Preface

Penny L. Hammrich

Director, Equity Studies Research Center, Queens College/CUNY
Dean, Division of Education, Queens College/CUNY

On behalf of the entire staff and faculty associated with the Equity Studies Research Center of Queens College/CUNY, I would like to welcome you to our national conference online proceedings entitled Aesthetic Education: Expanding Notions of Excellence in K-18 Learning Communities. In collaboration with the Lincoln Center Institute (LCI), this one-day conference explored aesthetic education from the LCI perspective. Through a range of presentations -- including experiential workshops, roundtables, panel discussions, and research papers -- participants explored what is meant by "excellence in education" and examined its impact within schools and in the larger educational communities. Participants were also treated to a variety of works of art, including a visually stunning production of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, as performed by the Hudson Vagabond Puppets. Scholar Nicholas Michelli's plenary speech provided an inspiring and focused setting for the conference. Additionally, a panel discussion served to provide multiple perspectives on aesthetic education and excellence. Participants also experienced a keynote address by Maxine Greene, a pioneer in the area of aesthetic education. The day of exploration concluded with a reception to allow participants to enjoy additional informal conversation and a poster session.

As conference attendees participated in various conference strands, they were challenged to reflect upon the meaning of "excellence in education," and its impact within schools and larger educational communities, and think about ways they can help support, mentor, and encourage students.

This conference would not have come into sharp focus or reached the community in such an important way, if not for the contributions of so many. First and foremost gratitude to the Equity Studies Research Center and Division of Education Staff: Michelle Ariano, Beata Breg, Victoria Dell’Era, Michelle Myers, Judith Rockway, Sonia Rodrigues, Daisy Sanchez, Patricia Taylor, and Zara Basmadjian.

Many thanks to the Tri-Chairs who oversaw the gathering from beginning to end: Holly Fairbank (LCI), Amanda Gulla (Lehman College), and Claire Aranow (Queens College). With the advice of the Advisory Group representing all areas of the Lincoln Center Institute Teacher Education Collaborative, the Chairs developed the vision and layered thought it required to bring the pieces together: Mary Debey from Brooklyn College; Harriet Lenk and Linda Levine from Bank Street College; Catherine Franklin, Gretchen Johnson and Jan Valle from City College of New York; Herb Perr from Hunter College; Marietta Saravia-Shore and Andrea Zakin from Lehman College; Ray Pultinas from Teachers College; Mary Bushnell-Greiner (also the Panel Discussant), Rikki Asher, Suzanne Li, John Pelliterri, Angela Love and Amy Winter, from Queens College.

The conference excelled due to the critical and enthusiastic guidance of Scott Noppe-Brandon, the Executive Director of Lincoln Center Institute. The essential support from the Institute came embodied in the form of Madeleine Holzer, John Holyoke, Tara O’Grady, Jo-Anne Suriel, Christopher St. Clair and the two teaching artists Patricia Chilsen and Jerry James.

Many heartfelt thanks to Anastasia Schneider, Principal, and the staff and faculty at the Queens College School for Math, Science and Technology (PS/IS 499) for welcoming the conference into their classrooms, hallways and public spaces. Their willingness to house the conference provided a common roof to serve this community.

Finally, deepest gratitude to Maxine Greene for guiding us to this point with inspiration and intellectual vision and leadership.

 

Foreward

Scott Noppe-Brandon

Executive Director, Lincoln Center Institute

Many thanks to Dean Penny Hammrich, Associate Dean Michelle Myers, and the many others at the Equity Studies Research Center of Queens College, CUNY, for their tireless efforts toward making Aesthetic Education: Expanding Notions of Excellence in K-18 Learning Communities such a rousing success. I also wish to thank LCI’s own Holly Fairbank for her key role in the success of this conference, alongside Amanda Gulla (Lehman College) and Claire Aranow (Queens College). Of course, we must not forget to thank our wonderful speakers, especially Nicholas Michelli and Maxine Greene, whose words about education, society, and the arts framed the value and importance of the day itself.

