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Art Education and School Year 2020-21: Navigating Remote, Hybrid, and In-Person Instruction in the COVID-19 Landscape

NAEA Town Hall Conversations | October 20, 2020

View the October 20, 2020 recording here.

Download the accompanying handout here.

Sharing solutions and support for success in this unique school year is our goal for this conversation. Join expert guides as they communicate how they are navigating the current landscape as supervisors, administrators, and classroom practitioners. Gain perspective from various vantage points and walk away with practical ideas for immediate use whether you’re faced with the challenges and opportunities of remote, in-person, or hybrid learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Complete information on all NAEA Town Hall Conversations is available here.

Panelists

Armon Barrows
Visual and Graphic Arts Teacher, Crater Renaissance Academy, Central Point, OR

Armon Barrows is originally from Helena, Montana. After drawing and cartooning most of his life, Barrows received a BA in art education from the University of Montana, Missoula, and an MA in art from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Barrows has taught art in public schools for almost 20 years—15 of those at the K–12 level at a rural school outside of Denver, Colorado. Since moving to Oregon 5 years ago, he has focused on both traditional and digital art methods for high school students. In his spare time, Barrows has worked on several freelance art projects for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, illustrated books and promotional material, and developed a myriad of logos and other artwork for various stakeholders he has been lucky to meet along the way. Outside of art, Barrows enjoys spending time with his wife and dogs, running, kayaking, and hiking in the Oregon wilderness.


Alysia Lee
Coordinator, Fine Arts, State Department of Education, Baltimore, MD

Alysia Lee’s full-circle role as an artist, arts educator, teaching artist, and arts advocate gives her a broad perspective of the arts ecosystem. Lee has received national recognition for advancing access, equity, visibility, representation, and power sharing among artists, organizations, and communities. Key to her methods are empowerment, partnership construction, and intersectional approaches to community exchange while centering anti-racism, creativity, and social justice. See Lee’s full bio [here].

Lee is the education program supervisor for fine arts education for the Maryland State Department of Education, where she shares her vision of statewide equity and excellence across five arts disciplines: music, dance, visual arts, theater, and media arts.

Lee is the founder and artistic director of Sister Cities Girlchoir, the girl empowerment choral academy in Philadephia, Camden, and Baltimore. She is a member of the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education and a board member of Chorus America.

Recent awards include accolades from the Kennedy Center, the Knight Foundation, National Association of University Women, Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation, and Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

Recent speaking/facilitation engagements include the U.S. Department of Education, the Kennedy Center, Americans for the Arts, Arts Education Partnership, Chorus America, Maryland Citizens for the Arts, Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, TEDx, Temple University, and Towson University.


L. Earl Franks, EdD, CAE
Executive Director, National Association of Elementary School Principals, Alexandria, VA

L. Earl Franks, the executive director of the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), is a veteran association executive and an advocate for public education and school leadership with over 3 decades of preK–12 education experience.

In his role as NAESP’s executive director, Franks advances the association’s mission to lead in the advocacy and support for elementary- and middle-level principals as well as other education leaders in their commitment to all children. He represents the nation’s preK–8 principals on the board of directors of the Learning First Alliance, the National Policy Board for Educational Administration, and as a member of multiple national educational organizations and coalitions.

Prior to his selection as the NAESP executive director, he served as executive director of the Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools, Alabama’s leading umbrella organization for principals and school administrators. He was inducted into the Alabama Educational Leadership Hall of Fame in 2018.

Franks received his doctorate in educational leadership from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his MS in education, a bachelor’s degree in music education, and an educational specialist degree from Troy University in Troy, Alabama.


Luisa Tio
Art Teacher, Matthew Maury Elementary, Alexandria City Public Schools, Alexandria, VA
www.luisatio.com

As a Cuban American art teacher, Tio wants her students to care about other cultures, to grow in their abilities, and to know how much she cares about them. She has been fortunate to study art in many contexts: as a Duke University undergraduate; in a University of Pennsylvania program in Ibadan, Nigeria, studying Yoruba art; as a docent at the University of Michigan Museum of Art; as an intern at the University of Witwatersrand Art Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa; in art schools in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; and in New York and Venice, Italy, through her NYU MA program. Tio worked actively as an artist during this time, and then two daughters (now 17 and 19) turned her focus to children, art, and education. Tio has taught elementary art in Alexandria (VA) City Public Schools for the past 16 years—10 at Matthew Maury Elementary School. She has been the lead ACPS elementary art teacher for 7 years. For many years, she has organized Alexandria’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Art Exhibition with the Alexandria Black History Museum. Each summer for the past 10 years, she has also run her own summer art camps.

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