$450,000 in Grants Supports Innovative Arts-Based Programs For New York City Public Schools
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 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 www.cae-nyc.org.
Parents As Arts Partners
2006-2007 Grant Summary Highlights
Program summaries for all 150 funded schools are available at 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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Source: 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,
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The Center for Arts Education
Web site: http://www.cae-nyc.org/