Art Jump Off!: Choice at the Center of a Middle-school Afterschool Arts Program

This essay is about what happens when choice is at the center of artistic growth and youth development in the conceptualization and implementation of a middle-school afterschool arts program.

Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School is a five-year-old, 700-student 6th- 8th grade pilot school in Dorchester, one of Boston’s most challenged neighborhoods. The school is in a bright and well-resourced state-of-the-art building, and is open seven days a week for programs that support students and community members alike. Named after a local community activist, the school embodies Lilla G. Frederick’s vision for a strong school that would become the hub of the neighborhood. Through the leadership of a charismatic and tireless principal and committed staff, the school has worked hard to provide a challenging learning environment. As a 1:1 wireless-initiative school, it recently received funding to bring cutting-edge technology into the classroom in an effort to provide students with the most comprehensive educational experience possible. Starting this year, each student has his/her own laptop for in-school use. The students at Frederick are primarily African-American and Latino, with a variety of immigrant populations from African nations, the Caribbean and Central/South America, and a small representation of students of European decent.

In addition to providing what aims to be a challenging learning environment during the school day, the school has developed a comprehensive out-of-school-time plan with full- and part-time staff, most of whom are social workers, overseeing programs before and after school, and linking students and their families to services beyond the scope of the school. Some of the out-of-school-time programs have originated within the school, and some are “chapter” programs, such as Girl Scouts. Other programs are delivered solely by outside organizations, and a few offerings are partnerships between Frederick and other schools or organizations.

Art Jump Off! is one such partnership program developed between Frederick and two other publicly funded Boston schools — the Boston Arts Academy pilot high school for the arts, also a Boston Public School, and the country’s only free-standing public art college, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where I teach. The partnership project was established to create a gateway to high school for middle-school students, and is grounded in the notion that out-of-school-time arts programming not only serves to build artistic skills but augments the youth development process, thus leading to skill development that can help students negotiate and navigate the transition from middle school to high school in a city where, in 2003, the 51% of the students who started ninth grade did not graduate. (Sum, et. al. 5 )

The program meets once a week for nine weeks each fall and spring, and is supported by a multi-year grant opportunity from a Boston-based foundation. Regular reports to the funder take place semi-annually and, originally, reapplications for funding were to be required in year two and four of the program. Recently, the funder invited the partners to apply for three years of funding beyond the three years already received. If this is earned, Art Jump Off! will have funding for the first six years of the program’s operation.

One of the considerations that initiated the process of developing the program was to look at the best way that artists-teachers in a pre-service art-education undergraduate program could work with their faculty and the invested public-school partners to deliver high-quality arts programming for middle-school students in an urban setting — a program that was structured enough to foster genuine learning while remaining open enough to be responsive to the interests of the participants in order to encourage their buy-in and subsequent ownership of the program. MassArt’s Center for Art and Community Partnership oversaw the grant application process and worked to ensure that the Center’s mission was fulfilled in supporting mutually beneficial partnerships between the college community and communities beyond campus. This was addressed by envisioning an environment that would aim to offer middle-school students a program in their school, directly at the close of the school day, to take place in two spacious, well-equipped and adjoining art rooms. The program would take a student-centered approach to arts learning that emphasizes a high degree of choice on the part of the participants and an unusually high degree of direct support for the students — the favorable student/teacher ratio would provide a high degree of support that is usually impossible to attain in traditional school environments. MassArt college students who are enrolled in the Art Education major would teach the program as part of my community education course, which is taken by half of the students in the department, regardless of whether they are planning to teach in schools, museums or community settings. Therefore, they would receive pre-service teaching experience and community-based program-development skills, while the middle-school students would have access to arts learning after school with support from a large group of highly motivated art students and the professionals supporting them.

