Normal Park Museum Magnet Named

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

National School of Distinction in Arts Education

 Normal Park Museum Magnet in Chattanooga was one of five schools in the nation to receive the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ National School of Distinction in Arts Education Award. The award recognizes schools that have made the arts an essential part of their students’ education. In addition to Normal Park, the other recipients included: Berlin Intermediate School, Berlin, MD; Dr. Charles R. Drew Elementary School, Silver Spring, MD; John Sayles School of Fine Arts, Schenectady, NY; and Winters Mill High School, Westminster, MD.

 Normal Park Museum Magnet was presented a plaque from the Kennedy Center during the January 15^th Hamilton County Department of Education School Board meeting. Principal, Jill Levine accepted the award from Rodney Van Valkenburg, Executive Director of Tennessee Alliance for Arts Education and Director of Arts Education at Allied Arts, on behalf of the Kennedy Center. The school also received a monetary award.

 Normal Park was nominated for the national award by the Tennessee Alliance for Arts Education. Selection criteria at the national level included a review of the ways in which arts education is an essential component of the school curriculum; how the program creates and uses imaginative learning environments for teaching and learning in, through and about the arts; how the arts program provides opportunities for parental involvement in education; how the program links arts education to community cultural resources.

 Normal Park Museum Magnet is dedicated to the arts in all content areas. Three times a year, grade level teachers with the assistance of the art, music, and dance teachers, produce a musical based on their classroom subjects. Tiny Seed, for example was a play about nature and its cycles. Parents and students are committed to the arts after school, partaking in dance, piano, guitar, drama, and visual arts classes. A recent parent /child visual arts class used the medium of papier mâché to produce a life sized elephant and monkey to add to the giraffe designed in a similar class last year.

 The awards program is an initiative of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network (KCAAEN), a coalition of thirty-two statewide, not-for-profit organizations that work with the Kennedy Center. The Tennessee Alliance for Arts Education is a member of the KCAAEN. The KCAAEN brings together educators, school administrators, parents, cultural leaders, and citizens from across the nation to emphasize the importance of the arts in America’s classrooms.