Center For Arts Education Awards 150 New Parents As Arts Partners Grants
NEW YORK, Jan. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Center for Arts Education (CAE), the leading voice in restoring and revitalizing the arts in New York City public schools, is pleased to announce 150 new Parents As Arts Partners grants have been awarded for the Spring 2007 semester. The grants total nearly $450,000 and have been awarded to a rich variety of New York City public schools to implement original arts-based programs designed to suit the individual needs of each school.
Parents and teachers from all 150 grantee schools will gather at New York University’s Helen and Martin Kimmel Center for University Life on Thursday, February 1, 2007, for a day-long series of workshops highlighting best practices in parent recruitment strategies, building parent advocacy for the arts, and other essential topics as a program kick off. The Kimmel Center is located at 60 Washington Square South.
Numerous studies indicate that parent involvement is a key factor in a child’s academic success. These CAE-funded programs use the arts as a means of encouraging parents to take an active role in their children’s education by participating in activities related to current curriculum units in English, science, math and social studies, as well as arts.
Since establishing the program in 1998, The Center for Arts Education has awarded more than 1000 Parent As Arts Partners (PAAP) grants to over 400 schools, serving 50,000 parents. It is estimated that more than 15,000 parents and more than 23,000 students will benefit from this year’s grants, including 7400 parents who are not currently active in their children’s schools. This year, 104 different cultural organizations — ranging from major theater companies and museums to community based poetry and cultural societies — are engaged in individually tailored partnerships with each of the 150 grantees to help bring quality arts learning to families in all five boroughs.
Nearly every New York City public school is eligible to apply for Parents As Arts Partners grants, including New York City Department of Education approved charter. For the 2006-2007 PAAP grant period, 232 schools submitted applications and 150 were awarded grants (10% of NYC public schools). These include 19 schools in The Bronx; 46 schools in Brooklyn; 26 schools in Manhattan; 41 schools in Queens; and 18 schools in Staten Island. Of these, 10 are special education and 1 is a charter school. Grants have been awarded to 42 schools new to the program this year.*
In addition: — 73% of grantees have 50% or more students eligible for free lunch (110 schools) — 56% of grantees are Title I schools (84 schools) — 19% are Empowerment Zone schools (28 schools) — 13% are schools have been sited as in need of improvement (SINI – 19 schools) — 5% are in need of corrective action (8 schools)
Program summaries for all 150 funded schools are available at http://www.cae-nyc.org/.
In addition to the workshops at the February 1 event, The Honorable Kate Levin, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner; Dr. Sharon Dunn, Senior Instructional Manager for the Arts of the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Arts and Special Projects; and Laurie Tisch, Chairman of The Center for Arts Education; will offer keynote remarks to the grantees.
Major funding for the PAAP Grant Program is provided by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and the NYC Department of Education. Additional support is provided by the Citigroup Foundation.
* Based on numbers reported by schools in the grant applications.
The Center for Arts Education (CAE) is a not-for-profit organization committed to restoring, stimulating, and sustaining quality arts education as an essential part of every child’s education. We create, identify, fund, and support exemplary partnerships and programs that demonstrate how the arts contribute to learning and student achievement. CAE is dedicated to influencing educational and fiscal policies that will support arts education in all of the City’s public schools. Since its founding in 1996, CAE, led by Chairman Laurie M. Tisch, has awarded nearly $40 million in private and public funding to support arts education partnerships and programs.
For more information on The Center for Arts Education, visit http://www.cae-nyc.org/.
