IEA Newsletter for Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Welcome to the Institute for Education and the Arts' newsletter for Wednesday, July 31, 2008. We apologize that extenuating circumstances delayed this issue’s publication by a day. The newsletter is published each Wednesday to the IEA listserv and archived here on the IEA blog.

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21ST CENTURY LEARNERS
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PREPARING CREATIVE AND CRITICAL THINKERS
Donald J. Treffinger, Educational Leadership Online, Summer 2008
“Once upon a time, educators might have said to their students, ‘If you'll pay close attention to what I'm going to teach you, you'll learn everything you need to know for a successful life.’ It's doubtful that this message was ever entirely true, but it's certainly not true today. We don't know all the information that today's students will need or all the answers to the questions they will face. Indeed, increasingly, we don't even know the questions. These realities mean that we must empower students to become creative thinkers, critical thinkers, and problem solvers—people who are continually learning and who can apply their new knowledge to complex, novel, open-ended challenges; people who will proceed confidently and competently into the new horizons of life and work.”
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ARTS IN EDUCATION FILM
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DOCUMENTARY TRACKS SUCCESS OF SOUTH L.A.’S FOSHAY CHOIR
Mary Engel, Los Angeles Times, 7/27/08
“It all started 10 years ago when middle school student Helen Camarillo walked up to music executive Tom Sturges at a Christmas party for youths and adults interested in mentoring … Sturges, a son of legendary screenwriter and director Preston Sturges, asked Helen where she went to school. Foshay Learning Center, she told him, naming a school in a crime-ridden neighborhood in South Los Angeles … For the next six years Sturges worked with the Foshay Learning Center Choir as members wrote and performed songs before ever-growing audiences. The choir's journey was featured in a documentary that premiered Saturday in West Hollywood as part of the Dances With Films independent film festival. The audience included 150 Foshay students and Sturges, who is now working with a new group of choir members. Directed by Reginald D. Brown, ‘Witness to a Dream’ chronicles the success of not only the choir but also of the students. In a school district known for high dropout rates, Helen and 30 other sixth-grade choir students graduated from high school in 2003, and 97% were accepted to four-year colleges. Of those, 92% are now college graduates.
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ONLINE LITERACY
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LITERACY DEBATE: ONLINE, R U REALLY READING?
Motoko Rich, New York Times, 7/27/08
“Books are not Nadia Konyk’s thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest. Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland … Her mother … would prefer that Nadia, who gets A’s and B’s at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Ms. Konyk said, “I’m just pleased that she reads something anymore.” Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.”
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SCHOOLS FOR THE ARTS
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STATE GIVES $250,000 TO HAGERSTOWN HIGH SCHOOL
Baltimore Examiner/Associated Press, 7/24/08
“The state is giving a quarter-million-dollar boost to a planned, arts-oriented high school in downtown Hagerstown [MD]. The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development says the grant will help finance the renovation of an old movie theater … the school will offer a college-preparatory academic curriculum in the arts to 300 students. They will be trained in the instrumental, performing, visual and vocal arts.”
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ARTSPACE
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ARTISTS TO GET THEIR SPACE IN ELGIN
Chicago Daily Herald, 7/25/08
“The Minneapolis-based group [Artspace] has chosen Elgin for its second Illinois project to create a co-op for artists. What put the city over the top? ‘Leadership, a vision, a drive - those were all the big indicators,’ said Stacey Mickelson, Artspace director of government relations, Thursday before a meeting with artists and community leaders. ‘We had a gut reaction in our first visit here that told Wendy (Holmes, Artspace vice president of resource development) and I this was the place.’ The 29-year-old not-for-profit group has 23 projects in 14 states. Artspace uses federal, state and local grants to convert neglected warehouses and old buildings into apartments, studio space, galleries and other commercial-use spaces.”
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GRANTS AND AWARDS
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MUSIC GRANTS
Mockingbird Foundation
“The Mockingbird Foundation, Inc. ("Mockingbird") offers competitive grants to schools and nonprofit organizations that effect improvements in areas of importance to the Phish fan community. Our programmatic focus is music education for children.”
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