Pacific Resources for Education and Learning

Enhancing community well-being through partnerships in education

Programs

Pacific Center for the Arts and Humanities in Education (PCAHE)

The PCAHE is a PREL program that focuses on arts and humanities education and is partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The primary goal of the PCAHE is to improve arts and humanities education and to build capacity in the Pacific community organizations that support that goal. We believe that integrating the arts and humanities with other subject areas makes learning exciting—a natural and efficient way to achieve academic and social competence. PCAHE offers professional development for educators, and technical assistance support for partnering arts and humanities organizations in the Pacific region. Many of the projects offered by PCAHE, such as Image to Word- Word to Image and Picturing Science emphasize the use of technology, language and arts into the curriculum. The PCAHE is a self-supporting unit within PREL, funded by grants and contracts from the organizations that it serves.

The arts and humanities are about the passions of life! Singing, dancing, sculpting, writing, drawing, acting, and storytelling are the events that make learning and working light and playful. The arts and humanities:

Make learning come alive.
Are serious and rigorous academic subjects.
Strengthen academic performance.
Help children understand themselves and different cultures.
Help children discover creative ways of thinking about questions and problems and working effectively with others.
Prepare students for jobs and careers.
Communicate world views, histories, beliefs, and values in meaningful and relevant ways.

Goals and Objectives

PCAHE strives to accomplish the following:

Foster and support visual, performing, and literacy arts education with the Pacific region
Promote understanding of cultural diversity among the 10 U.S. affiliates in the region and globally
Promote appreciation of the arts of the Pacific people
Foster education in and through humanities
Improve visual literacy in the region

Partners

The Pacific Arts Council (PAC) Network is part of the Pacific Territories Grant, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The Network, in partnership with Pacific Resources for Education and Learning, works to increase organizational capacity and collaboration among PACs. The grant focuses on the three PACs located in American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam. The Pacific Territories Grant strives to accomplish three major goals in and among the Pacific Arts Councils:

Increasing organizational capacity and communication through technology
Creating and planning activities that foster collaboration
Increasing organizational capacity by providing educational experiences

PCAHE works collaboratively with other agencies and programs to take full advantage of existing resources and expertise. Among these are:

Products and Services

The PCAHE staff conducts the following activities:

Produces videos, films, and CD-ROMs that promote comprehensive arts and humanities education.
Networks with agencies and individuals interested in comprehensive arts and humanities education.
Creates teacher resources and curriculum that support comprehensive arts and humanities education.
Plans and facilitates workshops and institutes in the arts and humanities for Pacific educators.
Plans and facilitates educational programs in dance, music, art, and theater throughout the Pacific.

PCAHE has published papers on standards-based art education, arts and literacy connections, and professional development, and has produced the CD-ROM Art of the Pacific Islands and a video curriculum resource titled Island Worlds identifying the differences between Micronesian, Polynesian, and Melanisian art. The booklet By Word of Mouth: A Storytelling Guide for the Classroom is available in print and online. For a complete list of and links to PREL's arts and humanities publications, go to PREL Products Online and search by topic. The following are sample programs offered by the PCAHE:

Image to Word - Word to Image Program

What Is Image to Word - Word to Image?

Image to Word-Word to Image is an exciting new program using standards-based art education experiences to improve comprehension, vocabulary, writing, and image making for children. The program is sequential and designed to help both teachers and students make meaning of other people's artifacts and images through talking and writing about art.

The Image to Word-Word to Image project strives to improve literacy through image making, and to improve image making through writing. The project's objectives are to:

Offer workshops to assist teachers in using standards-based art education as a vehicle to improve literacy (both verbal and visual).
Create curriculum resources for educators that will aid in improving image making, reading, and writing skills.
Exhibit examples of children's writing and images, which reflect their cultures and their whole worlds.

The hands-on Image to Word-Word to Image workshops for teachers help integrate art and image making into the present curriculum. The workshops are sponsored by Pacific Center for the Arts and Humanities in Education (PCAHE).

Why Integrate Art and Language Arts?

The Standards, published by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association in 1996, provide support for integrating art and language art. The following statements from the commentary offer guidance for the development of correlated art and language art activities:

Students need frequent opportunities to write about different topics and for different audiences and purposes - in art, students can write about a variety of topics related to the works of art studied and can produce works that address different audiences and purposes.
Students develop their knowledge of form and convention in spoken, written, and visual language as they create their own compositions and critique those of others - in art, students develop knowledge of visual language, create their own works, and critique their work and the work of others.
Students who explore cross-disciplinary connections develop a working terminology to describe language structure as they become more thorough readers and more effective writers - in art, students explore cross-disciplinary connections, become more visually literate, more thoughtful thinkers, and more effective writers.
It is essential that students acquire a wide range of abilities for raising questions, investigating concerns, and solving problems - when writing about art, students acquire a wider range of skills for expression, both verbally and visually.
Standards-Based Art Education includes:
Art History, which offers the opportunity to talk about and study one's own culture as well as the culture of others.
Art Criticism, in which students can talk about images using the language of art (elements and principles).
Aesthetic Inquiry, which offers experiences to talk about the nature of art.

Contact

For additional information, contact Dr. Lori Phillips, Director, at phillipl@prel.org.

Contact PREL

Pacific Resources for Education and Learning
Phone:
(808) 441-1300
U.S. Toll-free Phone:
(800) 377-4773

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