Anderson Ranch Presents The Art Educator Institute
June 28, 2009 – July 3, 2009: Anderson Ranch Arts Center is pleased to provide a unique weeklong opportunity for k-12 art educators to reconnect as artists and earn continuing education credits. The Art Educator Institute at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village, CO, will bring 15 art educators together from around the nation to think critically about their dual identities of artist/educators. Besides extensive studio time to focus on personal art making, there will be specific seminar sessions themed Mapping Our World: Intersections from the Studio to the Classroom where educators will relate studio practice to pedagogy. The Institute will build a community of learners and activate the expertise of each participant through dialogue, critique, inquiry, art making, and reflection. This opportunity is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and covers most expenses for each participant.
Time at the Ranch will be rigorous; each art educator will enroll in a weeklong workshop and spend a large portion of their week in the studio. Art educators will be able to select from a five-day workshop topic in the areas of painting and drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography and digital media, or woodworking in order to learn from professional artists through demonstrations, individual instruction, and slide lectures. Some of the workshops available to art educators will be Jack Balas, “Photo Canvas Hybrids;” Sergei Tsvetkov, “Beginning Intaglio;” Rick Parsons, “5 Days, 5 Materials;” and Wendy Babcox, “Digital Storytelling.”
In addition, the seminar component, Mapping Our World: Intersections from the Studio to the Classroom, will be facilitated by Cynthia Weiss, a noted artist and educator, and will explore a highly successful model of practice developed at Project AIM called the Arts Integration Learning Spiral. The Learning Spiral utilizes the art making process as a paradigm for developing curriculum and building arts partnerships. Participants will experience each step of the learning spiral including: creating a safe community of learners, working with big ideas to connect arts across the curriculum, creating inquiry-based units of study, building partnerships between arts educators and classroom teachers, learning in the language of the arts, activating exhibition as documentation, and developing a reflective teaching practice.
The objectives for the arts education seminar include:
- Creating a community of learners.
- Utilizing the concept of Mapping as an organizing idea.
- Investigating current scholarship in the area of arts integration, arts partnerships, cultural knowledge, and social action.
- Appling thematic arts integration pedagogy to one’s classroom/school practice through practical engagement in lesson planning and art making.
- Making connections between studio practice and teaching practice.
All participants will be required to enroll in both a workshop and the educator seminars as well as submit final documentation on how they incorporated what they learned at Anderson Ranch into their classroom practice.
Dates
The Art Educator Institute will run from June 28, 2009 – July 3, 2009. Participants are expected to arrive on June 28, 2009.
Compensation
This Institute is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and participants will be compensated with workshop tuition, lodging in a shared dorm, a full meal plan at the Anderson Ranch café, and a $100 travel stipend. Participants will be responsible for a registration fee of $45, studio fees, and additional travel expenses.
Eligibility and Requirements
Currently practicing, licensed k-12 art educators within the United States. Each educator must complete course work outlined in the seminar and submit documentation, such as lesson plans and a reflection paper, upon returning and integrating the ideas from the Institute into their classroom practice.
Facilitator
The seminar portion of this Institute will be facilitated by Cynthia Weiss, a professional visual artist, arts educator and teaching artist, with 25 years experience as a leader in the field of the arts and education. She is currently the Associate Director of School Partnerships/Project AIM at the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago. She directs Project AIM (Arts Integration Mentorship), which is a partnership program that trains Chicago Public School teachers and Chicago teaching artists to develop arts-integrated teaching practices that foster student learning through the arts. Cynthia was a founding member of Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), and is co-editor with Gail Burnaford and Arnold Aprill of the book; Renaissance in the Classroom: Arts Integration and Meaningful Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates, 2001, and the co-editor, with Amanda Lichtenstein, of; AIMprint: New Relationships in the Arts and Learning; published by Columbia College Chicago in 2008.
Graduate Credits / Continuing Education Credits
Two graduate credits can be earned from Mesa State College for participation in this Institute.
