| ARTS ACTIVE PARENT
June 1, 2007• Volume 2, Issue 10 Monthly Newsletter of the Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership Alameda County Office of Education • Sheila Jordan, Superintendent |
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Dear Alameda County Parents, June is the end of another school year, and depending on the age of your child, your family is preoccupied with graduation, with finals and grades, with work portfolios, projects, and end-of-school events. It may be time to install a new exhibit on your "refrigerator art gallery," or frame a graduation photo and hang it in a place of honor. It's certainly time to reflect with your child about the year that is ending and what is coming next. I grew up in a time and place when children weren't so programmed, and summer vacation meant hours and hours of freedom, largely unsupervised. The kids in my school might go to "sleep-away" camp for a week, or might be enrolled in swimming lessons or pottery class, but most of the time we were expected to entertain ourselves and stay out of trouble. What I remember most vividly about those childhood summers is the sense of leisure, of an abundance, a richness of time. We would call friends and invite them to "come over" or we'd walk to their houses. Sometimes we'd go "the long way" just for the sheer pleasure of being without responsibility on a quiet summer afternoon, the asphalt soft and warm under our bare feet. We'd sit outdoors after dinner in the endless-seeming summer evenings and listen to the crickets while we ate popsicles and talked and talked. And we made a lot of art. We drew each other; we drew the local scenery; we dabbled in pastels and water colors; we wrote poetry and stories. We invented our very own creative drama experiences, and lived in imaginary worlds for whole afternoons. We tried to sing like Barbara Streisand or Joan Baez. My family had a piano, and I spent hours trying to teach myself how to play it. Every once in awhile, I even practiced my violin! But the point wasn't so much that we were learning new skills, though we certainly were. The point was that we were stretching our imaginations, giving free rein to all our creative impulses, and it made our brains more elastic and ready for all kinds of learning. Those were gentler times, and our world doesn't seem to allow 8-year olds to wander (barefoot!) around town on their own. Most of our kids are more or less programmed and supervised this summer: They're enrolled in day camps and park & rec programs or they're being "watched" by family members or neighbors while we go to work. In the midst of your family's complex summer schedule, I urge you to look for ways to expand your kids' experience with open-ended creativity. It may be as simple as providing art supplies. For a younger child you can buy or build an "artist kit" containing markers, paint, and sidewalk chalk. If you feel like your house is already overflowing with art supplies, reorganizing a selection into a new box or small backpack can make everything seem new. For an older child, a new "adult" sketchbook and set of charcoals may be the perfect end-of-school gift. Or maybe this is the summer to enroll your teen in guitar or dance lessons, or create your own family ukelele ensemble. And as far
as your work schedule permits, participate in these arts activities yourself!
Draw pictures, write poems, sing along, paint scenery. These golden summers
of your children's childhood may turn out to be even better than your
memories of your own. |
Parents Making a Difference in Alameda and Emeryville
Alameda Unified has a long tradition of Arts Active Parents who are themselves artists and use their artistic gifts to improve their schools. (Remember our story about Circus for Arts in the Schools?) The KIDS CHALK ART PROJECT is a year long program bringing the art of chalk drawing into each K-12 school in Alameda, California. Their goal is to create a working fund that supports more art and creativity in all the elementary schools in the city. The project will culminate in an event planned for May 2008, where students and the extended community come together to create the world's largest chalk drawing (Guinness World Record). Pictured
above is parent/artist Mark Wagner, |
Emery Unified is a small and unique East Bay district, with only two schools, elementary and secondary. The energetic Arts Active Parents in Emeryville perform all kinds of volunteer activities to support arts in their community, as well as coming together themselves to learn about various arts disciplines. The photo below was taken at a May 31 premiere of a group of films created by Emery ELD students. Left to right are parent volunteer Elisabeth Montgomery, who led the students in creating their films and served as overall producer; Brynnda Collins, District Arts Parent Liaison; Steve Hambright, English Language Development teacher, and a special guest from Cal State East Bay.
The photo below is Emery Unified Arts Active Parents at their recent Digital Photography Workshop, where they learned to what the heck to do with all those digital photos!
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Summer Homework for Parents! To make sure that 2007-08 is a great year for arts in your school and community, here are two things you can do this summer. BE AN OPPORTUNIST in August, and look for other Arts Active Parents at your school. If you have a registration event where parents can pick up flyers about the Arts Active Parent newsletter, please let me know where and when I should deliver flyers. If you have an opportunity to put out a signup sheet for parents who are interested in supporting arts program, you may find that you have your own school's Arts Active Parents group by the time classes are underway! |
ATTEND
the Arts Active Parent Workshop June 9. This is a free workshop, but please RSVP by June 6 so we can plan materials. There will be a simultaneous free creative drama workshop for attendees' kids who are 5 or older. RSVP to Kathy at aparents (at) artiseducation (dot) org. |
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