From LCI’s perspective, the timing of the conference was superb. Locally and nationally, our educational systems and other aspects of our everyday world are reawakening to the many questions facing our society, hopefully awakening with a reconsidered set of goals and expectations. To be precise, while testing in education has grown in scale and scope, we are still failing to reach a dangerously large percentage of the nation’s youth, especially in urban centers. Our society is crying out for help. Public service is going through challenging times. The teaching profession itself is undergoing the single largest transition in our lifetime, namely, some 2.8 million of our 3.2 million teachers are either retiring or moving on to other jobs. In NYC, for the first time, the number of police officers has dropped as not enough recruits seek employment in this important aspect of society. There is much more, yet I am extremely optimistic. I believe that we in this city and this country have the imagination, creativity, and innovative spirit to solve these seemingly intractable issues. But first we must acknowledge the role of prime importance that fostering—nay, harnessing—imaginative thinking, creative actions, and innovative outcome must assume in this overall effort. We must honor it, promote it, and use it to build on the foundational efforts that underlie the restructuring of our schools. To do so requires time well spent, and imaginative thinking that “curves around to the other side” of the discussion. This conference was a step in this direction: just one of the many steps we must undertake, but an important one.

Aesthetic education, if thought of as both a noun and verb (a content area and an educational methodology) emanates out of the philosophical tradition which asserts that imaginative and creative thinking can be taught, not just discussed. Efforts to bring people together to move this agenda along are now more important than ever and, to succeed, we must not stop at the discussion alone, we must continue to play out this drama in classrooms across the K-18 spectrum. Only as we espouse action can we bring theory and practice into sharp relief; only then can we spread these values across the educational and social landscape.

Once again, I wish to thank everyone involved in this conference, including the many participants who gave time and attention toward helping expand the role of aesthetic education in expanding our notions of excellence in K-18 learning communities.

 

 

Introduction

Holly Fairbank (Lincoln Center Institute), Angela Love (Queens College/CUNY), and John Pellitteri (Queens College/CUNY)

Conference Proceedings Editors

The idea for this conference came about in a moment of spontaneity at a cross-campus gathering of representative faculty members in the Teacher Education Collaborative (TEC) at Lincoln Center Institute (LCI). It was along the lines of “this conversation about the implicit value of aesthetic education in the context of ‘excellence' as it is being defined in the current educational environment is too important and needs a broader forum…We should extend this to the K-12 community and those outside of the immediate LCI family…this needs to be a conference!” This urgency to be a part of the definition of excellence shaped the impetus and served as a focus for all that eventually came to be involved based upon that initial inspiration.

A good idea, one as big as “let’s have a conference!” requires many willing enthusiasts to make it into a meaningful event and it needs an inspired producer and an accommodating “barn” to house the event. The willing enthusiasts came quickly from Scott Noppe-Brandon, LCI’s Executive Director, and all dimensions of the LCI family, including K-12 teachers, professors, LCI staff and administration. This inspired group made up the Tri-Chairs and the Advisory Committee that guided the initial idea into fruition. The “producer” came organically from the Equity Studies Research Center (ESRC) in the form of its leader, Penny Hammrich. Her commitment to aesthetic education at Queens College (QC) had created a fertile, generative atmosphere for collaborative possibilities between QC and LCI. And to her, it was apparent that this was a perfect fit. This was to be the second in a series of conferences for the ESRC. The concept of the conference on aesthetic education suited the goals of ESRC-that is-to explore issues through a community of partnerships that advanced the study of equity in urban education.

Our “barn” came in an equally organic and spontaneously generous gesture from Anastasia Schneider, the principal at PS/IS 499, the Queens College School for Math, Science, and Technology and a flourishing partner with LCI. Her response to our inquiry was, essentially, “whatever you need I’m sure we can make happen.” This newly created school and rapidly growing Pre K-8th grade-environment had embraced the LCI partnership and the “Cluster” relationship with LCI & QC over recent years and they were eager to share their faculty and their learning community with a broader audience. PS/IS 499 was not only the host of the conference but stood as the model for how AE plays out in an elementary school environment. It so happened that they had just focused on a production of The Snow Queen, which was to become the work of art at the center of the conference. The pieces were in place. Now for the “show.”

The concept of the conference emerged more concretely after numerous meetings with the Tri-Chairs, Amanda Gulla (Lehman College), Claire Aranow (QC) and Holly Fairbank (LCI), and the members of the Advisory Committee in the spring and summer of 2006. We started with questions:

What of intrinsic value did aesthetic education bring to the current climate of education? What values did the K-18 community share as a result of their experiences with LCI? What questions were important to the members of this community? What could we learn from a gathering of this community that had the shared value around the arts and aesthetic education? How might we export these understandings to a wider audience in a concerted manner that exhibited the strength of this work across the education spectrum? And finally, how could we bring together the multiple voices that made up this knowledge base at the core of this discussion?

