Q. You recently became Executive Director of the Office of the Arts and Special Projects. Explain your role and the kind of work your office does. How does the office support schools?
A. We work most specifically with teachers in the arts, so we do ongoing professional development with teachers in all four arts: dance, music, visual arts, and theater. We’re also responsible for curriculum development in those areas. Additionally, we do a lot of work with school leaders. That means either working with school leadership teams or directly with the principals and helping them engage with art instruction—what it should look like, what kind of resources and materials they need, how to staff those programs. Additionally, we’re increasing our focus on what student achievement in the arts looks like and how we work with community partners and schools to achieve quality instruction.
Q. What’s your typical day like for you?
A. I will start the day at an elementary school, watching kids do an all-school concert, and by the end of the day, I’m working on fundraising in the corporate or philanthropic areas. It’s extremely exciting, the range of personalities and the opportunities I’m exploring.
Q. It sounds like the role is not just working with the schools, but you’re also working with the outside community as well.
A: We work very deeply with cultural partners, museums and performing arts institutions. Having come from that world, I feel like I’m back among my own people. It’s really exciting, and the significant contributions the industry is making to New York City public schools is extremely important.
Q. When you go out to schools, what do you take away from those visits?
A. There’s nothing more important than going to schools and seeing how the arts impact school culture, how they affect community, what kids are actually learning in the arts. It helps us both learn where we have more work to do and find where there’s some really exemplary practice that we need to highlight. One of the things we’ve started doing this year is taking both teachers and school innovators on visitations, because to see the arts practice in a real classroom setting informs what you’re doing in your own school and gives you an idea about how to ramp up the arts.
Q. Could you think of a better place for kids to be learning arts than New York City?
A. No, it’s really the best place. The challenge is how do you take advantage of these resources that New York City presents. There are opportunities for kids here that only happen in this City.
What’s also interesting about being in the City is that you don’t even realize what resources schools may have in their own buildings. When principals start surveying the faculty, they find that many teachers have rich arts experiences that they can tap into. I love to say that every third teacher in the City used to be an unemployed actor. I think there’s really a passion in actors for engaging an audience, and there’s a passion in dancers and visual artists, and they can bring that into their teaching. Artists are remarkably complex and complicated individuals, and they have multiple talents. To be able to tap into that is really a resource.
Q. Talk a little bit about your professional life before coming to the DOE. Do you have a theater background?
A. I have more of a background in opera, though I consider opera to be theater. I was a trained actor, but like everyone else, I quickly discovered that what I really wanted to do was to direct. So I worked as a director, mostly in opera, for about 20 years. I worked for some very large regional companies – L.A. Opera, Houston Opera – and then I spent a long portion of my time at New York City Opera. I was Director of Staff for seven years, and then I was Director of Education at New York City Opera for another seven years. Then I came to the Department of Education as Director of Theater Programs.
Q. How has your previous experience influenced the job you do today?
A. I think it gives me a really interesting perspective about both sides, both the school side and what it means to be a cultural provider working in schools. There are certainly challenges to being a cultural provider working with our schools, and I think I’m a bit more sensitive to what that means and also the extreme commitment our partners bring to our schools. I’m also a parent and have two kids in Department of Education schools, so I also feel that I have an insight into what it means to be a parent navigating the DOE.
Q. You grew up in Colorado. When you were a kid did you see yourself here in New York City? Did you always know that you wanted to be an actor or a director?
A. I always knew that I wanted to do something in the arts. My father was stationed in New York during World War II, so he used to tell these great stories about coming into the city from Fort Dix to see Broadway here. So even though we were in very rural Colorado, we always had a lot of arts in my family. So I think it was something that I always knew I’d do, even though I never in 100 years imagined myself doing this work. I think what’s engaging about it is that there are so many avenues for creative and thoughtful work.
Q. Did you perform in theater productions when you were a kid?
A. I remember being in second grade and singing “Easter Parade Dress” in a bunny costume. After that, I don’t remember not doing something in theater. In the West, there are these clubs called the Thespians Society, so I was a Thespian, and I did a lot of theater in college. I met my wife doing summerstock theater, and now my kids are involved in theater.
Q. Were you and your wife ever in a production together?
A. We were, that’s how we met, doing two productions in summerstock.
Q. What were the productions?
A. We were in “Man of La Mancha” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” together.
Q. How does your office work with outside organizations? How do they enhance the quality of arts education in the schools?