Parents As Arts Partners
2006-2007 Grant Summary Highlights
Program summaries for all 150 funded schools are available at http://www.cae-nyc.org/
Parent Learning — MS 61: Dr. Gladstone H. Atwell Middle School, Crown Heights – “Slave Narrative Project” The PAAP grant received by MS 61 provides much needed arts programming (the school currently has none) while preparing parents to more actively assist in their children’s Social Studies homework assignments. In partnership with The Afrikan Poetry Theatre, the school presents four after school workshops where parents become familiar with the autobiographical slave narratives of the 1930′s and 1940′s, as documented by the Federal Works Progress Administration. A teaching artist leads parents through the process of turning these autobiographical timelines into a storytelling format. Parents engage in theatrical and storytelling exercises and create visual works of art that connect to the slave narratives and to other cultural history content. They are also encouraged to attend in-school Black History Month performances with their children and are provided with related books and literature for home use as part of the program. — Brooklyn Academy of Science & Environment (BASE), Crown Heights – “Parenting Journey” BASE’s three-month “Parenting Journey” PAAP grant teaches and reinforces positive behavioral, relational, and parenting skills through theater and the performing arts. Meeting for fifteen Saturdays throughout the year, participants navigate parental issues such as parental self-esteem, self-awareness as caregivers, and breaking cycles of negative family communication. Workshops guided by teaching artists from Henry Street Settlement lead parents in theater games and improvisation exercises to generate and craft a script for performance addressing these family issues, as well as rehearsals with participants fulfilling many roles including performance and production. A culminating performance takes place at Henry Street Settlement for an invited audience of families, friends, and the BASE community. Community and Environment — PS 40: The Augustus Saint Gaudens School, Gramercy Park – “Designing Green” PS 40 uses its PAAP grant to support the school’s emerging arts and the second grade Social Studies “City Study” curriculum where participants study green roof structure design and create their own decorative green roof tiles. A green roof is a roof of a building that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and soil, or a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing membrane. Benefits may include reduced heating usage for the building, as well as a means of filtering pollutants and heavy metals out of rainwater. The workshop series begins with an introduction to green roof design hosted by the Center for Architecture Foundation where families create green roof structures themselves. A subsequent walking tour through the PS 40 community encourages participants to document historical and architectural details of the neighborhood through sketches and journal entries. The final segment of the program is a hands-on workshop at PS 40 where participants create castings and decorative tiles inspired by what they have learned in previous sessions. The castings and tiles are to be mounted on the green roof structure currently under construction at PS 40 through a recent city council grant. — PS/IS 298: Dr. Betty Shabazz School for the Performing Arts, Brownsville – “It’s After 10 PM: Safety and Our Children” PS/IS 298′s PAAP grant provides funding for a program introducing parents and students to the creative and technical skills of video documentary filmmaking. The school does not normally have access to video and film equipment, so this PAAP grant provides artistic and technological experiences that are otherwise out of reach. All content address safety, violence, community, and parent-child relationships and other issues affecting the school’s Brownsville residents. Through four after-school workshops participants are learn storyboarding, camera use, interviewing, audio and sound production, and editing as they create an interview/journal documentary of neighborhood life. Younger students engage in visual and audio journaling of personal experiences in their neighborhood; older students and parents use storyboarding, interviewing and editing techniques to create a final video for a school-wide presentation later in the spring. Supporting Immigrant Families — PS 160: Walter Francis Bishop Elementary School, Jamaica – “ESL Dance” Through a series of eight Saturday workshops, PS 160 uses its PAAP grant to collaborate with Michael Mao Dance to promote the active learning of English by recent Hispanic and Bengali immigrant parents and students. Mao, a Chinese immigrant himself, has developed a program, “ESL Dance,” that uses dance movement as a tool to facilitate language learning. He developed the program in 1993 to assist immigrants in learning English kinetically through simultaneous speech and movement. Session one serves as a kick-off meeting and session two is a trip to see Paul Taylor Dance Company at New York City Center. Sessions three through seven focus on making dance in preparation for a culminating performance by participant ESL families. The hands-on workshops use the traditional West African Kuku dance to teach sequential movement and forms of expression that reinforce verbal articulation, pronouns, and subject-verb agreement. The program targets thirty-seven ESL families who are new to the school. — IS 125: Thomas J. McCann Intermediate School, Woodside – “Mural For Washington Mutual Savings Bank” Ninety percent of the student population at IS 125 are Hispanic or Asian and, of these, twenty percent are newly-arrived immigrants. Through a series of visual arts workshops, the school uses its PAAP grant to help parents and students celebrate and become familiar with the cultures and traditions of the school’s diverse population. At an introductory workshop, participants explore their cultural roots and share unique celebrations from their culture. Parents are then encouraged to sketch replications of their celebrations to incorporate into a large-scale mural. During the course of the mural work, participants visit a local museum to view