AETE 404  Seminar IV: Creating Community    Fall 2009

John Giordano 

Office107B South (through the Art Ed Office) Office
Hours: Tuesday 1:30-3:00

Thursday 11:00-12:30 or by appointment  Tel: 617.879.7522 

email:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

Course Description

Community arts education can be defined as all art education experiences that take place outside of the graded K-12 school art classroom.Therefore, the definition of what constitutes community arts education is verybroad   Classes (and lessstructured art experiences) for children, youth, adults or intergenerational groups which take place in settings such as after-school programs, museums,senior centers, recreation facilities, treatment facilities, social serviceagencies, religious institutions, art centers, community centers, prisons,schools (outside of regular school hours), etc., are representative of community arts education settings.

Creating Community is intended to introduce students to the tenets of community arts education.  We will examine thevalues that are shaping this emerging field, and in response, we will researchsuccessful community based programs. This research will guide you in the further development of anafter-school art program named Art Jump Off! to take place at the Tobin Middle School in Mission Hilll.  An eight-week after-school art programwill be conducted at Tobin by the Creating Community class beginning inOctober.

The philosophy for Art Jump Off! has been developed by theCreating Community students and the course professor over the past five years.Art Jump Off! has evolved to embrace a choice-based curriculum so that middleschoolers have a more autonomy to make their own choices during the free hoursof the day.

My objective for you is that you find a challenging placeinside the many facets of Art Jump Off!. This means that we will do everythingfrom designing the program to doing administration, recruiting, overseeing suppliesand documentation. Everyone of you will have a unique role in the program.

• To develop an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of art education in a community context
• To examine how community arts experiences are often part of a broader system of interconnected servicesintended to promote youth development
• To research successful community arts education programs in order to determine what successful programs have incommon
• To design and teach an after-school program to middle school students
• To document the after-school program and reflect on its impact on the participants
• To self-access your teaching, while also assessing the impact of the program on the students

Course Content

The course will be discussion oriented.  We will begin by engaging in both group and individual class activities that are intended to broaden our understanding of how art and art education is part of what constitutes healthy and vital communities.

Next we will look at the individual programs that have transformed the lives of participants. We will look for the strengths of these programs and determine what markers of success they have in common.   Our research will include readings, web research,possible interviews and videos. This information will be shared in a roundtable class discussion.  This part of the class is about closingin on what good programs do in order to become successful in serving their participants.

In response to your research of existing programs, the groupwill design, administer and teach acommunity arts education program that:

1)    exhibitsthe common values that we feel successful programs embody

2)    reflectsyour understanding of what skills are needed to work with middle schoolstudents

3)    teachesparticular content and/or materials

Each of you will also develop an electronic course notebook that articulates what you experienced asa teacher/program developer in the Creating Community course and the Art JumpOff! program.

Keep all your coursework in electronic form, especially yourphoto documentation.  Thisinformation will be crucial to assembling your electronic notebook for the course,but it will also be very useful when you assemble your teaching portfoliosduring your final semester in the program!

The notebook requirements are explained in a separate Course Assignments handout.