Americans for the Arts

Richard Kessler

Tim Mikulski, who organized this blog salon, suggested topics for us to consider for the salon and it got me to thinking that since I blog a lot about issues, I would love to post a lesson of all things.

So, here’s one that I carry around with me wherever I go, although I don’t get to use it very much these days.

I hope you won’t mind if I skip the alignment with standards and some of the other traditional formats for curricula. I have formal versions of this lesson somewhere or another, but for the salon, I did a quick write-up from memory. 

Tim Mikulski

Although I successfully avoided using Twitter for a while after it was first introduced to the world. I figured that I didn't need another time suck added to my life beyond Gmail and Facebook.

While that is still probably true, I also discovered a better use of Twitter than just reading the crazy Tweets of Kanye West. It actually helps me do my job.

When I moved over to become arts education program manager at Americans for the Arts, I brought along our weekly newsletter, Arts Watch, with me to the new position.

I already had too many Google News alerts and also have a Post-It with 12 search phrases that I use each week to collect information that goes into that publication.

What I didn't realize is that Twitter can be used in a way that I would never have thought of until a friend of a coworker mentioned it to me - it's a news gathering system.

By "following" other arts and arts education organizations, practitioners, managers, etc., you end up having information delivered to your feed throughout the day.    

Listening to my grandmother tell stories about her youth, I cringed at the gallows humor of her siblings grabbing chickens by the neck and swinging them around their head trying to make a quick break, or their mother harkening out not to chop the head off too close to the clothes line.

Today’s youth are learning how to make their way a wee bit differently, instead of killing and eating their beloved livestock, they have really cool games to play, with titles like the just released Homefront for Xbox 360.

The plot is fabulous, the year is 2007 and the U.S. is pit against North Korea on our own killing fields, American soil.    

Field trip.  Those two words were music to my ears when I was in school, as they probably still are to most kids who are lucky enough to hear them these days.  For me it meant not only getting away from the monotony of the school day, but more often than not getting to experience something new and different: a museum, a musical performance, a zoo, etc.  But as most people are all too familiar with these days, budgets for education are being slashed across the country.  I have a feeling those two magical words are being heard less and less as each year passes.

With teachers in the arts facing layoffs across the country (check out these examples in New York and Chicago), it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ensure students are getting their fair share of the arts, and undoubtedly that means field trips centered around the arts are going out the window.  While we are advocating for school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and the federal government to not only keep arts education funding, but increase it, teachers are forced to get creative (luckily they had an arts education, right?) with exposing their students to the arts.

Tim Mikulski

As my third Arts Education Blog Salon comes to a conclusion, I wanted to first thank you for stopping by and (hopefully) reading all 31 posts over the past week.

The good news is that all of the posts will remain on the site and you can view them all at any time via this link - blog.artsusa.org/tag/march-2011-salon. You can also search our blog by topic or by other tags listed at the bottom of each post. And, if you are ever interested in blogging yourself, just send me an email.

I also want to thank all of the intrepid bloggers from the week: Victoria Plettner-Saunders, Ken Busby, Kristy Callaway, Alyx Kellington, Lynne Kingsley, Rob Schultz, Deb Vaughn, Allen Bell, Kim Dabbs, Rachel Evans, Kathi R. Levin, Joan Weber, Marete Wester, Richard Kessler, Merryl Goldberg, Clayton Lord, and Ben Burdick.

Each of the authors (among them a few staff members of Americans for the Arts, members of our Arts Education Council, Twitter friends, meeting presenters, and members of Americans for the Arts) wrote great pieces that rarely overlapped, but when they did, they complimented each other.

Considering my usual guidance is, "Write on anything related to arts education that you feel needs to be addressed - in under 650 words," I think they do a wonderful job.