numbers was a highlight of our visit and an image we would like to apply to our own vision. We were also able to learn new ways to organize resources for elementary visual arts lessons that can involve hundreds of students, and we were able to see a creative and positive classroom climate in regular theatre classes and structured production practices.

The whole visit provided us ideas that we can immediately apply in our classrooms and that we can use as we plan for the future of arts education in Sylacauga.

Out of the Box...Into the Arts

Implementing the arts requires thinking outside of the box.  The fine arts cohort this year is searching for ways to think outside of the box in order to make arts programs available to more students.  We are also working to help content area teachers to use the arts through innovative and engaging strategies, specifically literacy strategies that address the ACCRS, with literary and informational texts.

Many of our recent professional development opportunities through a state arts grant helped shape our direction for the year. Mrs. Crocker, Ms. Gonzalez, and I (Mr. Littleton) attended the Alabama Institute for Education of the Arts (AIEA) this summer.  In our cohort meeting, we shared many of the presented strategies in music, visual arts, and theatre that not only apply to our programs, but that also provide a diverse toolbox of instructional strategies that can engage students across all content and curriculum.  Mrs. Bailey, our new secondary visual arts teacher, shared her experiences with similar training in content and literacy application through the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Additionally, Mr. Tidwell recently attended the Show Choir Camps of America in Chicago, and he shared with us about networking with other choir teachers and participating in music skill clinics and reading workshops with music publishers.  Clearly, we are all excited and ready to share our resources with students and other teachers.

In our first cohort meeting of the year, we set our two-tier goal addressing our own programs and the content area classrooms.  We then considered opportunities that would help us attain our vision for the arts. We are planning sessions involving site visits and guest presenters that will allow us to become more familiar with other successful fine arts programs and the logistics that make these programs work. With content area application, we are planning a session to share many of our strategies with the secondary literacy cohort, and we are seeking other similar opportunities as well.

With our programs and our relationship with the content areas, it is all about: 

                                                                                                      
                                                                                             Out of the Box……Into the Arts