Two Glendale schools awarded $125K arts grant

Teachers and students at two Glendale schools will receive instruction and guidance from teaching artists provided to them by the Music Center as part of a grant-funded collaboration that aims to deepen arts instruction and curriculum.

Mark Keppel Visual & Performing Arts Magnet Elementary, as well as Toll Middle School, located just down the street from Keppel, are participating in the program.

The schools were awarded a federal grant worth $125,480 available through the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement, according to Glendale Unified teacher specialist Talisen Winder.

The grant will allow for teaching artists from the Music Center to work closely with Keppel and Toll instructors to provide new ways to enhance students’ learning and proficiency in visual and performing arts standards.

“[The] Music Center’s teaching artists are highly trained with expertise in individual arts disciplines as well as techniques for using them in the classroom,” Winder said in an email.

Once students promote from Mark Keppel, they go on to attend Toll, so Glendale Unified educators are focused on strengthening arts instruction there, too.

In all, 58 teachers from Keppel and Toll will undergo training this year, and part of it will involve the instructors observing as the visiting teaching artists model instruction in the classroom for one hour a week for 10 weeks.

In addition, the collaboration between teachers at both campuses presents an advantage to students, said Kristine Siegal, principal of Mark Keppel.

“It’s such a benefit for the students when their teachers work together, use the same language and share similar ideas because it transfers into their teaching,” she said.

--

Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan