Dale Davis & Karen Fitzgerald

This article is reprinted from the Association of Teaching Artist’s website, located online at www.teachingartists.com.

Taking the initial steps toward becoming a teaching artist can be daunting, but this article outlines several resources, strategies, and informational sources prospective teaching artists should investigate. The following list of competencies and capacities teaching artists should possess is broken down into three categories:

1. Understanding your art form.
2. Understanding the classroom environment, pedagogy, and human development aspects of teaching.
3. Understanding the collaborative process and working in an educational environment.

There are a number of valuable sources of information for teaching artists:

• The Association of Teaching Artists’ (ATA) website, www.teachingartists.com
ATA’s listserv is a free electronic grapevine that is emailed to subscribers on a near-daily basis. Job openings are often posted there, as are professional development opportunities and articles of interest to teaching artists. To subscribe, visit the site and follow the prompts. ATA’s website also features listings of cultural organizations, Boards of Cooperative Education, and arts councils throughout New York State that contract with teaching artists. It also contains Teaching Artist’s Journal, a monthly column written by teaching artists to provide insight into the daily functions of teaching artistry.

• The annual Common Ground conference
Common Ground is a coming together of New York State’s arts-in-education field, sponsored by Partners for Arts Education and the New York State Council on the Arts. The Association of Teaching Artists, the New York State Education Department, NYFA, Empire State Partnerships, and the New York State Alliance for Arts Education are collaborating partners. The conference provides an overview of what is presently happening in the arts-in-education field and offers professional development and networking opportunities.

• Arts in Education Regional Roundtables
These nine regional coalitions are supported by NYSCA’s Arts in Education Program. Each roundtable is a resource for information, networking opportunities, and professional development for teaching artists in their specific region of the state. For more information, visit www.nysca.org.

• Local Capacity Building Regrants (LCB)
Part of NYSCA’s Arts in Education Program, this statewide effort provides local support for arts-in-education partnerships between individual schools and individual teaching artists and/or cultural organizations. For more information, visit www.nysca.org.

• Empire State Partnerships (ESP)
ESP identifies, develops, and nurtures promising practices in arts-in-education by supporting long-term collaborations between cultural organizations and schools. ESP offers professional development programs and seminars during the summer. For more information, visit www.espartsed.org.

• Partners for Arts Education (PAE)
PAE provides resources and funding opportunities for arts-in-education in central New York and throughout New York State. For more information, visit www.arts4ed.org.

• The Center for Arts Education
CAE offers expertise and advice on how to become involved in New York City arts education. It also funds school improvement in and through the arts in New York City’s five boroughs. For more information, visit www.cae-nyc.org.

• NYFA
NYFA’s Teaching Artist Source is a free, online, searchable database of opportunities for teaching artists. The database includes professional development opportunities, job openings, fellowships, and more. Teaching Artist Source is available at www.nyfa.org. NYFA also coordinates the Teaching Artist Initiative in conjunction with ATA.

• The New York State Alliance for Arts Education (NYSAAE)
NYSAAE is a resource for information and professional development programs that creates networking and partnership opportunities for educators, teaching artists, and arts professionals throughout the state. NYSAAE represents the state of New York nationally as part of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network. For more information, visit www.nysaae.org/2004/.

• The Regional Leadership Initiative Networks
Groups of school/cultural organization partnerships that receive ESP funding from NYSCA’s Arts in Education Program’s School-wide Improvement Program work together to strengthen their collaborations, to design common professional development opportunities, and to disseminate promising practices. For more information, visit www.nysca.org.

Getting Started

If you do not have teaching experience, you may want to begin by volunteering in a less formal setting, such as working in a community center or summer camp. After-school programs also provide a good place to begin. These are accessible ways to gain experience, to determine your interest, as well as something to include on a résumé. Working as an intern will also help you gain work experience as an artist in the education field. Contact your local Arts in Education Roundtable or arts council to identify appropriate organizations and for assistance in identifying neighborhood cultural providers. For information on New York State’s Learning Standards, visit www.emsc.nysed.gov or http://accelerateu.org. These sites provide information about academic and arts standards.

Classroom Management

There are many books on classroom management, positive discipline, planning instructional lessons, and curriculum units published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. The books can be accessed through the publications section of their website, located at www.ascd.org.

Dale Davis is the president of the Association of Teaching Artists and executive director of the New York State Literary Center.

Karen Fitzgerald is a master teaching artist who provides consultations for several institutions on a wide range of educational issues.