AACL Grants Awarded

The Terra Foundation provided grants to help institutions participating in American Art at the Core of Learning create new programs and resources that connect to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts or to strengthen the connections in existing programs. Awards were made during fiscal years 2013, 2014, and 2015 to support projects for Chicago-area students and teachers about American art. Most grants did not exceed $25,000, but the Terra Foundation considered larger requests for substantial projects.

Art Institute of Chicago

$100,000To support the second year (2014–15) of “American Sources: Using Visual Art in the Humanities Curriculum,” a professional-development program for teachers that grew out of the Terra Foundation’s Teacher Lab. The program explores the use of art from the Terra Foundation and AIC’s collections as primary source documents and guides participants in developing related curriculum that aligns with the CCSS-ELA. It is expected to serve up to thirty local middle- and high-school teachers, including twenty CPS teachers.

The Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago History Museum

$25,000To support the development of the “Great Chicago Fire Student Workshop,” a new field trip program for third and fourth grade students in the 2013–14 school year. The workshop uses artworks in the CHM made by artists who personally witnessed the fire and its aftermath. The program is aligned with the CCSS-ELA, and uses art as a key primary “texts” for students during the field trip and post-visit classroom activity. The program is expected to reach up to six hundred students in its pilot year, and thousands more in the years to come.

The Chicago History Museum
The Chicago History Museum

DuSable Museum of African American History

$18,000To support the development of the “Legacy After School” program, which focuses on the art of DuSable Museum founder Dr. Margaret Burroughs in the 2014–15 school year. This new program will serve twenty-four CPS students in the ninth and tenth grades over fifteen sessions. Students will learn about American art while exploring concepts relevant to their world today. The program is aligned to the CCSS-ELA and uses artworks as key primary texts for students to respond to and explore. Students then create their own art and poetry and present these prints and poems to the community. Community contributors and presenters include Jedidiah Brown of the Chosen Generation project, the Black Star Project, the Mikva Challenge, printmaker and art educator Frederick McKelphin, and award-winning author Angela Jackson, who participated in the Organization of Black American Culture Writers Workshop.

$24,770

To support the “Legacy After School” program in the 2015–16 school year. This program, revised during its second year, serves twenty-four high school students from CPS over twenty-seven sessions. The program is aligned to the CCSS-ELA and uses key works of historic sculpture from the DuSable’s permanent collection. Students will focus on how artists historically responded to issues of racial and social injustice, learn about American artworks and the artists who created them, and create sculptures and poems inspired by what they learned. Students will present their work at a culminating event. Community contributors and presenters include: Jedidiah Brown of the Chosen Generation project, Associate Professor David Stovall from the African American Studies department at the University of Illinois Chicago, and award-winning author Angela Jackson, who participated in the Organization of Black American Culture Writers Workshop.

The DuSable Museum of African American History
The DuSable Museum of African American History

Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art

$25,000To support Intuit’s annual award-winning “Teacher Fellowship Program,” as its curriculum is updated to strengthen connections to the CCSS-ELA. The program introduces teachers to American outsider artists during five professional-development sessions. With support of Intuit’s staff, teachers create lessons about outsider art. The project includes field trips for students and a culminating exhibition of student work at Intuit. The program is expected to reach 600 Chicago students via twenty teachers from ten schools in the 2013–2014 school year.

Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

$25,000To support “Culture and Identity: Peace and Justice: Summer Teacher Institute and Learning Community,” a professional-development program serving twenty-five CPS fifth–twelfth grade educators and their students. During a five-day Summer Teacher Institute, museum educators, curators, and content specialists from the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, and the DuSable Museum of African American History will present tools and resources for teachers. Teachers will develop arts-integrated curricula that unite themes of culture, identity, peace, and justice aligned with the CCSS-ELA. After the conclusion of the Institute, museum educators will share all resources developed through the program with the teachers. Museum partners will also provide ongoing support for teachers implementing strategies learned in the Institute throughout the 2014–15 school year.

