Americans for the Arts

We are pleased to announce our new and expanded employment resource: Americans for the Arts Job Bank. 

You have told us that you are concerned about who will be the next generation of leaders in our field. We hope this service will facilitate your search and become a one-stop shop to help you get connected to top arts employers and job seekers, including new leaders in the field all across America. Our strength is in our numbers-about 60,000 visits to our website per month-which will only increase your visibility.

We are really excited to be heading to Seattle for the 2009 Annual Convention. Although Americans for the Arts hosts the convention, it is really YOUR convention. You are the presenters, participants, and consumers of this event. You are the ones who make it successful. We just set the stage for you to connect, listen, and learn from one another. 

We are currently accepting proposals to present. DEADLINE: AUGUST 1.

Below are some suggestions for what separates a good proposal from a weak proposal.

Initiatives to offer arts instruction to all students within large urban systems have succeeded in recent years. These efforts work to align private resources in support of sustained arts education provision by the public education system. The leaders of these efforts do not rely solely on central offices, state departments of education, or other individual education leaders or institutions. They understand the entire system and engage its leaders in decision-making and execution.

Decision-making critical to the provision of arts education is not centralized; it is distributed throughout the school system, from central office to classroom teacher. It is a series of decisions that determine how minutes and dollars are spent in public education and ultimately what students experience daily. These decisions include district offices but also principals and other administrative staff that work between central office and teachers.

When I first introduced myself as a blogger I vowed to write about my top ten concerns for education.  This blog outlines my utmost and number one concern, and that is: passion, or lack of it in schools these days.  I believe that a deterioration of schooling is directly related to a lack of passion in learning. Between frameworks, worksheets, testing, and enormous structures forced upon teachers, there is little time in the day to learn to love learning, or to be excited by learning.

Yesterday, I witnessed just the opposite.  I joined Carol Channing and her husband Harry Kullijian as they visited a magnet arts school, Lisa J.  Mails Elementary School in Murrieta, California. David Long, former California State Secretary of Education, had arranged this visit, and accompanied us as well. He has been a proponent of the art’s place in successful education, and has worked to partner Carol Channing and Harry Kullijian with the state P.T.A. and School Board Associations.