2017-027-E Arts - Ephesus Elementary School PTA - Fall 2016 Arts Grant Agreement

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DocuSign Envelope ID: 1 FB3C60F-686F-4434-8500-FE7D2516331 E Proposed Uses of Grant Funds Ephesus Elementary School PTA is requesting Grant Funds to help pay the artist fees for the 2016-17 Resident Artist, Poet Jaki Shelton Green. Although the PTA has already budgeted and committed the funds needed to complete the Resident Artist program this year, Fall 2016 fundraising efforts fell short of their expected goal (approximately $26,000 raised rather than the $30,000 anticipated). As a result, the PTA is seeking additional support for the Resident Artist fees in order to continue other needed programming. The Resident Artist program is new to Ephesus this year and is aimed at enriching the language arts curriculum while providing all students with the opportunity to interact with and learn from a successful working artist. During 2016-17 school year, Ms. Green is conducting a series of four visits to each classroom in the school. Ms. Green began the school year with visits to the 5th grade classrooms and is working in turn with the younger grades as the school year progresses. Each classroom visit is approximately 45 minutes in duration, with two goals: (1) to deeply engage students in working to understand and write poetry, and (2) to produce a poem for publication in the A Year of Poetry e-book that will contain poems created by all children at the school. In addition to classroom work, each series of four grade-level visits concludes with a "Peace Table" dinner to celebrate the poetry created during that grade's sessions with Ms. Green. The families of all students in that grade are invited to a potluck dinner where student work is on display, and Ms. Green attends. These Peace Table dinners are carefully planned to engage families in community discussions around issues of values and identity, and families who attend h`. are asked to encourage their children to lead conversations on some of the issues they have addressed in their poetry (identity, personal experience, conflict, common ground, feelings, and race and current events in the upper grades). Ms. Green's classroom visits last for approximately 45 minutes (longer for the upper grades and less for the lower grades, as attention spans allow). They are scheduled during the school day at a time chosen by the classroom teachers. The visits occur once per week for a series of four consecutive weeks. Classroom teachers remain in their classrooms to observe, to participate, to reinforce appropriate classroom behavior, and to further integrate the experience into the curriculum. The schedule of visits is as follows. September — 5th Grade (9/9, 9/16, 9/23, 9/29 — Peace Table dinner on 10/12) October — 4th Grade (10/21, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10 — Peace Table dinner on 11/30)