I have always been a scholar and a poet. I won my first award for poetry in the 4th grade. I remember my algebra teacher in high school scolding me for writing poetry in the margin of my math notes. It made perfect sense to me. I wrote poems about mathematical concepts to draw connections and define terms. She reprimanded me. Freshman year of college I left the private art school where I was enrolled because I felt my scholarly appetite was not being fed. I remember writing poems to explain my emerging epistemological stances during my doctoral program. Yet, when I went to my community open mic where I was born and raised as a young poet, the language of academe felt ill placed peeking through my stanzas. I remember wondering what was happening to my voice as a poet.
Read moreEmbedding Arts Practices In Our Everyday Lives
As people around the world move towards a more holistic mindset or “one that involves the mind, body, and spirit,” the arts are being utilized more and more to enhance our view on public healthcare and how we can individually support our own well-being. To gain a clearer understanding of the employment of the “the arts” and “arts therapy” within the everyday lives of students, practicing artists, and the general public, I began an exploration into this topic, which I have outlined below.
Read moreCOMMUNITY POST: The Mutual Benefits of Arts Partnerships Ignites Post-Pandemic Community Engagement in Cultural Life
As a music educator during COVID, I reached out to the community and forged partnerships with local museums and organizations.The area museums were viable partners as they were not open to the public and in need of programming. Our school musicians performed lawn concerts at the local museums and recorded performances in their facilities to couple with museum online events.
Read moreBRIDGING: Systems Change to Improve Pedagogy, Policy, and Practice
In our campaign for 2022: Building Creative Features, we have decided to focus quarterly themes on the four inquiry-based processes emerging from our research on leadership in arts and cultural education. This campaign is forward-looking and plural in nature: we are not hoping to creatively build one singular future that will have the most benefit for us as individuals, but rather we are all employing our creativity in order to build a plurality of futures which provide a multitude of pathways for us all.
This quarter’s theme is “bridging”, and the topic where I would like to frame our discussion. (Be sure to check out the series on “unlearning” and “navigating”…and stay tuned for “holding tensions” next! Check out all posts in the 2022 Campaign here.)
Read moreTowards an Enriched Understanding of Arts Integration
When arts integration (especially through this expanded view) is implemented by educators, artists, and institutions, extensive evidence shows - particularly in the scholarly fields of social justice youth development that youth have a deeper understanding of self, their community, and the world within which they live.
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