The partners from the three schools, which included art teachers, the principals, the social worker who runs the Frederick Middle School’s out-of-school office, MassArt Art Education faculty members and students, as well as staff from the college’s Center for Art and Community Partnerships, thought carefully about the nature of the middle-school years in order to establish a program philosophy that would best suit this particular group of 6th-8th graders. And since the teaching and administration of the program is linked to my college course, I also asked my students to reflect on their own middle-school experiences in preparation for planning a program tailored to meet the needs of this group of middle-school students. Memories of the middle-school years are often not particularly positive; my students used words like dulled and confused or statements such as, I was a different person than I am now, to describe themselves at that age. We also discussed the fact that the Frederick students were primarily African-American and Latino, while our class (and their professor) was primarily of European ancestry. Most of us also had K-12 education backgrounds that did not take place in urban environments. Rather than adopt a color-blind approach to our differences with the students, we sought to acknowledge difference and the challenges it poses while developing a program where students are seen as individual learners with particular capacities. The Frederick students were embarking on the developmental tasks of the transition into adolescence, where the tension between the established patterns of early/middle childhood clash with a wide variety of emerging factors — a time when young people seek independence and desire to make new connections in their own communities and, to a lesser degree, in the various communities (geographic, social and cultural groups and/or identities) beyond their neighborhoods. They are confronted with jarring changes in their bodies and minds, and youth begin to reject parental role models. As adults, we clearly see the swings between childlike and adult thinking, emotional expressions and behaviors in the 6th-8th-grade population. Although adults know these enormous changes require guidance, the middle-school years are also the time when participation in out-of-school programs generally falls off sharply. Special challenges that youth face in urban environments, where complex personal and social issues for people living in communities with high levels of poverty and a lack of access to many of a cities cultural, economic and recreational assets bear down on them around the same time that many young people become less interested in being engaged by programming that could potentially help them at a crucial point in their development.

In consideration of what young people want and need, Art Jump Off! decided to embrace student choice and personal attention as ways to help young people develop artistic skills, with emphasis put on the idea that they can be helped through the developmental challenges of the middle-school years by placing a high value on the visual arts, and more specifically, by placing a high value on student choice in how they engage in visual arts experiences. This is seen as a vital opportunity for urban youth to be supported to bring more consideration to the choices they make during the time of day when they generally have the most freedom about how they use their time. Since they are already negotiating choices of one kind or another during the afterschool hours, we considered how an art program could focus the process of making choices so that the participants would have to give serious consideration to questions such as: What kind of art am I interested in? How do I want to say that? How do I get this material to work the way I want it to? Do I want to explore this kind of thing in high school?

We also embrace social interaction as an important component of this time, so a question like, “Who do I want to spend time with right now” is seen as highly relevant to the student’s experience and growth. We have found that a committed group of Frederick students have answered that last question by choosing to spend time with their friends and college-level mentor/teachers from MassArt, as well as two high school students from the Boston Arts Academy who also assist the teachers each week with the hope that the Middle School students will get to know the BAA school community firsthand. I am present at the program each week and provide administrative support so that the MassArt students can focus on teaching. In year two, the partnership hired a former MassArt graduate student in Art Education (with an emphasis on community arts teaching) to serve as program coordinator. She is also present at the Art Jump Off! each week and works behind the scenes to ensure administrative flow so that I can focus on the learning of my MassArt students and the Frederick students. This intergenerational setting has come to be a place where discussion, focused work and a sense of community (and a little horsing around) are all present. Disciplinary issues, in a school where disciplinary action is more than a little common, are practically nonexistent in Art Jump Off!

This might sound ideal, but practically speaking, art education in this particular out-of-school context can only have a holistic impact on youth as a result of the conceptualization and development of a well-considered strategy for connecting as many factors as possible in providing a broad and sustained landscape of opportunity and support for youth. Well-conceived programs can offer high-quality learning experiences taught by creative, well-prepared and caring adults, while connecting that programming to a wider network of individuals and organizations whose work is focused on serving youth. For this reason, the partners who created Art Jump Off! felt that the program could better reach its goals with support from the Lilla G. Frederick out-of-school-time office, which is run by a social worker and staffed with social-work graduate student interns whose training is focused on youth develop and urban issues.