 

Our emerging line of inquiry, or guiding question essentially became:

“How might Aesthetic Education be defined as central to the notion of excellence in education within the current social context and in what ways might a conversation across the K-18 learning spectrum be informative, both within and outside of the LCI community?”

 

In designing the conference it became clear that, in order to have the conversation we strove for, several components were essential. We wanted there to be a design that facilitated discourse across teaching and learning communities. Every strand would include members of the spectrum of those we believed to be our audience, K-18 educators, teacher educators, teacher candidates, arts educators and administrators in both the arts and education. It was essential that we had Maxine Green’s voice as keynote speaker, it was essential that there was a work of art central to the conversation, it was essential that we composed a panel of speakers that would address the theme from multiple vantage pionts, and it was essential that we designed this conference bringing together the multiple perspectives of the constituents committed to aesthetic education in the urban classroom.

Maxine Greene, our keynote addressor, describes aesthetic education as follows:

“...an intentional undertaking designed to nurture appreciative, reflective, cultural, participator engagements with the arts by enabling learners to notice what there is to be noticed, and to lend works of art their lives in such a way that they can achieve them as variously meaningful” (2001, p. 6)

 

In Nicholas Michelli’s discussion of AE in “Community in the Making,” a book about the Teacher Education Collaborative, he describes the importance of AE to the access of knowledge in our society.

“Schools, we know, exist because they are the places where children gain knowledge…AE provides a critical way of thinking about knowledge as something created that can be understood and transformed in the way we experience it…. through aesthetic education, as conceived by LCI and CUNY, children learn of their own power, perhaps not fully realized, to make knowledge through their experiences with works of art. This is important learning because it empowers students for the rest of their lives to think for themselves as capable contributors to knowledge, not simply as consumers.” (2005, p. 15)

 

A wide variety of experiences and interpretations of aesthetic education were represented in this conference, an opportunity designed to be a conversation reflecting a diversity of entry points and perspectives. This publication precisely reflects this multivocal vision.

The conference was organized around four thematic strands: Strand A – Arts in the General Setting described the major components of AE in the K-12 educational setting. In Strand B – Partnership within the Community & Across Disciplines, the importance of interdisciplinary and community-based collaborations is highlighted. Strand C – Excellence in Education & Advocacy for Aesthetic Education examines how AE relates to critical thinking about pedagogy. Innovative research endeavors in AE are described in Strand D – Research into Aesthetic Education. In this publication we present each contributors’ reflections on their paper presentation, roundtable discussion, workshop, or poster presentation within each strand.

In Strand A (Arts in the General Setting), we attempt to describe a foundational understanding of LCI’s approach to aesthetic education. Here we have invited the newcomer into the conversation to break down the individual components of the practice.

Two LCI teaching artists constructed workshops from the perspective of two different art forms. Workshops with visual artist Jerry James around the “Oak Seasons” installation at PS/ IS 499 and theater artist Patti Chilsen with “The Snow Queen” performance both offered participants an engaging, hands-on experience and follow-through discussion.

Suzanne Li (QC Education Librarian), John Holyoke (LCI Program Manager, TEC) and Angela Love (QC Faculty and LCI Liaison) offered a workshop, Before and After the Performance: Selecting Contextual Materials, that explored the possibilities of contextual connections and resources around specific works of art. The workshop and subsequent paper gives numerous approaches to the exploration of contextual materials as they enable the learner/educator to engage further, to make connections to the world surrounding the work of art, and to further the potential for connections to curriculum.

Susan Koff , in her reflection on the Roundtable discussion, Dance Education in Post-Katrina New Orleans, explores the impact of a specific dance education program on the young population in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Her study suggests that, through dance-integrated experiences, elementary school students were supported in their attempt to redefine a sense of space, place and community in a world torn apart.

In Strand B (Partnership within the Community & Across Disciplines), the collaborative nature of the LCI approach is presented through interdisciplinary projects within the community.

Maggie Reilly, of the Computer School, presents The Upper West Side Architectural Project. In this project, middle school students use the designs of historical buildings in their community as works of art for interdisciplinary aesthetic explorations.

