Now is the Time to Regulate Teaching Artists

I think we must remember the word 'Artist' here. A person who has had work in galleries, or performed on stage many times professionally etc. is a person with extraordinary love for their art. Remember the vast majority of people who study art, music, dance, acting never take it to that level of commitment. Love of the art is what makes a person practice, study and deal with the difficulties of trying to be an artist, usually with little or sometimes no financial reward. So it is that love of the art, that enthusiasm we wish to communicate to students in a classroom. We get excited about the art and children pick up on that. When children are having fun with art (or anything else) they learn much faster with better retention.

Why are we so concerned with giving people a piece of paper (certification). Should we give an artist a certificate to say " you have proven you love pastels or Mozart" How about giving a child a certificate to say you can draw an apple. Many great artists dropped out of art / music schools because they felt choked by the need to get that piece of paper. They went on to become great largely because of their independent thinking.

I believe a Teaching Artist should be concerned with trying to generate enthusiasm and encourage students to think outside the box but in there own way. The famous author Frank McCourt did it by telling engaging stories in the classroom. The kids then wrote their own stories and he gave them advice on how to develop their skills. His students loved it and it gave them skills they used in other subjects, confidence and life lessons. (Check out the hundreds of letters his students left on the NY Times online after his recent passing).

Administrators have a job to do and they like to have a piece of paper (certificate) that says this person they are about to hire knows how to
teach. That's understandable. But think for a moment of the model of the small town in a rural place. Everybody knows everybody and when the schools is looking for a TA they turn to artists who live in that community. Fine, but what about the big cities and what if the person is a fine artist but not a good teacher? Many arts organizations like Brooklyn Arts Council have a registry of local artists which is a great resource for schools. Artists who are good teachers can produce excellent references from the schools they have worked with before.
Those that are either new to teaching or finding it difficult to be good at can take courses to improve their skills. Young artists know other artists that are experienced teachers. They could volunteer to spend time in the classroom with the experienced teacher to learn how it's done. That apprenticeship traditional model has worked for centuries. Most teaching artists would love to have an assistant. Arts organizations can and do assist with mentoring programs and can also be involved in developing common practices with regard to pay guidelines, insurance etc. But let's leave the artist's be what they are and let the kids pick up on that energy.

we have too much regulation already
get the govt out of our lives

there is ZERO need to regulate teaching artists

one size fits nobody

let the free market sort it out
there are plenty of webbased feedback sites that evaluate everything including teachers

govt regulation will only waste more of our money and lower our choices
probably even dumb down teaching to meet some political crap standard

This conversation about certification is like small talk when the house is on fire.

TAs are struggling. The country has 16% unemployment. We need a fully-staffed, TA-led advocacy group, with an active service component, offices and a legislative agenda. We need our own lobbyists. Not to be divisive, and not to dismiss the service organizations and advocates we have now. But where's the infrastructure, where's the substantive service component for TAs? Isn't authentic representation the first rule of community empowerment? When a group of TAs starts a conversation over coffee, certification is not at the top of the list. We talk about surviving.

Also, Jane Remer is usually right.

Quality of instruction is the primary issue. If an artist is going to work in a school as a certified teacher or a teaching artist, he/she must have the knowledge, skills and understanding to undertake this role. For some, going the route of becoming a certified teacher is the best way accomplish this goal. For those who wish to take the route of becoming a teaching artist, standard certification for teaching is not the answer.
The best way to assure that artists are properly prepared to work in schools is for arts organizations to collaborate with schools. On one hand, it is the responsibility of an arts organization to train its teaching artists. Although each organization has its own methods, they all include curriculum development and implementation, assessment, and the ability to work with students in a class setting. On the other hand, it is the responsibility of a school that wishes to bring artists into the school to evaluate the ability of the artists from a particular organization to fulfill its needs. If one is going into the business of providing a service, does one not hire and train skilled people to provide said service? If one is going to hire someone to perform a service, does one not make sure the person can satisfactorily provide said service?
However, this responsibility need not be so clearly delineated. If a school is going to form a partnership with an arts organization, part of the collaboration should be a shared responsibility for the preparation of artists to come into the school and the preparation of teachers to work with the artists. The key is to assess the goals of the proposed partnership, the skills each brings to the venture, and how to best prepare the artists and teachers to jointly accomplish these goals.
New York City provides a good example of how this partnership can work. The Blueprints for the Arts were developed collaboratively between DOE arts teachers and artists working for arts organizations. These Blueprints provide guidelines used by schools and arts organizations. Teams of facilitators comprised of DOE arts teachers and artists working for arts organizations, of which I am one, assist schools in developing arts programs and providing professional develop for teachers in the arts. Are these documents or this partnership the perfect models for arts education? Of course not. The point is that this collaboration facilitates bringing quality arts education into schools.