Bringing the best resources to young people in order to provide them with the tools for positive growth is a process that embraces the shared responsibility of individuals, groups and the numerous service fields that support the development of positive assets. Until recently, such domains as K-16 education, the arts, philanthropy, government, social work/mental health and community development were aligned in their commitment to serve youth, but they were not necessarily interdependent and collaborative in the way they conceptualized and implemented opportunity. But as boundaries between disciplines loosen in response to the understanding that there is marked overlap and a need for common goals among the professional fields that aim to support youth development, the work of youth-focused practitioners coalesces at the intersection of these domains to create programming that is far removed from the silo-driven models of the past. Therefore, youth programmers are striving to create asset-building opportunities that rely on the convergence of these domains — with synergetic results. The emerging field of Community Youth Arts lies at the intersection of these domains. Ultimately, what defines this approach is the idea that there are enough people from various fields involved in the process to support sustained relationships with young people over extended periods of time in order to connect them with resources such as human services, mental-health services, information and support for scholarship and other funding, school admissions support, job training/skill development opportunities, and additional out-of-school-time program opportunities.

In the case of visual-arts-centered programs, the K-12 education and youth development fields, funding structures, governmental and human service agencies and nonprofit institutions that support artist-teacher professional roles are rallying around the notion that the arts are a very good way to promote artistic-skill building in conjunction with the personal, social and cognitive assets that facilitate youth development.

In recognition of the complex combination of factors that promote positive development, my students and I sought to analyze the positive assets that the youth-development field considers to be vital to the positive development of young people. They include:

Positive conditions in certain areas of their lives can support young people in acquiring those assets: parental/family involvement, family life, challenging educational environments, civic/community engagement, friendship and relationships with mentors and direct or indirect role models. They are also helped by the esteem-building experiences resulting from skill acquisition in challenging areas such as literacy, the arts, sports and traditional academics and time that is well spent throughout the day and weekends. It was never a consideration that Art Jump Off! could succeed at fostering an environment that would touch upon and support all the developmental assets, but we sought to acknowledge their importance in the lives of youth, and to integrate that understanding into our program philosophy while documenting examples of how our participants were showing evidence of growth. Each of my students kept a detailed journal about a middle-school participant of his/her choosing. One objective of the journal was to identify shifts in the way participants approached their work, their interactions with others and the way they seemed to be relating to themselves. Because we, as a partnership, value artistic growth as part of the overall youth development process, the class also added a fifth category to the aforementioned areas of positive youth development assets, focusing on artistic development. This category pertained to the development of formal skill building, finding appropriate form for ideas, deep engagement over time and habits of mind.

The planning process for Art Jump Off! also included the collaborative work of creating mission and vision statements as well as goals for that year. We also read literature from a variety of fields around the successful attributes that high-quality community-based youth programs hold in common, and applied our understanding of those attributes to research on national youth programs, leading to class presentations and discussion. As a result of considering what attributes programs have in common, we generated 13 attributes we felt were most important in establishing a well-rounded program and circled back to them as they applied to our program through weekly and a final program written reflection.

After establishing these attributes, researching evidence for such qualities in other programs, developing vision and mission statements as well as goals for the semester, we set out to develop curriculum that provided both guidance and independence. The result was a “choice-based” program that drawing loosely from the Teaching for Artist Behavior(TAB) movement in art education that encourages self-determined exploration by setting up an art classroom with a number of centers that promote student choice in materials and techniques (Princeton Online).

In the spirit of TAB, the program uses a centers format in which middle-school students have the opportunity to explore a variety of media and ideas with the support of instruction that attempts to encourage the development of independent decision-making skills. Each week the participants can choose to participate in any one of five centers of interest to them. Each center takes place at large tables in Frederick’s 3-D and 2-D art rooms. The five different centers are called On the Wall (2-D drawing and painting), Off the Wall (3-D clay handbuilding), Flip Side (mixed media), Movie Making (video and animation) and Fashion Garage (stitching, fabric dyeing and construction). Students can jump from center to center in order to explore a wide breadth of media, or they can stick to one center for the entire program. This built-in choice mechanism is intended to place autonomy in the hands of middle-school students at the time of day after they have finish the “mandated” tasks of a school curriculum, and before they go home. The decision to run the program in this manner was initiated by the MassArt students who, in their research and readings on community-arts programs, felt that one of the most important things middle-school students should have the right to exercise in their free time was making good decisions for themselves — with the support of caring adults who understood that positive youth development doesn’t happen without young people being guided to become self-directed and self-initiated in working through the issues they are presented with.

