ArtsBridge and The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
General Description
University of Oregon (UO) ArtsBridge is an innovative arts education outreach program at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and an extension of the nationally recognized ArtsBridge America program at Lawrence University. UO ArtsBridge is a unique research-based arts education partnership with Oregon schools that provides high quality arts education to Oregon's K-12 schoolchildren. UO ArtsBridge provides service-related stipends to qualified graduate and undergraduate university students (scholars) to teach the arts and to create projects in visual art, dance, theatre, and music using resources from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.
UO ArtsBridge objectives are: 1) to provide ongoing instruction in the arts and culture for under-served K-12 pupils in Lane County in a manner that allows them to explore their own creativity while benefiting from the intrinsic and cross-curricular value of the arts, 2) to provide continuous professional support and museum resources for K-12 classroom teachers in Lane County and unique opportunities to integrate the arts into traditional curricula in ways that address local, state, and national standards in the arts, and 3) to provide community service learning and teaching opportunities for UO students (scholars) in the visual and performing arts in local schools.
Although K-12 teachers and university students (scholars) share classroom time together, each lesson, as it fits into teachers' curricula, is researched, developed, and taught by university scholars. These services are at no cost to the scholar, teacher, or school. These scholars will develop, with the direction of a teacher, a project plan to be administered to their class over the course of a term. Project plans serve as creative learning outlines that integrate teachers' curricula with university scholars' expertise in the arts.
In order to support the transition from university student to "scholar", each university student meets with an assigned faculty mentor from the University of Oregon on a regular basis. Mentors work closely with university scholars to provide emotional and technical support. As with all the players in this inclusive program, mentors observe scholars in the classroom and evaluate them on clarity of presentation, use of time, and involvement of teachers in lessons planned.
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art's hands-on resources, which include examples of teacher curricula, instructional videos, slides, a reference library, and art kits, are essential to UO ArtsBridge's success. The museum's ability to integrate institutional goals with the agendas of eager university scholars makes its educational programs and partnerships effective. UO ArtsBridge leads the way for university education programs to join hands with state educational departments as national and local standards in arts education are initiated. UO ArtsBridge offers its scholars valuable opportunities to gain a better understanding of arts education, teaching, and the educational system and provides K-12 classroom teachers with professional development and support in teaching the arts.