BCTA gets State and National Recognition!

Building Community Through the Arts (BCTA), which builds trust among students in Maine academic classrooms through creative theater and dance, has recently gotten the attention of the Maine Department of Education and Americans for the Arts in Washington DC. The Maine DOE has invited MAAE to aggregate its pre and post data so that it can promote BCTA as an “evidence-based program.” BCTA was developed as a response to the school shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, and in the reminder of that tragedy following the Parkland Florida and Texas school shootings, Americans for the Arts published the blog that MAAE sent in about this program.

Building Community Through the Arts (BCTA) brings group creation in drama and dance into the non-arts high school classroom. The two-week artist residency program engages entire high school or middle school classes – usually but not always English classes – in the development of an original dance or theater piece that expresses the group’s self-identified social issues and/or themes drawn from class curriculum. At a culminating regional performance “conference,” which is open to the public, the participating classes and schools gather to perform for each other and reflect on the experience. Initiated in response to the tragedy at Columbine more than a decade ago, the program’s collaborative process helps to break down social barriers among students even as its classroom setting directly impacts the atmosphere for learning.

ARTS INTEGRATION

The weaving of art-making strategies into the teaching of non-arts content areas of ELA, math, science and social studies has been shown to boost student engagement and student achievement. Low income and special needs students have been found to be helped more by arts-integrated classroom instruction in ELA and math than by traditional remedial programs. Arts integration is most effective when it is a school-wide practice, and the classroom teachers themselves are trained to integrate the arts, and can use them also to respond to unexpected opportunities and changing classroom needs, rather than relying only on pre-scheduled visits from teaching artists. For rural schools in low income and remote communities, the classroom teacher-centered model is also more practical and sustainable.

Grades 1 & 2 students show that the spring sun will revive the plants in the spring

A group sculpture based on positive and negative space makes others want to join in!

Eastport Pilots School-wide Arts Integration

In partnership with the administration of AOS 77 in Eastport, and with the encouragement of the Maine Department of Education, MAAE has been piloting the state’s first model of schoolwide and classroom teacher-based arts integration in theater and dance. Designed by MAAE to be sustainable at schools in Maine’s many remote, low-income communities, the model piloted in Eastport offers a way for Maine schools to respond to the growing research showing the benefits of arts integrated instruction for student learning and engagement. The project began last year at the Eastport Elementary School, grades Pre-k through 8. This year MAAE has been expanding its pilot to grades 9-12 at Eastport’s Shead High School. Funding has come from the Maine Community Foundation’s Washington County Fund and the Davis Family Foundation.

Unlike the models adopted by large urban schools in other states, which rely more extensively on the local presence of theater and dance artists, the MAAE model provides classroom teachers themselves with flexible models of individual and group student creation in theater and movement and gives the teachers the training and professional support to adapt those activities throughout their curriculum. The Maine DOE is treating the pilot as a case study, whose results the Department can help us disseminate statewide. 

At a demonstration at Eastport Elementary School last May by the EES teachers and students of every grade level parents and community members got to see exciting examples of the results at the elementary and middle school level. Those included grade 1/2 showing through movement the life cycle of plants, grade 5/6 enacting its exploration of missing scenes in a Harry Potter novel, and grade 7/8 performing the powerful dance they had created showing the apocalyptic impact of climate change. In the demonstration’s finale the 7/8 class invited the other students – and the adults too! – to join them in forming a group shape based on positive and negative space. One by one the students – even pre k four-year olds! – added themselves eagerly into the shape, and several adults joined in as well. It was quite a day! See below for photos. To see the write-up in the local newspaper, The Quoddy Tides, click here.

MAAE Expands its Eastport Integration Pilot to English Teachers County-wide 

STUDENT LEADERSHIP GROUP

The Student Leadership Group (SLG) of the Arts are Basic Coalition (pictured above) is facilitating the formation of ABC Student Advocacy Teams at schools around the state. Within individual schools, these teams will serve to connect students engaged in different art forms. The teams will also form a larger network of young arts advocates from all corners of Maine, learning from each other and supporting each other. One of the signature activities of the teams will be to participate each year in Arts Education Advocacy Day, advocating directly with their state senators and representatives at meetings which will be organized and conducted by the teams themselves.  With ongoing training and support from the ABC Student Leadership Group (SLG), the teams will also begin to organize advocacy initiatives in their local school communities. We hope you will join us in this work as well. Please reach out to us if you’d like to learn more about how an ABC student advocacy team can be formed at your local high school or middle school.

SCHOOLS WITH ABC STUDENT ADVOCACY TEAMS