A. In creating our curriculum, we partner deeply with those organizations. We really wanted our Blueprints to address what practice in the field looks like, as well as how we would work jointly training teachers. So that’s very significant. There’s now a shared vocabulary about what arts instruction should look like, whether you’re a teacher or a cultural arts provider. What cultural providers can bring is the kind of energy that a professional artist can bring into a classroom. They can also bring a specific expertise and obviously, with musicals and performances in the City, they can provide access to real practice that may not be available in general classrooms.
Q. How does your office work with the Fund for Public Schools and how does the Fund support the arts? What way can the greater public get involved?
A. We need to do this all together, and the Fund for Public Schools is hugely instrumental in helping us find the additional resources to do the work in schools. Some of the projects we’ve worked specifically with the Fund on have to do with Arts Grants renovations, where we come into schools and install dance spaces and theater spaces, lighting and sound equipment, lights and those kinds of things. So, that is a real substantive addition to what the schools can provide. We have great support foundations that provide a lot of resources both for classroom teachers and arts teachers that we wouldn’t be able to provide, necessarily. I think the Fund helps us shape our vision for what a better arts education looks like: how do we work with those communities, how do we share a vision, and how do we get everyone to the same table?
Q. The Second Annual Madison Avenue Gallery Walk is coming up in a couple of weeks. Tell us about that event.
A. There are great events during the year that allow parents, families, and interested members of the community to see the work that our kids are doing in the arts. The Madison Avenue Walk, to which you’re referring, is a great opportunity to see some really exemplary student visual artwork that’s being supported by the Madison Avenue BID. It really brings professional work into the same setting as student work. DOE teachers will be at some of these galleries providing guided tours, so it’s a way for the public to see the work our teachers and students are doing.
Q. What’s the most important thing that arts educators can teacher our students, and what do you hope students leave our schools with?
A. Really good arts education is extremely rigorous in the art form because I think to deeply appreciate art involves making art and being a part of that process, which is really rigorous. But the applications from arts education is much more than just artist training. The arts are about problem solving .They’re about really deep collaborative work. The arts are about articulating a vision. The arts are about discipline.
I think all those things, regardless of whether you become a professional artist or not, will serve you well. I look at my own kids. I have an older daughter who’s a dancer, and I see the kind of discipline that she brings to her daily life because of standing at a ballet barre for hours and hours. It’s really significant and important.
Q. It sounds like you have a household of artists at home. Are you all always talking about the arts?
A. Well, we talk about art a lot, but we do talk about other things on occasion.
Q. Do you guys see lots of shows and concerts?
A. We do. I see a lot of theater, because I really love it, and I see a lot of dance with my oldest daughter. We probably go to a museum once a month. We’re arts pre-disposed, and even when we travel, that’s where we navigate. We’re probably not as athletic as we should be, but we do a lot of cultural events.
Q. What’s coming up next for your office?
A. The big thing that’s coming up for us is of course our PS Visual Arts Exhibition, which this year again will be at the Metropolitan Museum. That’s an extraordinary event. The public should take advantage of the Met, go down to the Uris Gallery and see the really exemplary art that’s taking place. We also have our all-city music concerts that will be at the Skirball Center at NYU in early June. Those are kids that come together from across the city and perform in jazz, orchestra, band, marching band and choir, so it’s really a great opportunity to see that work as well.
Q. How do you see the role of your office changing in the coming years? You said you were focusing more on how to measure student achievement in the arts.
A. I think we’ve done really substantive work in curriculum and professional development. The flip side is how we hold schools accountable for what they’re delivering. We’re now in the third year of our Arts Count Initiative, which is a Citywide survey of arts instruction. We’ve looked at licensed arts teachers, cultural partners, and resources in the school. Each and every school gets an individual arts report, as well as an aggregate report for the city. It’s really informative about the work we need to do and the work we need to help schools do. As this develops, you’re going to see really specific strategies for moving individual schools into this arts accountability mode.
Q. Has anything surprised you at the DOE in terms of what’s happening in the schools with the arts?
A. What’s really surprising is the way that individual schools take advantage of the arts. The arts look very different in different settings. I think the ability of the arts to capture what the kids know and understand and the prior knowledge that they bring can really shape a program and make it very specific for individual communities. That’s extremely exciting, to see the range of arts in our schools.
It’s not a purely Western approach to arts. It’s about taking advantage of the people in your community, what cultures they come from and what they can bring to the table.