The presentation, Aesthetic Education and Action Research; A Title V Collaboration between Two CUNY Campuses and LCI in Search of Engaged Pedagogy involved four members of this collaboration. Amanda Gulla, Andrea Zakin and Susan Polirstok of Lehman College and Holly Fairbank of LCI describe their work together toward faculty development within an action research frame.

Lori Kent, in Fear of Water: A Response to Life After Hurricane Katrina describes her work as an artist in the Community Arts Initiative in New Orleans. This project provided opportunities for residents of the devastated communities to process their experiences of trauma through creative visual arts.

Strand C (Excellence in Education & Advocacy for Aesthetic Education), examines the cutting edge ideas in pedagogy and the importance of advocating for AE in educational settings.

Lucy Barbera of Lesley University emphasizes the importance of social justice education in teacher preparation. She describes the use of arts in teacher training to develop the necessary components of advocating for social justice.

John Pellitteri, in The Emotional Intelligence of Aesthetic Education presents the connections between arts and emotions and describes how AE can be used to develop the abilities to use emotions for adaptive purposes, thus forming the rationale for a position of advocating for AE in school settings.

In the paper Critical Aesthetic Pedagogy: Toward a Theory of Self and Social Understanding, Yolanda Medina (Borough of Manhattan Community College) describes how AE can be important in developing a sense of critical pedagogy. She notes how perceived barriers can prevent teachers in training from taking action to make necessary social change.

Faith Deveaux, Ernesto Donas, and Gail Perry-Ryder, of Lehman College and CUNY Graduate Center present the paper, Teaching and Learning Aesthetic Education: Relevance and Reflection. They highlight three different voices from distinct disciplines in a collaborative effort to integrate AE into a graduate counseling course.

Strand D (Research into Aesthetic Education), focuses on research into aesthetic education.

Mark DeGarmo, with Dancers/Dynamic Forms, Inc., present Accessing Embodied Imagination: A Movement-Learning Theory And The LCI Approach To Aesthetic Education, in which he describes a distinct approach to aesthetic education as embodied imagination. He contrasts this approach with imagination as visual learning in his description of movement-learning theory into practice.

Lisa Novemsky (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Florence Samson (Education Consultant), Marietta Saravia-Shore (Lehman College, CUNY) and Gail Synnott (Brooklyn College) each share their insights as first-hand witnesses integrating aesthetic education into their courses across the curriculum in higher education. They present their ideas in their paper, An Exploration into the Process of Integrating Aesthetic Inquiry in Courses Across the Teacher Education Curriculum.

Edward Wall from City College of New York (CUNY) presents a pragmatic and theoretical application of aesthetic education. In his paper, Deconstructing and Reconstructing Aesthetic Education in the Mathematics Education Classroom, he examines these ideas through a mathematics education course for teachers and teacher candidates.

In their paper, Disrupting the Taken-for-Granted Urban Teacher Education and Aesthetic Lines of Inquiry, Catherine Franklin and Gretchen Johnson of City College of New York challenge the stereotypical notions of effective classroom practice through their qualitative studies. These studies examine teacher candidates’ experiences with aesthetic education from different points of view.

Micheline Malow-Iroff (Manhattanville College) and Karen Steuerwalt (Queens College), in their paper, What Aesthetic Education Contributes to Classroom Motivation for Students with Learning Disabilities, describe from a theoretical standpoint how aesthetic education can support students who are at risk for academic failure to take risks. They encourage teachers and teacher educators to consider the possibilities of extending aesthetic education into the inclusive setting.

The panel discussion, as part of Strand D, revolved around the question “What are the salient issues that need to be explored in regard to aesthetic education?” The panelists included educators and administrators representing voices both within and outside of the LCI immediate community but all with a deep committment to the importance that the arts have in the understanding of excellence in education. These panelists included Leslie Bedford from Bank Street College, Kim Kanatani of the Guggenheim Museum, Scott Noppe-Brandon of LCI, Jon Snyder of Bank Street College, David Steiner of Hunter College, and Graeme Sullivan of Columbia University. Mary Bushnell Greiner of Queens College was the discussant. The panel Chair was Mary DeBey of Brooklyn College.

The day ended with a reception revolving around a Poster Session with representatives and illustration from the various aspects of the LCI community including partnership schools (PS), focus schools (FS) and Teachers Education Collaborative (TEC), as well as the High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry (HSAII), founded by LCI was represented, as was the LCI Queens Cluster formation.