“We hoped that we could reinvigorate the Alliance when we hired a new part-time executive director in January of this year, and Janet very effectively moved our planning forward,” said Board Chair Cathy Archer. “Unfortunately the Kennedy Center, our parent organization, lost a significant amount of its funding from the Department of Education and cannot provide any program support to state Alliances for the foreseeable future. This, along with other financial hurdles, was a devastating blow, and we are unable to continue.”

We are very grateful for your support of the Vermont Alliance for Arts Education, and hope you will continue, as we will individually, to work to assure that all students in Vermont receive arts instruction as part of a complete education.

Janet Van Fleet

The Vermont Alliance for Arts Education, a statewide non-profit devoted to ensuring that the arts are an essential part of K-12 education for all students in Vermont, has announced that Janet Van Fleet has been hired as the organization’s Executive Director.

“Janet is a former public school teacher, a practicing artist, and one of the founders of SPA, a community arts center in Barre,” said

Walter Judge, Chair of the Alliance’s Board of Directors. “We believe her skills, enthusiasm, and contacts will help us do great new things in arts advocacy, programming, and support for teachers.”

Van Fleet added, “The arts are a necessary and enriching part of being human. They expand our minds, open our spirits, and are proven to enhance academic and occupational success. Investing in arts education pays us back many times over.”

The Alliance was founded in 1975, and is a member of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network. It works throughout the state with the professional associations of teachers of dance, drama, music, and the visual arts, as well as the Vermont Arts Council, the State Department of Education, and other organizations that support and advocate for arts education.

An October 1, 2009 NY Times article discusses the incorporation of art not in the classroom, but in new schools being built across the country, from New Haven, CT to Los Angeles.  The artwork is built into the design of the schools, or room is left both in the building and the budget to provide artwork throughout the school, in order to provide students and teachers opportunities to learn while walking the halls.  In New Haven:

The Columbus school incorporates sculpture and other art into nearly every corner of its year-old building with the hope that it will inspire students in this working-class Hispanic neighborhood to learn. It is one of a growing number of newly built or renovated public schools across the country that look more like cultural centers than the austere, utilitarian houses of learning of the past, displaying museum-worthy pieces commissioned from artists alongside more traditional finger paintings and statues of school mascots.

The schools can be expensive to build, but they are replacing buildings that are 40 to 50 years old, some older, and the artwork being installed is a mere pittance compared to the rest of the budget.

Administrators are happy with the response, as are teachers, parents and children. By surrounding students with “Art”, art begins to lose its feeling of separation from the other core subjects, and it is used to enhance and support that learning.

This article is a pleasant report about the power of arts in education.

The Dana Foundation, which sponsors research on the brain and how it’s ability to learn better through art, and which is a great supporter of arts education, has published an article on its website well worth reading: How Arts Training Improves Attention and Cognition by Michael I. Posner, Ph.D., and Brenda Patoine.

Michael Posner argues that when children find an art form that sustains their interest, the subsequent strengthening of their brains’ attention networks can improve cognition more broadly.

This is the kind of work that provides hope that we can find the appropriate balance between the teaching of the arts and the other disciplines in order to help form better students.

Dear Vermont Public School Music, Visual Art, Dance and Theatre Teachers – Please share this with your colleagues:

You read the title correctly!

$80,000 of Title IID (Enhancing education through technology) grant money has been reserved for Vermont’s Music, Visual Art, Theatre, and Dance Teachers. This is open to K-12 arts teachers.

This is “one-time money” and this grant will likely not be repeated in this way in the future.

Application Deadline: October 30^th

To find information, instructions and the grant application, click HERE and then click on ARTS.  For the application only, click HERE.

Here’s the introductory information on Title II D Grants:

One of the essential skills most prevalent in our 21st Century education landscape is collaboration. This grant program represents the department’s work within that realm. Content area specialists are assisting to make this program a success and provide technology to support the acquisition of skills in those specific areas. Many of these content areas have not had an opportunity such as this in the past. The grants are set up for a variety of funding amounts and are targeted specifically at teachers. This is a Title IID program and eligibility requirements are in place for those schools wishing to apply.