Now you can have the new CA Dance Standards in the palm of your hand! The CA Department of Ed has launched a new mobile app that allows teachers to search, filter, and sort standards to isolate specific content, identify standards common across disciplines, and inform decisions around instruction and assessment. Currently available for handy access to the Arts (including Dance), Computer Science, Health Education, History–Social Science, and Mathematics content standards. Forthcoming updates will add standards from additional content areas, such as English Language Development and English Language Arts, and will provide additional features to enhance the usefulness of the application to California educators.

More information about this free mobile download here.

The California Arts Council (CAC) seeks video input from artists and artist educators from all over the state as part of their 2020 Strategic Framework Development. What’s important to you? How should the CAC focus their efforts? What do California artists need today?

This is a fun way to engage in advocacy, and share your opinion about how the CAC can serve and support you as an artist and educator. You can even involve your students!

Consider these interview questions, and choose 1-2 to answer by video:

• What do the arts, culture, and creativity mean to you?
• How is your life enriched by the arts?
• How would you like to see the arts uplifted in California?
• What are the values that the California Arts Council should aspire to?
• What is your vision for how California can be a leader when it comes to arts, culture, and creativity?

Find out more about how to film & submit here.

The California Arts Council wants to hear from you! Whether you know nothing or everything about the CAC, your voice as a dance educator matters to them. Help them serve you better by filling out their survey, as part of their new strategic plan.

From the CAC:

COMMUNITY IS AT THE CENTER OF ALL WE DO AT THE CALIFORNIA ARTS COUNCIL.

And growing our community, giving voice to our community, learning from our community, and fostering belonging within our community are at the center of our newest planning project.

In 2014, the California Arts Council adopted a strategic plan built upon four pillars, focused on growing and stabilizing our work and ensuring that the arts were recognized, celebrated, and supported in communities across the state.

Since 2014, the CAC has experienced rejuvenation and growth, thanks to the support of our community of organizations, artists, youth, activists, and elected officials. We’ve increased our grant offerings from five programs to 18; our ranking of per capita arts funding from 50th of all 50 states to now 26th; and if Governor Newsom’s proposed arts funding increase is approved, the state’s ongoing investment in the arts will grow from just $1 million annually in 2013 to more than $26 million this year.

At the same time, California has endured some of the biggest natural disasters in its recorded history. New and significant community traumas have positioned the ever-pervasive problem of racial inequity front and center, garnering national attention for our state. We face a housing crisis unmatched by anywhere else in the country.

The impact of these recent events has heightened the collective consciousness and sense of urgency and duty to address California’s most critical issues—things like diversity, access, and inclusion; emergency preparedness and response; and healing of our communities.

We are a different California than we were in 2014, and a different California Arts Council.

To best uplift our communities through culture, creativity, and the arts, it is important to have an updated and relevant strategic vision to guide our work across the state of California. That said, we’re excited to announce the development process of our 2020 strategic framework.

This strategic framework will be the CAC’s roadmap for the next five to seven years as a guiding principle to align our mission of advancing California through the arts and creativity with our aspiration of making the arts an accessible, equitable reality for the diverse state of California.

Learn more about their plan.

Take the survey.

Create CA’s free May 15 webinar makes the case for the relationship between the arts and student success. Reach for the Stars: Arts-based Pedagogy as a Pathway to Excellence and Equity, explores the possibilities of tapping into student potential and living truths through the arts, creating a path to both excellence and equity. Get some facts & ideas that you can share with your community & administrators! The webinar features Dr. Yvette Jackson, Bryonn Bain, and Skye Walker as speakers.

The Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) is seeking applications for educators who wish to participate on subject matter expert panels to align California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET) assessments in the visual and performing arts (VAPA) with the newly adopted California Arts Standards for Public Schools. VAPA teachers and teacher educators, as well as individuals who advance VAPA education and programming for school-aged children outside of traditional school settings, are needed for the following areas: Art, Dance, Music, and Theatre.

•    The deadline to apply is March 28, 2019. Deadline extended to April 7, 2019.
•    CTC is prevented by statute from providing compensation for advisory panels such as these, but travel and accommodations are provided, depending on the home location of the panel members.
•  The California Dance Education Association recommends applicants have at least ten years of service in education.  Applicants should be sure about their teaching credential status before applying.  If you are selected for this panel, you will not be able to take the CSET for Dance for five years after completion of this assignment.

Please send any questions related to this announcement to Phyllis Jacobson at PJacobson@ctc.ca.gov. 

If you are interested in applying, please complete this application form. 

Californians for the Arts is launching CA’s first Arts, Culture & Creativity month this April, and they’re calling on us as arts educators to get involved! The goals of this month include:

• educating our representatives about the public arts programs that benefit Californians
• sharing our arts impact stories
• connecting, advocating and mobilizing
• building our case and showing our strength

so that we can:

• support Governor Newsom’s permanent funding increase of $10 million in the 2019 budget
• recommend continued increased and permanent funding for the arts
• ensure all students have access to arts education and the ed code is enforced

You can get involved by joining them for Arts Advocacy Day in Sacramento April 23rd, exploring their Ways to Engage page, or registering for free advocacy training in your city. Discover more here.

California’s Dance Teaching Credential is in the making! Listen to Jessy Kronenberg (CDEA Past President and Director of the Dance Credential Task Force) as she sits down with Dance with Teachers to discuss the history of California’s dance credential, where it stands now, and what we can expect in the future. Check out the 36 minute free podcast here.

Advocating for dance at the governmental policy level can be intimidating if you don’t know where to start or what kinds of small steps have impact. Americans for the Arts has some resources that can help, including ones that are state-specific. Find out what’s happening in your state, who your arts representatives & supporting organizations are, and how to get involved here.

The National Arts Action Summit is a multi-day event, March 4-5, 2019 in Washington, D.C., giving you the opportunity to receive crucial advocacy training from experts in the field and then put that training into practice on Arts Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill. Hosted by Americans for the Arts in partnership with over 85 national arts organizations, Arts Advocacy Day is the largest gathering of its kind, bringing together a broad cross section of America’s cultural and civic organizations. Grassroots advocates from across the country come to Washington, DC to meet with their Members of Congress to garner support for issues like arts education policy, the charitable tax deduction, and funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

On Monday, March 4, 2019, hundreds of arts advocates from across the country convened for interactive advocacy training and peer-to-peer learning and networking. That evening, attendees will have the opportunity to attend the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts & Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Then, on Tuesday, March 5, 2019, after the Congressional Arts Kick Off, advocates met with their U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives to share their stories about the impact and transformative power that the arts have in their communities.

Why should I attend the National Arts Action Summit?

1. Networking with your fellow arts advocates from across the country and go on congressional visits led by State Captains.
2. Learning the latest research facts and figures on the arts to help make your case.
3. Strategizing with experienced advocates during an interactive role play session on how to make the case for the arts and arts education to your Members of Congress.

More info & registration.