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