I won. I got the award for arts and crafts at Triangle Acres summer day camp. It was a very happy day for me. “Uncle” Harry, my arts counselor, said he was proud of me because I tried everything, never gave up and had a great attitude. I have never forgotten Uncle Harry. He influenced […]
Recently, a team of researchers from the University of Virginia combed through data about the educational trends in teaching kindergarten and first grade. The perhaps obvious finding was that over the prior ten years there was more testing, more rigorous reading and math proficiency goals and generally higher expectations of incoming five-year-olds, leaving significantly less […]
When I was growing up in Columbus, Ohio, we’d take family trips to the Columbus Museum of Art. I remember three things about those trips. One was a Deborah Butterfield horse in the lobby that seemed huge at the time; another was a frayed Renaissance tapestry that filled the main stairwell. The third was a […]
After months of rigorous research, development and testing Art in Action has added a new art lesson based on the sculpture of Japanese-American artist and California native Ruth Asawa (1926-2013). Asawa’s work helped change the definition of sculpture. In 1950 she submitted an artwork made of her signature looped-wire to the San Francisco Museum of […]
One of the things I love most about Art in Action is the way that it allows the entire school community to reflect on what is important to them in education. Art makes the deepest impact in a school where the teachers, parents and students collaborate to provide space for creativity and expression. Space […]
Program Manager Kelly Bravo’s article: STEAM ON! Designing Art Lessons that Integrate with Core Curriculum was recently featured in Education Closet’s STEAMed digital magazine. The article takes the reader through how we created our new Spirals in Nature lesson as Kelly provides advice on how to work with subject specialists, parent volunteers and classroom teachers […]
August 24, 2015 Menlo Park, CA–Art in Action has recently received nearly $75,000 in grants to deliver its visual arts education program to schools with need in East Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Jose, San Francisco and Monterey County. The grants were awarded by the Palo Alto Community Fund, the Nancy Buck Ransom Foundation, the […]
It may be hard to believe, but it is already back-to-school for many of our Art in Action schools. Anticipation and excitement are especially evident in our kindergarten parent docents who are not only starting an educational journey for their eager young children, but are also passionately ensuring that those young minds have full access […]
Art in Action is thrilled to be featured in a John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities Perspective by Erin Raab, a doctoral candidate at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Raab, who is working on the Art in Action project at the Gardner Center, argues that an arts education develops a range […]
Memorial Day will soon be here, marking the beginning of summer and the end of another school year. Memorial Day, of course, was created to remember the sacrifices soldiers have made on behalf of America. It seems fitting then, that we take a moment to reflect on our fifth grade curriculum in which students take a tour […]