Most of what can be said here...has been said here. I will offer only one additional thought.

Colleges and universities began to teach the arts at some point in history...the artists who became faculty were (and are)likely to have un-certified credentials. They still teach (some better than others) they still fit into a definable profession, they still see a wide range in pay and job security.

A degree in teaching artistry may not guarantee a job in teaching artistry...but, offering it, and establishing credentials based on reputation, may push us past 1994.

I have read with great interest the comments of my colleagues on the pros and cons of certification of teaching artists. There seems to be consensus against institutionalizing creativity and academic freedom. However, I am concerned that the impact of the teaching artist is less than it could be until we train all teachers to understand the methodolgy of teaching the arts, which is applicable to all teaching. The "studio" approach enables all students to become engaged in the learning process. It reaches students who are alienated by traditional classroom techniques - because of individual personality traits, language barriers or socio-economic differences. The sparks that emanate from a classroom led by a gifted teaching artist - too often dissipate when that artist has left. The power of teaching artists to transform the system is meager but their influence on traditional classroom teachers can be immeasurable. Check out the success of students who study in an environment filled aith the arts rather than an hour or two a week and you won't find as many dropouts. Since an understanding of the value of the arts has grown, it is being reflected in the curriculum in teacher training institutions. How to make some of that training compulsory for licensed teachers who never got it seems to be a good place to start.

Suffice it to say that from my perspective Jane Remer’s point #1 (August 16) says it all and the other points through-out underscore the bigger problem of the value, challenges, quality etc. of K-12 teaching and learning in the arts. The points about the complexity of it, implicit conflicting agendas, etc. are particularly compelling.

While I believe it essential for any organization that employs teaching artists to have standards of its own I disagree at this time with any initiative to “certify” teaching artists. Jane et al. said it much better than I could. The only thing I think I could add to this discussion is that, in my view, arts educators seem distracted by growing the industry of “teaching artist-ing” rather than really, really, authentically figuring out how to partner with schools to solve the social problem of the absence of the arts in childrens' lives. Do we really want to spend our already strapped resources of time, money, and people on growing a plate of spaghetti so we can throw it at the wall for another twenty years? It seems to me that we need to learn from the social/entrepreneurial movements in this country to affect the kind of national changes described by Jane et al.

A nation tests what it values (think: reading, writing, CAT scans, and blood tests). If I’m right, then our strategy over the years has been off-track and the “certification” trend is alarmingly…wrong. In my view, the arts restoration strategy should be to:

1) Build national public will for K-12 arts education (if McDonald’s can contribute to obesity through fast, yummy, and fatty food, why can’t we build a world of children playing a musical instruments or acting in plays if our quality is so good and if this stuff is really important?) There’s lots of thinking about this in business/social entrepreneurial communities – a group traditionally absent in our arts education think tanks.
2) Establish national assessments in each of four arts disciplines that require core competencies by the 12th grade. Teaching and learning standards are likely to be measured against actual social needs rather than individual or organizational agendas.

If the arts education movement would focus on the above goals, I believe that we could see some sustainable change by mid-century.

I so love Jane Remer's thinking.

I've been participating in the teaching artist certification discussion for about three years, and here's MY perspective:

1. The only people with a truly vested interest (as a group) in certification of Teaching Artists are those who work for institutions: school districts, colleges that offer certificates, and cultural organizations that are concerned with an image of "professional standards."

2. Teaching Artists might accept certification, if it was a guarantee to receive a higher wage. Otherwise, it's a glorified (and likely valuable) professional development program.

3. As long as the accountability debate exists (and in some ways, I think it should always exist), the discussion of the qualifications of anyone working in the classroom (teachers, paraprofessionals, social workers, and artists, to name some of the usual suspects) will be up for discussion. Even if certification is approved by some or all states/school systems, that will not end the debate.

