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Lesson Plans


Re: school art organization

[ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]
Christine Merriam (ktwnldy.az.us)
Sun, 16 Nov 1997 17:22:34 +0000

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Judy said: I am interested in starting an extracurricular art
organization.
I have a month to come up with a proposal to present to the board to
justify
it as a paid position. They are extremely supportive of the arts, but
even so
I want to make this presentation convincing. I am interested in other
group
activitities, fundraisers, or community projects. Also if you have any
experience or advice that might help me bypass any obstacles you have
encountered. I am the only art teacher in a small (450 students) high
school

Hi !
A few years back I started what I called the "Art Squad" (not
original, saw the name in some article... but the connection with the
all revered sports world did come across in the workd Squad). On the
average I had about 40 hard core members out of a school of 600 in
grades 3-5. One thing I noticed, many of the students in it were not
the stellar "artists" but just kids who needed attention.
My goals were to introduce the students to artists, museums, and
galleries via field trips and visiting artists. (we are in a small
rural and remote community and most of the art I was showing them was
reproductions) Also the students learned to be docents for exhibits we
had in our school. We raised money all sorts of ways.... selling junk
food or candy is the easiest thing I found, not the most creative.
Make sure your office has a good accounting procedure, we lost money
one year.
Anyway, I did get paid for it after doing it for a few years! Hope
you get funded immediately! We did some great stuff... like onsite
painting activities in Monument Valley with local artists (4 or 5
students with one adult artist). This was covered by the newspaper...
gave the school some good PR. I still have some funds from a few years
ago... took a break for a while, and am getting requests from parents
and students whose older siblings were in it to start it up again.

Christine Merriam
Kayenta Intermediate School

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