artwork from different cultures. When the mural is completed, as part of an ongoing relationship with Washington Mutual Savings Bank, it will be displayed for public view in the local branch before returning for permanent display in the school’s main lobby. Improving School Culture — PS 12, Brownsville – “Turning A School Around Through The Arts” PS 12, a school on the SURR (School Under Registration Review) list in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn, has seen significant restructuring in the 2006-2007 school year, including a re-introduction of the arts into its curriculum. A first time PAAP grantee, the school is using the funding for partnerships with TADA! and Young Audiences New York (YANY) to share this revitalized arts programming with parents and families. Two trips to The Brooklyn Museum and Carnegie Hall reinforce the accessibility of community cultural resources, while two hands-on workshops at the school directly engage parents and students in arts learning and participation. The first workshop, introduces participants to Argentine dance including the Tango and the Gato folk dance. The second is a day-long Parent Forum for the Arts featuring a session on Mexican Dance, a Musical Theater session, and two workshops on music and visual art making. Each family may participate in two sessions: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The dance sessions connect to PS 12′s Social Studies “Communities Around the World” and “Latin American” curricula. Other sessions reflect the in- school “Musical Theatre Skills” residencies that TADA! provides for students in grade 3. — PS 176: Cambria Heights – “Easing Testing Pressure With Hip Hop” To provide creative programming that offsets the testing demands of grade 4 students, PS 176 uses its PAAP grant for series of workshops and in-school sessions exploring the oral storytelling traditions of Hip Hop music. The first evening workshop introduces parents and students to West African storytelling traditions, encouraging participants to use authentic African instruments and improvisational music to help tell stories. The second workshop explores the process of writing poetry and emphasizes creative writing skills. Two final evening workshops are entitled “Hip Hop: The New Oral Tradition” and fuse storytelling, rhythm and poetry through the analysis of contemporary, socially conscious Hip Hop and Rap. Participants are encouraged to write and perform their own songs addressing social issues and problems facing students today. Two in-school workshop sessions on performance and music prepare students for the workshops and for the culminating Café Night where parents and students perform their stories, rap and poetry. Activities begin in February, coinciding with the study of Black History Month, and continue through April, to supplement a Literacy unit on books exploring social issues. Alternative Education and Special Needs — Passages Academy, The Bronx – “Building Literacy Through Visual Arts” Passages Academy has multiple locations in the Bronx and serves students, both incarcerated and probationary, who are placed in the program by New York City Supreme and Family Courts. Ninety percent of its students have reading skills two or more years below grade level. The Academy uses its PAAP grant to support reading initiatives at the school, which include an Arts & Literacy integrated picture book curriculum for students who are non-readers or who read significantly below grade level. The Bronx Museum of the Arts provides three gallery talks and hands-on art sessions for parents and students designed to develop analysis and critical thinking skills. In a hands-on session on bookmaking, where participants learn specific techniques such as using shape and pattern to express abstract ideas and using word and image to show time and transformation in book narrative. — Brooklyn Transitional Center, Far Rockaway – “Photography In Special Education” LEAP currently works with students at Brooklyn Transition Center, a special education school for students severe cognitive delays, to help them document their experiences as workers and members of the local community through the use of digital photography. Many of the school’s teachers also integrate digital photography as learning aids. The school’s PAAP grant adds to this use of creative media by providing insight to parents on how the school uses photography to enhance artistic and literary expression. Three hands-on workshops for parents and students address discrete digital photography skills. Participants are trained to take pictures that evoke specific emotions then learn to establish a narrative with the photos they’ve taken. A fourth workshop demonstrates how to prepare and display the photographs for a final culminating event, which takes place at the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art. — Hungerford School, Staten Island – “Visual Arts for Special Needs Students” Hungerford School in Staten Island’s Clifton neighborhood, serves a special needs population ages 12 to 21 that includes students classified as medically fragile and severely and profoundly retarded. The school uses its PAAP grant for visual arts activities for its families that include hands-on visual art instruction, a trip to the Museum of Modern Art, and an exhibition and unveiling of participants’ work. The series is led by MoMA teaching artist Gordon Sasaki, a visual artist and wheelchair user since a 1982 automobile accident. The program includes three hands-on art making sessions dedicated to the production of one large-scale mixed media group mural exploring the theme of community. A visit to MoMA introduces participants both to works of modern art and, through a special workshop, to the techniques and philosophies behind curating and preparing an art exhibition. Participants utilize these skills to prepare a mural unveiling and reception at the school.
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The Center for Arts Education
CONTACT: Heather Mangrum, Director of Marketing and Public Relations,+1-212-971-3300 x308, heather@cae-nyc.org, or Maggie Guggenheimer,Communications Associate, +1-212-971-3300 x307, maggie@cae-nyc.org, both ofThe Center for Arts Education
Web site: http://www.cae-nyc.org/