Personally, I like to work with systems (if they are suitable and logical), and think that there are methods to develop criteria for quality for a teaching artist. Now, I do believe those criteria will need some flexibility, which is probably impossible to accomplish on a very large scale.

Several times I've heard the comparison for teaching artists with certification for yoga teachers. Of course, there are certifications in dozens of forms of yoga, and not all certifications are equally rigorous.

Let the debate continue. I'm not holding my breath for a quick or easy solution.

Throwing in to balance the discussion...

I have been a high school English and theatre teacher and currently work in an arts education nonprofit. I associate daily with teachings artists working in multiple art forms working and all grade levels. In many instances, I have given direct feedback to teaching artists about the impact and effectiveness of their programs.

I agree that the certification/licensure process can be carried too far in that the completion of a program or attainment of a document becomes a substitute for genuine achievement and competency. However, I've encountered so many great artists who could benefit from targeted, high-quality training in educational and developmental theory and practice. Since the idea of a teaching artist is still evolving (and largely an unknown entity to the majority of the American public), we need bold partnerships between experienced teaching artists, arts and cultural organizations and higher education institutions to provide rigorous training in the practice of teaching artists. Novice artists, in particular, need to realize that being a teaching artists is not a "gig" that makes some money, but a unique calling.

Professional educators (teachers, principals, curriculum directors, etc.) want the assurance that any teaching artist who enters their school buildings have been "tried and tested." More than ever, parents and community leaders expect a great deal from their childrens' schools, and teaching artists who want the privilege of working with children in an academic environment need to be able to back up their effectiveness with solid experience and training. Teaching artists themselves ultimately receive the greatest benefit.

If our nation's educational system would make a real committment to the ongoing, sustained funding of teaching artists in a variety of disciplines, then I think it has a legeitimate right to have expectations of those artists and it can and should provide the funding to develop guildlines as to whether those teaching artists are meeting expectations. Just because someone is a great artist doesn't mean they're a great teacher, and vice-versa.

But the idea of regulations when there isn't any real committment to funding is unfair and unrealistic.

My two cents...

I liked your layout of the current scene. What is apparently at stake here is the perennial issue of diminished employment of artists in, after and out of schools. I would like to suggest that the long annotated chronology I wrote for the Teaching Artists Journal Volume 1, No. 2 (2003), will provide our readers with an historical background and deep perspective on the rather uniquely American phenomenon of instruction. Meanwhile, here are my thoughts.

1.For a country that has not yet figured out the role and the value of the artist (let alone the arts) in society, it seems absurd to talk of the need for certification of artists who may teach multiple art forms in multiple settings to multiple age groups, for multiple reasons and outcomes, generally for very short periods of time. No one seems to have made the case – the quality instructional case – for this possibility….or I haven’t heard it. It seems equally unreal to expect such diverse practices as now occur around the country in so many diverse situations could find common cause in even a “fundamentals” course of study. I would imagine that the last thing artists want is to be standardized, while being held accountable for vastly different standards across the country.

2. I believe the term "teaching artist", a phrase that was coined by a staff person in the Lincoln Center Institute roughly four decades ago, was and remains misleading. (In the early days we called them artists, or visiting artists, or depending on the time they spent in schools, resident artists). The problem with the current and widely used shorthand of TA is that it is meaningless. Teach what content, using what methods, to reach which learners, using which field-tested and measurable methods, for what length of time to develop and sustain learning, whose effectiveness is almost never assessed consistently and persuasively. And, how do you do all that when the artists are normally not responsible to anyone in the schools in which they teach, nor held accountable for results that align with the school and the district's policies and practice.

3. I believe the role of the artist in classrooms is to serve as a resource to the principal, the teachers, parents and the students; in this role, he or she should facilitate arts learning in his or her domain, with the primary purpose of building capacity in classroom and specialist teachers through partnerships that respond to national, state and/or local ARTS standards. It is also incumbent on the school and the artist (and the arts organization if there is one) to collaboratively document the impact of their work and assess student growth and understanding of the art form(s) in play. I believe the value of professional artists in schools is their broad and deep professional knowledge, experience and passion for honoring different ways of knowing and understanding our world. Take that away, and you're left with folks who struggle with all the instructional, social, management and age-appropriate knowledge, skills and understanding that our best classroom and specialist teachers take a good five years to really master in the classroom.

