Dr. Sharon Dunn, Arts Educator
by Joan
Baum, Ph.D.
In the middle of talking
about Project ARTS and other initiatives she is working on
to promote the arts in the city’s schools, Sharon Dunn is asked if she has enough
space, equipment, discipline-trained teachers and supplies
to do the job. “No, No, No, and No,” she replies
with a laugh, but quickly follows up with the “tremendous
challenge” she feels to recruit, train and have in place
a renewed cadre of teachers for grades K-12, and to continue
to explore imaginative ways of deploying the cultural and artistic
resources of the city.
As Senior Instructional
Manager for Arts Education at the Department of Education,
Dr. Dunn, who is also president of the volunteer not-for-profit
New York State Alliance for Arts Education, is determined
to provide not just enhanced curricula but “superior” instruction to the city’s
over one million children and 1200 schools, in accordance with
New York State Learning Standards for grades K-12, and in collaboration
with prestigious institutions that have been partnering with
districts ever since the 80s and 90s when programmatic budget
cuts all but eliminated arts education. But, she points out,
The Met and MoMA are not responsible for teaching art, they
can’t address sequential learning, and they need not
attempt consistent, systemic instruction. That’s not
their job. That charge belongs to the Department of Education.
To that end, the Chancellor
decided to centralize efforts administratively, while allowing
for creative scheduling and deployment of resources in various
schools. Committees were established to ensure that music,
art, dance and theatre were addressed at each major educational
division: elementary, middle school, high school, and that
a standardized “curriculum
blueprint,” available to all arts teachers, would place
each discipline in interdisciplinary instructional context:
history, culture, theory, application, social and economic
influences, as well as job and career opportunities. The elementary
schools would require study in all four arts areas, the middle
schools a year of two, and the high schools would allow for
elective concentrations. It is Dr. Dunn’s hope that middle
schools will become feeder schools for high schools concentrating
on one or two of the arts. She also envisions flexible management,
whereby one elementary art teacher in a school with 60 classes,
for instance, might be “cycled through” each of
the grades. And of course the city’s spectacular arts
institutions would continue to “supplement” the
blueprint by providing resources and top artists for classrooms.
Dunn acknowledges that the initiative may be uneven,
but she also points to great progress in improving attendance
at poorer schools that have solid arts programs. Special summer
programs to train teachers holistically are already in place,
and regional superintendents have formed groups to ensure that
the curriculum blueprint goes even beyond state standards.
She means by this not just excellent sequential instruction
but joy. She recalls her own love of visual arts that had been
encouraged by an observant teacher in Brooklyn, and she notes
that a child with a recorder, for example, exercises not only
eyes, ears, feet, fingers, but social skills, collaborative
learning so vital for success in school and work.#