$25,000

To support “Whose Streets? Our Streets! Art and Spatial Justice in the Urban Environment,” a summer teacher institute serving twenty-five CPS teachers and their students during the 2015–16 school year. This teacher institute, revised from its 2014–15 iteration, will focus on strategies for investigating artworks and connecting social justice concepts to classroom work. During five summer sessions, museum educators, curators, and content specialists from the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, and the DuSable Museum of African American History will present American artworks in the context of social change. The teachers will then develop arts-integrated curriculum and pilot this in their classrooms. During the school year, teachers will refine their curricula and share practice at follow-up sessions, and students of program teachers will participate in a field trip to one of the host institutions.

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

$25,000To support the pilot year of the “Multiple Visit Program,” a sequential field trip and classroom program for CPS students and teachers in third through fifth grade. This program, led by teaching artists, builds on an open, inquiry-based dialogic experience around two exhibitions featuring American art. Over the course of the school year, each teacher will bring students to the MCA for three visits. Teachers will also engage in three professional-development workshops that will support their classroom teaching to compliment visits to the museum. The program is fully aligned with the Speaking and Listening standards of the CCSS-ELA. The program served twelve CPS teachers and their three hundred students in the 2013–14 school year.

$25,000

To support the “Multiple Visit Field Trip Program,” a sequential field trip and classroom program serving twelve CPS classrooms of fourth through sixth grade students in the 2015–16 school year. The program, which is revised from its pilot year, is led by teaching artists and builds on an open, inquiry-based dialogic experience around exhibitions featuring American art at the MCA. Fully aligned with the Speaking and Listening area of the CCSS-ELA, the program consists of three professional-development workshops for teachers in December 2015, followed by three consecutive field trips to the museum for students. Teachers will receive curricular resources and information about exhibition artworks, and will support their students’ classroom learning in-between visits to the museum.

 

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College

$5,000To support “Close Readings of Dust Bowl Texts,” a new program that will engage two classrooms at Lincoln Elementary in Chicago and Kingsley Elementary in Skokie, Illinois through curriculum and student field trips in the 2013–14 school year. The program engages the full faculty of partner schools through a professional-development workshop. The program focuses on text and images from the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, using curriculum co-created by the MoCP and the Mary and Leigh Block Museum in collaboration with the two teachers whose classrooms will participate in the project. Students will explore Dust Bowl-era photographs and prints from the MoCP and Block collections respectively. They will visit the MoCP to see photographs in person and to meet with Dyanna Taylor, Dorothea Lange’s granddaughter and creator of an American Masters documentary film on the photographer.

$60,000

To support “American Photography and Literacy,” a two-year professional-development and curriculum-development program for CPS teachers on the subject of American photography and literacy during the 2013–14 and the 2014–15 school years. The workshops focus on deepening understanding of American photography and the CCSS-ELA and support teachers in developing and implementing their own curriculum. This program serves forty CPS teachers, and is informed by the MoCP’s participation in the Terra Foundation-led AACL initiative. ­­

The Museum of Contemporary Photography
The Museum of Contemporary Photography

National Museum of Mexican Art

$25,000To support “An Immigrant’s Perspective,” a new curriculum-development project serving twenty-five sixth through twelfth grade teachers in CPS and their approximately 750 students. Three teachers will collaborate with museum staff to develop new curriculum that explores the immigrant experience through prints by two Mexican American artists, The CCSS-aligned curriculum explores immigration through artworks and will then be piloted by teachers during the 2013–14 school year. Pilot classrooms will take field trips to the museum. Once the curriculum has been revised after testing, it will be published on the NMMA website.

National Museum of Mexican Art
National Museum of Mexican Art

The Newberry Library

$20,000To support two three-day “Teachers as Scholars” (TAS) seminars, each of which will serve fifteen Chicago high school teachers. The 2013 seminar focuses on representations of Native Americans in art and archival materials, and the 2014 seminar focuses on World War I and American visual culture. Teachers participating in TAS will learn from each other and from experts about ways to bring works of art to teaching history, literature, and other humanities fields. The teachers will create lessons that reflect seminar content and give students opportunity to use primary sources, aligned with the CCSS-ELA in reading and writing. These lessons will pull from the Newberry’s Digital Collection for teachers, and may be made available to others via this digital platform.

The Newberry Library
The Newberry Library