4. Artists, the arts and artistry let alone top notch quality in the schools and community will continue to cyclically fall in and out of favor in classrooms, schools, districts, cities, states and the nation. While.

5.I personally don't see much point in mapping the territory. For what reason? What might we expect to learn and do from that kind of very expensive and almost always imperfect "survey" inquiry (you can never really trust or confirm the accuracy what the folks who fill out the surveys say).There is no point looking for promising practices because the variety of settings, instructional goals, and social purposes I alluded to earlier vary so widely.

6. The most profound issue here is one of quality, artistry and authentic knowledge, demonstrated understanding and experience. No national survey can capture that elusive set of criteria. And, as I said at the top, it would be well night impossible trying to identify criteria and indicators of excellence that everyone across the country could agree on. Many studies have been conducted around these issues over the last twenty or more years. They have not been able to grapple with the hardest question of all which is always: who will "train" or develop the artists to become competent teachers, and for me, the answer is usually not, “other experienced artists”. Why? Because experience, alone, is not always a good measure of good teaching and learning, especially if it has never been assessed, vetted and confirmed by certified educators in the schools and others who have top credentials to make these judgments.

These issues deserve serious consideration, discussion and debate. May the games begin.

Jane Remer
August 16, 2009

I do not favor licensure for teaching artists.
Right now, I'd love to take a class in playing the soprano recorder. I'd dislike the idea that nobody could teach a class unless they had accreditation and licensure. I understand intuitively that the girl or guy from Berklee or the Royal Conservatory in Toronto may have more impressive credentials than the self-taught youtube musician, but I don't need a state infrastructure to help me with that.
I am all for regulation of lots of things,but
arts instruction is not among them.

There are plenty of good reasons to be skeptical about certification/regulation for teaching artists (and more than a few that are petty and trivial). Among the best is that certifying teachers has not proven to be a guarantee of teacher quality. Why would certification guarantee teaching artist quality? On the other hand, if teaching artists are vital to strategies to expand the roles of the arts in schools, we should expect that schools will begin to demand some kind of guarantee that artists are qualified to work with their students. It may be better to be proactive, rather than waiting until certification is imposed on teaching artists. At that point artists will only be able to complain.

I've been a teaching artist in Chicago since 2002 and have worked for a variety of organizations and populations. Currently I'm a freelance contractor and tend to work for several sites at once. One reason I took this route was the creative freedom it offered to me as a practitioner, and the fact that it emphasized the "artist" part of my identity as important and necessary. I guess I sort of like that this profession is something of a "Wild West," and that it offers artists who teach in wildly different ways. As an artists' practice is such an individual thing, I get antsy when I imagine the landscape of a certification process that would ask for a certain "standard" or uniformity in teaching practice. Is that really what we want? Who gets to decide, and which ideas and practices will be included (and excluded)? What wildflowers might be sacrificed when we start cultivating our garden, and how much do we want to cultivate it? Of course it's important to consider what the sites want and what's best for clientele, but I haven't yet heard how such a process might benefit artists. I'm all for more opportunities for professional development, trainings, sharing teaching ideas, and interchange between teaching artists; such opportunities, are very helpful for me.

Most artists who teach for these programs do so precisely because they don't have to waste time on getting rubber stamped by external organizations other than the one who hires them and going through basic background checks.

Quite frankly I am tired of seeing "teaching artists" who don't make artwork anymore. That should be the accreditation that they should be judged on. Once again, it should be the responsibility of the hiring organization and the community in which they are involved to judge their worth. Not turn it into a second rate education certification. If people want artists to teach then they have to allow the artists to make art.

Stop the accreditation mania! There is too much rampant "professionalism" and associated bureaucracy in the United States and Europe right now.

If anyone should buck the trend, it is artists.

If some role needs to be regulated by the powers that be, let's at least give it the right name. Maybe "licensed visual stimulus operatives"? Or "state-approved culture indoctrinators"?

NO ACCREDITATION FOR ANY ARTISTS EVER!

If we want rigor without rigor mortis, best not to put teaching artist certification in the hands of state education departments.