PS/MS 95’s Arts Leadership Team is one of fifteen Arts Leadership Teams that belongs to a community of arts leaders in the Bronx, the Bronx Arts Learning Community (BALC). This year, DreamYard has gathered fifteen of our partnerships to create a community of schools who are all committed to strengthening the arts programs in their schools to provide their students with a quality arts education.
Each school that belongs to the BALC has formed an ALT. It’s been really amazing and interesting to see the different things that have come out of each ALT - school art celebrations and festivals, arts professional developments, arts newsletters and teachers impacting the way that the arts are programmed within their schools.
I’ve had the opportunity to sit in on ALT meetings at each of our schools. Given the time and the space, ALT are able to have conversations about the arts in their schools and take steps towards accomplishing their goals. It’s been wonderful to see inspired individuals take on leadership roles, teams starting new traditions within their school and also to see administrators fully supporting their ALT’s efforts.
This leaves me believing that despite the many challenges that surround teachers, administrators, schools, Teaching Artists and arts organizations, many great things can be accomplished by people who are willing to make it happen!
How can we get more people to take the time to come together and have these conversations? How can we further support these efforts? What other ways can we set ALT up to be successful?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Elizabeth // Apr 8, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Maile,
Getting people together often seems like the hardest part! It sounds like ALTs and the BALC are great models to create opportunities for people to connect and share. I love your observation about teams “starting new traditions” because that really speaks to building capacity within the school. Could those events, in whatever form that take on, be an opportunity for the teams to share their goals and accomplishments with the community, both school-wide and larger? If the event was a celebration (or performance, gallery opening, etc) could it happen multiple times so that there are opportunities to involve sharing with students, teachers, and perhaps something in the evening for parents and community members?
2 Elsa Sanabia // Apr 14, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I think one of the challenges we are facing right now is not having common planning time. The ALT is making a great effort to make it possible, but with time allowed to have these meetings, more things could get accomplished. Also, I think that next year we need to include parents to be part of our meetings. That will be wonderful!
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