The curriculum is planned to provide a careful balance of structure and freedom, in keeping with the spirit of the program in general. The college students plan for each class, but allow student voice to drive the direction of a center as it develops over time. Responsive teaching is challenging in that control and organization over lessons has to be relinquished so that the participant’s interests can be explored. This means that each center has to allow for new participants each week. And because the middle-school participants understand that they are partially driving the curriculum when they choose what they will do on a given day, and what they do inside of that supportive, yet open-minded environment, their sense of ownership continues to develop as the program develops. Their input is openly solicited and new centers have been developed in response to their interests. For example, students wanted access to computers, so a digital video-and-animation center was established. Similarly, the original name of the program was "Art After Hours." At the end of the first year, the name of the program was instantly changed at the suggestion of the participants. Even though the “adults” had some misgivings about the name the students requested for the program due to the fact that the “Jump Off” has a variety of meanings, we felt that the students connected the program to the idea of a jumping off point—a “new beginning” as opposed to the more controversial meanings of the term. It was important to let them own the name and the program behind that name. This name-change symbolized an important shift in perception where the school partners and the Frederick students had become genuine partners in the direction and development of the program.

The primary challenge for Art Jump Off! has been to deliver a program that offers in-depth visual-art content in the kind of environment that supports young people’s personal development beyond the arts. For example, as part of the grant that funds the program, the students are also offered scholarships to MassArt’s youth programs on campus taking place on Saturdays, and summer and school vacations, thus creating a connection to additional art education and to higher education. The two mentoring students from the Boston Arts Academy high school organize a presentation by BAA students that take place during a field trip to the high school so that the Frederick students can have firsthand discussions with their potential future peers as they picture themselves to be part of a high-school community. This component of Art Jump Off intends to provide practical tools for making the process for choosing a high school more tangible and navigable. Teachers from all three schools collaborate on helping students with the admissions process. When language barriers or other obstacles prove to challenge a student’s access to future opportunity, the social workers in Frederick’s out-of-school-time office handle the process of bridging the student’s school and family lives. The funders are active in the progress of the program by demanding thorough updates and reports, but also by providing workshops and support in addressing programmatic needs and challenges.

Like many Community Youth Arts endeavors, Art Jump Off! is a collaborative work. It is grounded in an understanding of the community’s assets and challenges. Although it started as a “top down” project, it has a fluidity that allows for the participants to impact the direction of the program’s identity and curriculum. The participant’s voices are valued and clearly present in the program, in ways as varied as the artwork they make, the ever-evolving curriculum and the impact they have on the MassArt students. Last year (year three) was the first time parents came to pick up their children from the program. They asked more questions about what it offers and its link to the Boston Arts Academy. As a result, the goal for year four is to strengthen connections to the parents and guardians of the middle-school students.

Art Jump Off! also builds bridges between three learning communities that, potentially, could both support a sixth grader at Frederick in attending the Boston Arts Academy for high school, and MassArt for college, thus completing an educational pathway. Ultimately, the program exists to support youth in their discoveries, and to facilitate independence and creative work — something that can happen when a team of adults collaborates with young people in developing pathways for navigating their own creative and human development.

The following is the journal of Kassandra Derby, a MassArt student, kept over the nine weeks of Art Jump Off! in Fall 2007. It follows one Frederick student through the program. The journal shows the quality of relationships between the Frederick students and the two college students who taught Fashion Garage, while identifying changes in the participant — artistic growth, dedication, persistence and independence The names are changed.

Portrait of a Student: Alejandra, 7th Grade

For the past 9 weeks I have had the chance to observe an extraordinary student in Fashion Garage. This student absolutely defined my teaching experience at Art Jump Off and became a clear example to me of the phrase “mutually beneficial relationships.”

When I read through my observations of Alejandra, certain words jump out at me: Focused, Intent, Deliberate, Determined, Patient, Hard–working, Mature, Reasonable. Looking at these words I am surprised that I am describing a middle school student, as every week I was surprised that Alejandra truly was only a 7th grade student. Alejandra looks the part of a 7th grader — a small girl with very long dark brown hair whose simple accessories always coordinate. Of her trio of friends she is the quietest, never joining the hysterics that the other two lively girls sometimes find themselves in. Though she is quieter, she is definitely not shy. In the last class at the Boston Arts Academy, she was one of the first to step up in front of everyone to share her work, which she modeled on request.

