Newsletter 01

GREETINGS from Argy’s cubby with a view of the State House dome! My cubicle at the Department of Education in the Cross building is a double wide with a great view. For those of you that aren’t familiar, the Cross building is connected to the State House by an underground tunnel and the Department of Education takes the entire 5th floor.

Your name has been added to this list-serve because you were kind enough to take a few minutes and fill out the survey after receiving a letter from me in the fall. The letter was sent to 1224 arts teachers and 350 participated in the survey. YAHOO!

The purpose of this list-serve is to send you information that is related specifically to Arts education and education in general. My goal is to send a brief message about twice a month. If you want to communicate directly with me please email me at: argy.nestor@maine.gov

If you would like to communicate with the entire list-serve please send your message to: doe-arts@lists.maine.gov and I will post it to the list-serve.

I said there would be a door prize for someone(s) who had participated in filling out the survey and the winners are: Michelle Gnodde, a Visual Arts teacher for grades K-12 in Madawaska and Robert Helstrom a band teacher for grades 7-12 in Ft. Fairfield. They will each receive a year’s membership to the Maine Alliance for Arts Education plus art prints(Michelle) and a life size Hannaford cut out of a tuba player named Hanni (Robert). CONGRATULATIONS!

What is happening at the Department of Education? The governor’s proposal for the reorganization of the school districts is keeping folks busy. PLEASE go to: http://www.maine.gov/education/ and read the proposal. It is important that you look at this information so you can become better informed on what will be discussed in this session of the legislature.

On January 29th representative members of the Arts are Basic Coalition (ABC) which is made up of Maine Alliance for Arts Education, Maine Music Educators Association, Maine Art Educators Association, Dance Education in Maine Schools, Maine Drama Council and Very Special Arts will be meeting with the Commissioner of Education, Susan Gendron, to discuss arts education topics. I will be there as well and will keep you posted on the outcomes of the meeting.

If you haven’t looked at the proposed revisions of the Maine Learning Results they are online at
http://www.maine.gov/education/lres/pei/index.html

Also, there are crosswalks (showing where the 1997 and 2007 MLR overlap). To view the crosswalks go to: http://www.maine.gov/education/lres/pei/index.html

The proposed revisions will be going to the legislature this session and we should know the outcome sometime in April.

I have been visiting school districts throughout the state (over 100 classrooms) and will be sharing some of what I have learned in this list-serve. To those of you I have visited THANK YOU for sharing your classrooms and schools with me. Teachers of the ARTS ARE THE BEST! We have SOOOOOOOO much to be proud of!

Visual and Performing Arts Information

contact information:

Learning results Information

Newsletter 01