Summer is coming to an end and schools across the country once again are opening their doors and welcoming learners of all ages. The education systems of 2019 are shifting to meet the needs of these learners, and this is an ongoing and huge challenge for school leaders. Some students aren’t returning to a traditional school, while others never stopped their learning when the last school year was “officially” over. Fortunately, we have excellent educators across the country leading with innovative ideas to tackle aspects of these differences. As a veteran arts educator of 43 years, this blog is a reflection of what is circling around in my head.

In early May 2019, I had the honor of being one of 75 participants of the Spring 2019 American Express Leadership Academy (AELA). I gathered with others from across the country to explore our own personal strengths and weaknesses as leaders, and to collaborate on strategies to take that information and be better. Towards the end of the week, we each met for 90 minutes with an executive coach who’d reviewed all of our assessments, self-reflection, and organization information. We also began to reflect on how we could practically use our epiphanies and discoveries. The experience was incredible. Never before have I been afforded the luxury of three and a half days to focus on myself, not just myself in the context of the work I do. The information I received allowed me to ruminate on what I was learning and how it specifically impacts leadership in the field of arts education—and what I can pass on to my colleagues in the field. 

All students deserve high quality arts education that develops important skills needed to succeed in today’s competitive workforce. Many of the skills developed through arts learning—collaboration and cooperation, problem identifying and problem solving, decision making, design thinking, articulation and critique, constructive communication—are considered key attributes by employers around the world in the 21st century. After all, they are the skills of leadership. Since 1989 the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education, Ohio Arts Council and the Ohio Department of Education have worked together to gather data and report on the status of arts education in Ohio’s schools. The Ohio Arts Education Data Project launched in September 2018, and Ohio is proud to be among the first few states in the nation to provide online arts education data dashboards available to the public!

As my time on Americans for the Arts’ Arts Education Council winds down, I’m given to reflecting on the power of “art-relationships.” Over the past three years, these relationships not only have benefitted me on a personal/social level, but also have elevated my professional expectations and performance. I’m grateful for the people I’ve met on the Arts Education Council, I’m honored to call them friends, and I’m appreciative that they’ve made me a more successful arts administrator. With my final council post for ARTSblog, I thought I’d share some insights I’ve learned as they relate to developing professional connections.

A few weeks ago, a Lawrence Arts Center School of Dance staff member popped into my office to say hello. A few minutes into it, I realized her real reason for stopping in: they needed someone to be a walk-on in the fall production of Madeleine put on by our pre-professional company, Lawrence Ballet Theatre. That first rehearsal? Let’s just say this: I felt like I was losing a real-life game of Frogger. With ballerinas instead of cars. Unprepared, I stumbled, quite literally, upon what comes from commitment and practice. These young dancers spend 5-6 days a week in class, in concentrated training for years, to make an extremely difficult art form look not just beautiful, but completely natural. They make dance look effortless, like anyone could do it. At this point, I couldn’t match their training, but I certainly could find it within myself to try to match their commitment. With this humbling realization, I promised to stick with it. The next evening, I sheepishly slipped into our next rehearsal full of apologies: to the ballerina I almost hamstrung, to the junior stage techs that had to reset the stage twice for me, and the duet whose sequence I stumbled into the middle of. Expecting to be met with frustration and annoyance, I found exactly the opposite.

As arts educators, we should always try to dream big. We don’t need a Broadway budget to create good educational theatre. What we need are dedicated arts educators who are passionate about the message of the production and how it can be a transformative experience for young people. So many students often tell us that this may be the first play they have ever seen and how powerful the storytelling experience was for them. Rain, sleet, or snow, like the post office, we always deliver an authentic theatre experience; no matter where we go or how we get there, the rewards are always worth the effort.