The piece she modeled was the work of countless hours, both in and out of the program. Alejandra had come to the first class, along with the rest of her friends, with the goal of making a purse. The first week she dyed her fabric so that it would have black and white stripes. Though I didn’t know it then she already had a specific vision for her purse. The next week she drew out her concept, which was simple enough, and began pinning. Because the fabric was too thin to have any strength to it, Alejandra had to pin a white fabric to the inside and then sew the hems on the edges. This step became very frustrating to her as she struggled with the stitching and the time ticked on. Before she had a chance to really sink her teeth in the technique, the class was over. I was afraid that the lack of progress would discourage her and she would lose interest. But Determined and Patient, Alejandra returned the next week to continue her battle against the thread. Unlike some of the other girls, she was not satisfied with mediocre work. When Lorraine taught her how to make her stitches closer and more even, Alejandra really dedicated herself to mastering the method, rather than just quickly sewing up her purse.

By mid semester it was clear that it would be unlikely that the students would be able to do more than one project. It was clear that Alejandra was disappointed, but she was also very reasonable, seeing how hard the work is. Alejandra and her friends persevered. Each week they would come and sit and stitch. The sense of community formed around that sewing circle helped the girls keep going as the weeks wore on. The girls would gossip and laugh and offer advice and suggestions about each other’s projects. One day they were talking about the class they had in this room only an hour or so earlier, and how different it was from Art Jump Off. Alejandra said if it weren’t for Art Jump Off, she wouldn’t have come to school that day. I was shocked and flattered. When I was in middle school skipping school never even occurred to me as an option, and here this girl who is so dedicated to her sewing project, had almost skipped this very day! I had assumed that such a hard worker would be equally dedicated and interested in school. I never thought that our quiet Alejandra was one of the kids who can only find their place in art. But I guess this makes sense, for her motivation is extraordinary.

The same week as Alejandra’s statement we were teaching embroidery. None of the girls were particularly taken with the technique and were anxious to get back their work. Alejandra had trouble mastering our way of embroidery because of the stiffness of the fabric and ended up making up a different method. Her method was not as efficient, but she seemed to understand her limitations. Once she had completed the task she was released and allowed to work on her purse. Lorraine and I were satisfied with having shown them the basics of embroidery and hoped that it would give them a foundation when their projects were at a good point for embroidery. However as the weeks wore on, it didn’t seem like any of the purses would ever get to that point. The lesson was a lost cause.
In our second dyeing session, Alejandra quickly tied her fabric in the same fashion as her first session so that she could use it in her bag. She was very concerned about the time and asked if she could continue working on her purse while her piece was steeping in the dye. Sensing her worry Lorraine and I of course granted permission. Unfortunately this week we were so preoccupied with drop-ins that we had little time to help Alejandra and the rest of the crew with their purposes. We may as well have been absent from the program. Still our dedicated workers, Alejandra especially, continued on. As I dealt with our energetic and unmotivated tie dyers, I would glance over from time to time and see the girls all quietly working on their own. I was so grateful. When Alejandra asked if she could bring home her purse to work on at home, I was thrilled to let her. I had been worried about the girls finishing their purses and I was glad to give them more chances to do so. This began a huge saga, which changed the shape of our station.

Two weeks later the girls came back empty handed. Alejandra was the only one who remembered her purse. The community of sewers broke up as Jennifer and Alexis left the circle to join Flipside (probably motivated by the printmaking experience last week on the field trip to MassArt). Alejandra and I worked on how to attach her handles to her piece. Again I was impressed by her dedication to doing something well instead of just quickly. We brainstormed and tried many methods. Each time the result was not satisfactory to her, whether because it was not the right look, or it just wasn’t done perfectly, she did not hesitate in pulling out the stitches and starting over. In most of my experience with middle school students and even high school students this is very unusual. Most would notice the inconstancies and accept them rather than redo all their hard work. Alejandra’s maturity is definitely beyond her years.

A second example of her maturity that extends beyond her work ethic occurred during the embroidery lesson. Alejandra had chosen the hot pink embroidery hoop, and when Jennifer came in she demanded that she wanted it because it was pink. After a little fuss from Jennifer, Alejandra handed it over saying that it was just the color and it didn’t really make a difference. She did it so nonchalantly that I don’t think Jennifer got the message of how immature she looked in comparison. I think that Alejandra definitely forms a balance in her group of friends.

