Archive: Around Town

On an early June afternoon, Terry Byrnes, president of the Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI) and Martha Frommelt, president of the Fine Arts Booster Group (FABG), visited Caroline Elementary School where they witnessed four examples of arts education. IPEI and FABG work in conjunction to facilitate community connections and support for students and teachers of the Ithaca City School District (ICSD).

At the front entrance, Byrnes and Frommelt admired the school’s version of the “Watershed Wall”, the district-wide public art installation and collaboration between FABG, ICSD and the City of Ithaca with many other organizations. It was unveiled in June 2010 near the Ithaca Commons.

The sounds of Kindergarten and First Grade students performing for their parents was emanating from the first room they passed. Music Teacher Kara Notarianni was directing the young musicians as they sang and also played ukuleles purchased in a previous year with IPEI and FABG grant funds.


Toward the rear of the building numerous students of various ages were painting different parts of a mural with their teachers and with community volunteers. Teacher Miriam Mack received an IPEI Teacher Grant for “Travel Through the Curriculum” involving all Third, Fourth and Fifth Graders and Marybeth Ihnken, professional muralist. This art project included students helping to design and create the murals focusing on New York State history and geography to be permanently mounted in the hallways.

Byrnes and Frommelt reached their destination –a classroom that opens into the hallway of murals. Caroline Third Grade teachers Sharon Nelson and Dusty Beigel had invited IPEI and FABG representatives to observe their students as they demonstrated their “HIP Arts” for their parents. Nelson and Beigel had piloted an arts integration model called HIP Arts (Hangar Integration Project) with funding from both IPEI and FABG and with support from the Hangar Theatre Education Department.

“HIP Arts engaged the students in theater activities that supported their abilities to make inferences and draw conclusions. Reading comprehension depends on students' abilities to ‘read between the lines,’ wonder about meaning, and form opinions about what they read,” explained Nelson.


Hangar Theatre teaching artist Holly Adams worked with the two classrooms reaching a total of 47 students for ten one- hour-long sessions each. Teachers followed up in-between sessions to strengthen student comprehension skills. This project addressed NYS Learning Standards in English Language Arts. HIP Arts is a collaboration of the Hangar Theatre, Caroline School, and Anne Rhodes, a state-wide Arts in Education curriculum planner. This collaboration was planned, implemented and assessed by both teachers and teaching artists together.

Students performed scenes (and some served as narrators and directors), and they wrote dialogue as well as descriptions of scenes to develop their ability to find clues in the scenes and interpret meaning. These skills were transferred to their classroom reading texts where they were similarly encouraged to move beyond the literal and draw conclusions.

Nelson shared a relevant quote from “Renaissance in the Classroom” with Byrnes and Frommelt: “When well planned and implemented, arts integrated education is one of the most effective ways for a wide range of students with a wide range of interests, aptitudes, styles and experiences to form a community of active learners taking responsibility for and ownership of their own learning.”

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