President-Elect Updates Lisa Vartanian Paramus School District lvartanian@paramusschools.org
Welcome back to the 2020-2021 school year! Whether you started your year in a hybrid or distance learning model, I know that you are diligently working and engaging with your music students keeping the arts alive and thriving in your schools. In the middle of these uncertain times, I am so thankful for your incredible commitment to the important work we do. When I go online, I see all the music education pages and all the teachers reaching out via social media and helping each other with lesson plans, teaching resources, and webinars. And it makes me feel confident that we will get through this, and that our students will continue to learn and grow. It's our nature to persevere and to work in partnership, and it's what makes us a fantastic music education community.
September Ready Report, Arts Ed NJ This year I was reminded of the power of partnership when I worked on the September Ready report with Arts Ed NJ. Following the June 29 release of the New Jersey Department of Education's guidance for reopening schools, Arts Ed NJ unveiled a comprehensive, 126-page document offering practical guidance for K-12 school administrators and arts educators seeking to provide meaningful arts instruction for their students. The document was the product of a collaborative effort involving more than 130 arts administrators, educators, practitioners, and association leaders. It highlights strategies, plans, and solutions needed to deliver arts instruction in a way that addresses, first and foremost, critical health, safety, and well-being considerations for students, faculty, and staff. It is a critical resource for these times.
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New Jersey: First in Nation to Provide Educators with Social and Emotional Framework Tied to Arts Education Arts Ed NJ https://www.artsednj.org/
With the unveiling in June of The Arts Education & Social and Emotional Learning Framework, New Jersey is now the first state in the nation to provide a formal roadmap illustrating how the arts foster and often amplify social and emotional learning. More importantly, the framework shows how educators can effectively embed social-emotional learning into their arts curriculum. "This new framework shows beyond any doubt that arts education provides students with opportunities to exercise their SEL skills," stated Dr. Maurice Elias. A professor of psychology at Rutgers University and director of the Rutgers Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab, Dr. Elias served as a co-chair of the Social and Emotional Learning and Arts Education Taskforce that developed the framework. "As students exercise their SEL skills, they reach and meet arts standards in a deeper, more integrated way than they otherwise would. This website is a must-bookmark for anyone concerned with arts education or SEL, or the well-being of our students." Social-emotional learning is a process intended to provide students with the knowledge, attitude, and skills needed to understand and manage emotions, confront challenges and make responsible decisions. The focus is on self-awareness, social awareness and self-confidence. The arts, by their very nature, are a catalyst for students' social and emotional development.
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