Americans for the Arts

The typical structure of 99% of U.S. non-profit arts organizations includes segregated artistic, administrative, and development departments. My colleagues who work in such segregated institutions experience chasms between departments and waste time bickering and competing for an even share of resources. Aside from the intention of human resource efficiency, I have never understood the acceptance of this structure.

Upon leaving graduate school I was fortunate to co-lead a small organization, Asian American Dance Performances, where there was no division between the artistic and administrative staff. I happily danced and choreographed while writing my first grants and figuring out excel spreadsheets. I always loved math and spatial relationships, which were the modalities I used to learn dance. After completing a graduate program where my portfolio included a written thesis, performance thesis, and written and oral comprehensive examinations, I was able to talk and write about dance with ease. I could make a case for my artistic work and the work of my fellow artists.

The more I learn from the ongoing research on adolescent cognitive development, the more I realize the degree to which high school students are expected to make major decisions for which their brains are not quite ready. It’s no wonder that the college decision process, as well as the consideration of careers, is so overwhelming for many if not most 17- and 18-year-olds. I remember my son at that age: he couldn’t imagine going into any field other than music. Yet the plethora of choices and decisions without clear guidelines to facilitate the process proved to be highly confusing and enormously time-consuming for him. In fact, it became the inspiration for the creation of MajoringInMusic.com, in an effort to ease some of that angst for other students - and their parents.

I grew up attending family orchestral concerts with my mother, two childhood friends and their parents, and my piano teacher who, contrary to the stereotype, I was very fond of. We would head over to the symphony hall every few months to experience the orchestra, and I was even encouraged to enjoy the experience more with the promise of a trip to a favorite restaurant afterwards. Experiencing entertainment aimed at children just my age, with people I loved, the opportunity should have all led to positive experiences with the orchestra. Yet, every family concert morning, I would wake up with dread of the boredom that I was about to endure. I grew up hating orchestral kid’s concerts!

It’s that time of year – summer is here! As we say goodbye to another school year and take the next month or two to regroup, plan, and hopefully enjoy some much needed R&R (preferably on a beach), here are a few (mostly free) really great professional development resources to help refuel, recharge, and inspire our creative minds. The bonus is they’re all available online!

The whirlwind of recent congressional activity on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), ultimately culminating in the Senate’s passage of the bipartisan Every Child Achieves Act (S. 1177) and the House’s Student Success Act (H.R. 5), has sparked a great number of questions from music and arts educators, as to the implications of these pieces of legislation, both in policy and practice. For those interested, a thorough legislative analysis of what exactly the bills WOULD do for music and arts (primarily as a result of their listing as core academic subjects) is available from Americans for the Arts. I am routinely asked by music educators, however, about several bigger picture issues, and how they pertain to the Senate bill, in particular, with regard to what it WOULD NOT do. As such, I thought it would be useful to try and speak to those concerns directly, all at once – and try to outline the limits of a new ESEA.

How many of us have had the conversation around Arts Integration and Arts for Arts sake? Value in both right? We know from countless examples and research studies that the best benefit to a child is to have a arts specialist, arts integration AND a teaching artist to provide the ‘expert’ outside perspective. This is something I know in my core –something I teach my graduate candidates at CCNY. So I had to laugh when it took me nine years to apply this same structure to the teaching of Advocacy –which I did for the first time this year and the results have been triumphant!