Before Alejandra left class after the 7th session I had her, Jennifer and Alexis all write down their phone numbers so that I could call them and remind them to bring back their purses. The next session while we were pulling up to Fredrick Middle School, John saw a little girl from Fashion Garage waiting on the corner for someone to pick her up. Lorraine and I jumped out of the bus and ran to the corner hoping to intercept her. It was no use, she had already gone. We walked back disheartened, worrying that she had skipped class today because she had forgotten her purse. When we got to class we asked Jennifer and Alexis where Alejandra had gone. We asked Jennifer to call her and she handed the phone to me. She said that something had come up, but I still felt it may have been because she forgot her purse. I think she has a sense of how much we like and respect her and I don’t think she wanted to disappoint us. While Jennifer and Alexis easily shifted over to Flipside, Alejandra was so focused and intent on finishing her purse that Art Jump Off had come to mean Fashion Garage and sewing her purse.

The next week Alejandra called me the night before the final Boston Arts Academy field trip. She was trying to figure out how she could get her purse to us if she couldn’t get permission to go on the field trip (it looked like that was going to be the case because her parents hadn’t let her come on the field trip to MassArt). We figured out what to do but I said I really hoped that she could come. Before we headed over to Boston Arts Academy, Lorraine and I braced for her absence and wrote her a thank you card for her friends to bring back to her. I was feeling unexcited. In the end all of our students had abandoned us to another center or, in the case of Alejandra, she wouldn’t be coming to the last week of the program because of her family’s problem with her attending field trips.

Suddenly the kids emerged from the stairwell at Boston Arts Academy and there was Alejandra with finished purse in hand. Lorraine and I were so excited and Alejandra was beaming. She had redone the handles so that they were attached with a Z shaped design that was way more original than the attempts we had made in the 7th class. Her nickname was embroidered on both sides of the bag, and lo and behold, when we looked inside the bag she had three other small bags she had made on her own using embroidery, sewing, and even appliqué! It was so exciting to see that our embroidering lesson hadn’t been a lost cause. It was even more amazing that Alejandra had taken a lesson she had learned weeks before and had applied all by herself without any help.

We were so proud and couldn’t help but show her off. When we asked the students to share their work, Alejandra immediately volunteered and waited patiently for her turn (I imagine more patiently than I waited). She showed off her purse and her work, while Lorraine, John and I peppered her with questions to reveal the significance of the piece. Alejandra modeled it for the camera, and one girl (joking) even tried to steal it from her. Her fellow classmates were clearly impressed. Just before they left we gave Alejandra the card and left to let the girls giggle around it. A few minutes later Alejandra came up to me with a thank you card and a hug, and then found Lorraine to deliver the same. It was an affirming experience for all.

While Lorraine and I walked back to MassArt we reflected on the experience. It had really touched us both and made us feel like we really gave something to Alejandra. In turn Alejandra gave us passion and meaning to teaching. I have felt very privileged to know such an incredible 7th grader.

Kassandra’s observation of Alejandra identifies artistic growth and commitment rare in a 7th grader. Alejandra persisted in developing new skills, and applied those skills to independently conceived works, as exemplified by the three additional bags she made at home. Kassandra also noticed a mature response to a peer conflict when Alejandra gave her friend the embroidery hoop while indirectly pointing out how immature her friend Jennifer’s behavior was. The journal also notes that Alejandra appears to have negotiated her independence with her parents, who had not supported her in attending the first trip to MassArt,. After Alejandra stated to Kassandra that she would likely not be allowed to attend the final trip to the BAA, where the students were presenting their work, she had been allowed to come — an event that was clearly important to both Alejandra and Kassandra. To say that these observations prove the program had direct and measurable impact on Alejandra’s progress in terms of youth development assets might be too far reaching, but Art Jump Off! clearly did support her in making artwork beyond her prior experiences and in learning and independently applying new skills, while entrusting her with the responsibility to work with program supplies independently at home. Kassandra offered Alejandra an opportunity to show responsibility in remembering to bring the work back to school — something that Alejandra likely didn’t do on one occasion, making her choose not to attend that day rather than face the perceived consequences of her actions. This might well have ruptured the student/teacher relationship had Kassandra not reached out to contact her immediately by telephone through Alejandra’s friend. That phone call suggested that Alejandra could still earn the respect of her teachers even if a mistake was made, and as a result, she chose to pursue her independence by both fulfilling the challenge of her artwork and attending the filed trip to BAA. Kassandra talked about how Alejandra’s enthusiasm was a gift to her, something that appeared to be mutual.

