14 Jun Norene Ketcherside Endowment for Fine Arts host symposium for local teachers
Area elementary and high school teachers attended the 2014 Symposium on Contemporary Art and Community Engagement May 29 & 30 at the McPherson Opera House. The symposium was funded by Norene Ketcherside Endowment for Fine Arts. In addition to the symposium, the fund provided each attending teacher with a $250 grant to purchase classroom art supplies during the upcoming school year. This fund is administered by the McPherson County Community Foundation.
Acquiring complex-level thinking strategies for combining art education and core standards was a goal for the symposium. The presenters utilized artwork and exhibits at the McPherson Opera House, McPherson Museum and the Mary Anderson Art Center as part of their agenda. By combining local original art work with standards-based art education, the teachers learned how to enliven the curriculum for their students and incorporate College and Career Ready Standards for Math and ELA.
Reviews of the symposium favorably acknowledged how important combining the common core and local resources were in teaching children art education while implementing st
andards. “I learned the importance of using community resources to meet standards,” states one of the attendees.
Joyce Huser, Fine Arts Education Consultant for the Kansas Department of Education, was one of the presenters for the symposium. Ms. Huser is one of the writers for the National Core Arts Standards. She is a National Board Certified teacher with years of experience teaching K-12 Art Education with an emphasis on
Arts Integration.
Other presenters were Amanda Martin-Hamon and Liz Kowalchuk. Ms. Martin-Hamon holds the position of Associate Director of Community Engag
ement at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, KS and has taught courses at Washburn University and the University of Kansas. She was awarded KAEA’s Outstanding Ar
t Educator in Museum Education, has published in Art Education and the Journal of Museum Education and has presented at numerous professional conferences. She is currently chair of the Lawrence Arts Roundtable and serves as a board member of the Kansas Alliance for Arts in Education.
Ms. Kowalchuk is a professor of Visual Art Education and the Associate Dean of the School of the Arts at the University of Kansas. With 32 years of art teaching experience at both the K-12 and university levels, Liz is interested in how teachers can use local art and community resources as a source of inspiration in their curriculum.
In December, 2010 the Ketcherside family established the fund in memory of Norene, a former McPherson elementary school teacher and promoter of fine arts. She actively worked with the McPherson Art Restoration project to locate, refurbish, appraise and display the USD 418 art collection. Their family foundation has also worked with professors from the art department at Washburn University to promote fine arts to children.