Anne Rhodes

This past fall and winter, representatives from NYFA, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), and the Association for Teaching Artists conducted a series of Town Hall Meetings across the state to determine what professional development opportunities are currently available for teaching artists and to establish goals for the future of the practice.

As part of the ongoing Teaching Artist Initiative, these meetings followed the survey sent to artists and cultural organizations last year, the results of which were profiled in the fall 2004 issue of Chalkboard. In the Town Hall Meetings, groups in Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, New York City, Long Island, and Rochester shared information about the training and professional development opportunities for teaching artists offered in their area, as well as thoughts about the barriers and problems teaching artists and cultural organizations encounter and what teaching artists need to know and be able to do in order to work effectively in the classroom. What follows is a summary of what was learned from the Town Hall Meetings.

Many organizations, especially those who have been in existence for a while, have a good understanding of the value and complexity of teaching artists’ work, and are providing effective professional development. That’s the good news. There are, however, several challenges that both teaching artists and cultural organizations face. Most professional development opportunities are available only through cultural organizations, usually in the context of employment. Many cultural organizations primarily work with (or prefer to work with) teaching artists who already have experience (for more information on how to get started as a teaching artist, see the article by Dale Davis and Karen Fitzgerald in this issue of Chalkboard).

Professional development is an expensive investment for an organization to make in an artist who may move or otherwise become unavailable. The professional development offered is usually very specific to the mission, needs, and goals of each particular organization, and the learning may not be transferable to other organizations. Comprehensive professional development resources offered by Empire State Partnerships such as Summer Seminar and the Regional Leadership Networks are primarily available to artists who have been hired into a partnership. Most colleges and universities with arts and/or education departments are unaware of the arts-in-education field, and their departments of education, fine arts, and arts education are often unconnected. Arts-in-education as a field is poorly recognized or understood, and is often invisible within communities and among cultural organizations, arts councils, schools, artists, and funders, with NYSCA standing out as a major exception. That’s the bad news.

Goals that emerged

What might address the issues and needs outlined above? What might we begin working toward? Here’s a list of several goals that emerged from the Town Hall Meetings:
• Increasing the visibility of arts-in-education among artists, colleges, universities, school districts, and cultural and educational organizations statewide. This involves introducing these organizations to the work of teaching artists, to results from the Teaching Artist Initiative, and to the history and language of arts-in-education.
• Creating diverse, accessible portals of entry for artists who are interested in becoming teaching artists, as well as widely available professional development for teaching artists to upgrade their skills in a number of areas.
• Creating well-recognized portals for organizations and schools that are interested in embarking on arts-in-education, and helping them find guidance in supporting and training their staff.
• Reaching a statewide consensus about the foundational skills teaching artists need in order to work in any organization, as well as agreeing upon benchmarks for what artists need to know, understand, and be able to do at different levels of mastery.
• Reaching a statewide consensus about what constitutes quality in professional development and what kinds of professional development are most effective.
• Exploring the possibility of making professional development for teaching artists more affordable through an ongoing, statewide delivery structure process.
• Identifying what the work of teaching artists is worth, developing model fee structures, and determining who should pay for artists to acquire skills as an educator.
• Working collaboratively with New York State’s arts-in-education organizations and arts councils and potentially working with out-of-state organizations, as well as colleges and universities.
• Covering several levels of arts-in-education training, from foundational to advanced.

Additional questions

• What are the benefits and dangers of “certification”? When should a teaching artist be labeled a “master”?
• Should print and/or digital resources be developed for teaching artist training?
• How can artists best learn about pedagogy, child development, curricula, and learning standards?
• Would a statewide roster of teaching artists be valuable to the field?
• What systems could be developed to help teaching artists stay current in their artistic field?

Immediate next steps

We encourage current and prospective teaching artists to talk with colleagues about the issues raised by the Teaching Artist Initiative, to create a forum for dialogue, and even to try out something that might have potential. The Teaching Artist Initiative intends to find ways to dialogue with artists about what opportunities could be created to increase access to training and what artists expect from cultural organizations. We will also seek discussions with cultural organizations about what kinds of training might be provided jointly statewide and what needs to be provided at the organizational level, as well as reaching a consensus about what types of professional development might be shared and how it should be delivered. In the coming year we hope to organize or encourage a few pilots of collaborative professional development for teaching artists. We’ll all keep talking to each other and continue to improve our already excellent arts-in-education programs across the state. And the students in New York State will be the happy beneficiaries, the best news of all.

Anne Rhodes has worked in arts-in-education for over 25 years as a performing artist, teaching artist, trainer, facilitator, and consultant. Her work most recently has focused on arts-integrated, inter-disciplinary curriculum development; partnerships between arts organizations and schools; and professional development for teaching artists and teachers.

To view survey tools, complete data, and notes from conversations at Common Ground ’04 and Empire State Partnerships’ Summer Seminar, please visit .