RAED & Essential Questions
by Dr. Sarah Tambucci
Director, AEC On Monday, October 12 the Arts Education Collaborative will once again host an opportunity to stimulate our thinking, stir our curiosity, and motivate us to consider the possibilities.
Regional Arts Education Day has become an anticipated professional development event that is a nexus for informing work in arts education. This year, Dr. Mariale Hardiman of Johns Hopkins University School of Education will deliver the keynote address. Dr. Hardiman is neither artist nor an art educator. She describes her support for arts education as the result of her first hand witness as a school administer. She will take us on a journey that is rich and powerful. Fueled by her desire to help students, she began to explore the intersection of brain research and arts integration.
While much is yet to be learned about how the brain functions, we have little evidence that what we do know has translated into daily instruction. How can an increased understanding of brain research inform lesson design and assessment of student learning? Informed by that research, how can arts educators raise the bar on expectations for student learning as
well as their own? Arts integration has become a strategy for capitalizing on student interest and motivation in the arts as a tool for learning in all content areas. The crowded curriculum, high stakes accountability testing and tightened school budgets have positioned arts integration as a viable model for school reform. But when and how does integration impact student learning? How has what we know about the human brain support integration as an instructional strategy? And what constitutes quality arts integration while the integrity of the arts is maintained?
Afternoon breakout sessions for RAED will focus on four implications of the keynote address: Collaborative Professional Learning: The AEC Music and Visual Arts Frameworks as professional development tools will focus on how high quality professional development influences academic rigor for teachers and benefit students; The AEC Parent Education Program as an advocacy process will showcase the important role of parents in advocating for high quality standardsbased arts education; The AEC Interactive Website as a strategy for sharing best practices, materials, resources and information; and The AEC Planning Forward is a session designed to provide and solicit input to making the thoughtful initiatives outlined in
our first Strategic Plan a regional reality. Please accept our invitation to attend, engage, question, comment and grow with colleagues at the seventh annual Regional Arts Education Day.