What does this narrative have to offer in terms of a window into the program? It suggests that a teacher and learner of vastly different backgrounds can establish a mutual relationship leading to personal growth in both of them. It also suggests that engagement with artmaking in an environment that uses the shared responsibility of interrelated youth-serving fields can set the stage for such an intimate connection in the afterschool classroom because the teacher had other individuals to help her negotiate Alejandra’s absence. The solution called for a personal connection to the student (phone calls between them) beyond the typical capacity of schools. Carefully supported creative expression, personal choice during the time of day when young people generally decide what to do with their time (for better or worse) and mutually respectful social connections with peers and adults come together to foster the kind of independence that emerging adolescents need if they are going to, like Alejandra, push beyond established artistic, personal and social patterns. Art Jump Off! will continue to strive to be a place where urban youth can come to understand themselves and the world while forging positive connections to social structures and institutions that take a sustainable, holistic approach in supporting the their growth over a period that reaches beyond the finite timeframe a student is generally associated with one school community.

Incidentally, of the six Boston Arts Academy students who worked as mentors in Art Jump Off! these past three years, three have gone on to attend MassArt for college. It was not an explicit goal for the BAA mentors to choose MassArt, nor have the partners researched a direct a link between this choice and their participation in Art Jump Off!. Yet, this outcome is welcomed. Art Jump Off! has now supported, either directly or indirectly, middle-school, high-school and college students. This year, the first group of students who started the program as sixth graders are applying to BAA for high school. Time will tell if Art Jump Off! helped them successfully make that transition.

This essay is part of the Community Arts Convening & Research Project, 2008, funded by a Nathan Cummings Foundation grant to the Maryland Institute College of Art. The essay was reviewed and selected by the project's Editorial Board: Ron Bechet, Xavier University of Louisiana; Lori Hager, University of Oregon; Marina Gutierrez, Cooper Union; Ken Krafchek, Maryland Institute College of Art; Sonia Mañjon, California College of the Arts; Amalia Mesa-Bains, California State University Monterey Bay; Paul Teruel, Columbia College Chicago; and Stephani Woodson, Arizona State University.

John Giordano is a visual artist and associate professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he coordinates undergraduate Community/Museum Education, and works with Master’s candidates developing thesis exhibitions. Giordano co-founded and co-directed MassArt’s Center for Art and Community Partnerships, 2004-2008. Recent projects in community/museum education include “Terminus” and “Consumed Buy It” — two exhibition/gallery education projects between MassArt students and Boston high schools.Giordano was named the 2006 Higher Education Art Educator of Massachusetts, and was the recipient of the 2006 Bruce Dayton Faculty Fellowship for summer research at MassArt. He is currently a candidate in the Interdisciplinary Studies doctoral program at Union Institute and University.

Kassandra Derby earned a B.F.A. in Art Education in 2008 from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She worked with numerous Community Partnerships programs during her time at the college. In 2006, she curated an exhibition of artwork by students and faculty in the college’s Godine Gallery titled, “Modern Day Slavery,” and developed concurrent events with communities beyond campus to bring awareness to issues of exploitation and slavery in the world today. Derby received the Art Education department’s Civic Engagement award upon graduation. She is now a high-school art teacher at Milton High School in Milton, Massachusetts.

Eccles, Jacquelynne S. , et al., eds. Community Programs to Promote Youth Development. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2002.

Sum, Andrew et. al., “Measuring High School Graduation Rates and Dropout Rates in the Boston Public Schools: The Findings of Alternative Estimating Methodologies.” 2005. Boston Private Industry Council. 27 Feb. 2008 < http://www.bostonpic.org/resources/measuring-hs-graduation-and-dropout-rates-boston-public-schools-findings-alternative-estim>.

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Art Jump Off!: Choice at the Center of a Middle-school Afterschool Arts Program

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