Proposal for Media Arts Licensure with Board of Teaching Meeting Jan 15

Comments by Cherry Cramer, MAFCS VP Education Co-Chair
from an article published from the MAFCS Newletter, page 15, Dec 2009.
A Media Arts endorsement is about to be proposed to the MN Board of Teaching. the U of M and the Perpich Center for the Arts have proposed Media Arts standards and a possible art endorsement for this area. The purpose of the endorsement is to assure that the process of art is taught and teachers adhere to the arts standards when teaching art.
There are layers of concern. An area of concern has been discussed by the MN FACS coalition. One is that this is both a licensure and a standard issue and local districts make the final decision to approve which credits are taught in which courses. The Board of Teaching (BOT) is concerned with licensure and does not make decisions about which teachers teach which standards. Once Licensure is approved, then it becomes an issue of highly qualitfied. Highly Qualified implies that a teacher has an art degree and has passed the Praxis test in art. When all is said and done, if a school district decides it is appropriate to teach an art credit in a FACS class, the local school board appoints the preson responsible for seeing that teacher meets the requirements of the art standard.
Another peice of the discussion centered on teaching an art process versus teaching as a vocation. A third point of discussion is the fact this proposal is about a Media Arts Standard that may be made into media Arts endorsement. At this time there are not many FACS teachers that teach media arts according to the standard as this standard just came up. But currently neither does an arts teacher or other career and technical education teacher unless they have seen the standard. This is an art standard that may or may not be taught in a FACS class some day.
It was pointed out that this tye of endorsement may limit students in the choices of how to obtain required credits. When a visual arts licensure went through a few years ago, there were not enought FACS teachers or CTE teachers that questioned what was going on and it negatively impacted FACS and CTE teacher's ability to teach a visual art standard. The proposal for media arts endoresment will be brought to the BOT meeting Jan 15 beginning at 8:30 am at the MDE Building in Roseville. http://http://www.education.state.mn.us/MDE/Teacher_Support/Board_of_Teaching/Meet_Minute_Agenda/index.html