Jazz is what the band is doin’ and there is a lot going on inside this music!
When you go to hear a jazz group play, you’re witnessing the creative process of a group of individuals who feed each other ideas and feelings. The group works as a whole to inspire its members to explore their own voice while also supporting the other opinions within the group. It’s a democratic process – cooperative learning at its finest – the crossroads of creativity and curiosity.
Jazz in Schools is active in providing professional development workshops for teams of teachers, teaching staffs and individual teacher training. We work with arts and classroom teachers, college music education majors and school administrators.
Engaging teachers in the creative process gives them a fresh approach to the delivery methods used to meet the academic mandates of their teaching.
Arts Integration Professional Development
Jazz is a process that is structured and provides space for creativity. It’s the “poster child” for best teaching practices including Cooperative Learning, Setting Goals, Bloom’s Taxonomy in Cognitive, Psychomotor, and Affective Domains, and the use of the Artistic Method.
Jazz in Schools collaborates with BalletMet, Opera Columbus and the Greater Columbus Arts Council to provide teachers with the tools to address Best Teaching Practices while also learning how to offer the arts to their students.
Over a span of four years, Columbus City Schools have sponsored arts integrated professional development to more than over 100 teachers and have documented more than 500 lesson plans to include music, visual art, drama and dance. Jazz is the genre of music included and teachers receive practical applications of how to learn about jazz, talk about jazz and use jazz to teach the elements of music.
Jazz Is Spoken Here
Most fine arts/music content standards identified by the Ohio Department of Education can be addressed by examining the elements of jazz music.
This workshop is delivered to college music education majors. During the workshop, students are given the tools to include jazz in the music curriculum (K-12) and are encouraged to value jazz as a vehicle to interact with their school’s general student body and staff.
Arts Assessment
Jazz in Schools is providing a link to professional arts assessment consults for professional development for classroom and arts teachers. We examine methods to evaluate student progress while engaged in arts integrated projects that include jazz.
Conference Sessions
The Director of Jazz in Schools, Judy Shafer, is available to present at conferences. She has presented at Arts Midwest, Americans for the Arts, National Art Education Association, and Ohio Music Education Association and has plans to present in January 2010 at the Missouri Music Education Association.
