James Caldwell High Teachers Earn 'Young Audiences' Scholarship

From Caldwell-West Caldwell School District: A group of teachers at James Caldwell High School has been awarded a Young Audiences scholarship, offered by The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Foundation for Educational Administration.

The grant will cover the expenses of an Artist-in-Residence program at James Caldwell High School during the 2016-17 school year.

The grant project grew out of the school’s participation in the Educational Leaders as Scholars summer program at Princeton University, which district staff have attended since 2013. Attendees in July 2016 were teachers Sue Callaghan, Robin Keil, Mea Amacher, and Frank Lincoln, and administrators Jim Devlin, John Bertollo, and Jessica Valentine. As a result of participating in the institute in 2015, Ms. Callaghan had collaborated with Art teacher Mea Amacher to develop projects which synthesized graphic art objectives with language arts objectives. Using digital photographs, Art students created collages of symbols from the various plays of Shakespeare, and using art masterpieces, musical works, and digital images, English students created movies which captured the essence of Shakespearean characters.

“A major focus for James Caldwell High School over the past four years has been to integrate the arts in correlation with the works of Shakespeare,” said Ms. Callaghan. “In 2013, we instituted a Shakespeare Festival, which has been held annually every April since then. It’s been a truly collaborative effort, and students have responded very positively to the opportunity to engage in this important work at the Festival and in their classes as well.”

This year, the teachers have also created a Professional Learning Community which focuses upon arts infusion across the curriculum. Their plan for the year is to try to build upon the base which they have created integrating arts and humanities and then to move beyond the language arts classes into other disciplines. The Dodge Foundation/FEA Grant will allow the teachers to expand their work into music and dance, an area of the arts which tends to be under-represented in most curricula. The artist-in-residence will share ways of incorporating more movement into curriculum and instruction, including strategies such as tableaux and dance. Greater movement will allow students to develop their understanding of key concepts through the employment of their kinesthetic intelligence.

Image via Caldwell-West Caldwell School District