Visiting Artist Program

Program Description

The Durango High School Visual Arts Department is pleased to announce a new visiting artist program for the 2011-2012 school year. This program has been made possible because of a generous grant from the Michael Crane Memorial Arts Education Fund and Durango Foundation for Educational Excellence.

The visiting artist program will enhance educational opportunities for visual art students at Durango High School by placing professional visual artists from the Four Corners community into art classrooms to teach, mentor and work directly with students. The goals of this program are aligned with both the Durango 9-R District’s Strategic Plan as well as the Durango High School Strategic Site Plan and aim to fully engage visual arts students in meaningful, relevant, authentic learning experiences (9-R Strategy 4) as well as create a community-wide partnership in order to promote student accountability and success (DHS Tactic 4).

Professional visual artists from the community will be asked to apply to the program and propose learning opportunities for students that join their expertise in the visual arts with both the Colorado Academic Standards for Visual Arts as well as the required concepts covered in specific visual arts courses.

A total of four professional artists will be chosen from these applications to fill spots for the 2011- 2012 school year in the following 2D and 3D visual arts media areas: Painting, Drawing, Photography and Ceramics/Sculpture.
Eligibility Any professional visual artist from the Four Corners region who has a passion for the visual arts and a desire to work directly with students in the art studios at Durango High School is encouraged to apply. Applicants are not required to have prior experience teaching in public high school art classes. Applicants must pass a background check, gain authorized volunteer status and be given a badge through Durango 9-R Human Resources before beginning their work with students.
Durango 9-R Authorized Volunteer Status Chosen applicants must be able to gain authorized volunteer status through Durango 9-R Human Resources before beginning their work with students. It is not required that you go through this process before being accepted to the Visiting Artist Program. However, please check your eligibility for gaining authorized volunteer status by reviewing the authorization paperwork found at this link on the Durango 9-R District Webpage and contacting the HR department with any specific questions about your personal circumstances that would be related to you gaining eligibility.

Application Process

Application packets must be fully completed and mailed to Durango High School Visual Arts Department no later than October 7, 2011.
Applications will be reviewed and potential applicants will be asked to come to Durango High School and meet with the visual arts staff in person about their proposed ideas.
All applicants will be notified via email as to whether or not their application was accepted by October 28, 2011.
Chosen applicants work in the classroom would be scheduled and completed before the end of the 2011-2012 school year.

Application Packet Contents

The application packet must be fully completed. The application contains: general information, proposed lesson plan and images of sample work on CD- your art work and student work (if applicable). Download an application.

How do I Develop a Lesson to Propose?

Professional artists from the Four Corners community can apply to teach a lesson in a class for the Visual Arts Department at Durango High School. Professional artists are first asked to pick: a specific course; specific content from that course; and specific Colorado Academic Standards in the Visual Arts to address. Then, they are asked to use their own talents as well as a creative approach to develop a lesson that will address the content and standards as well as engage students. For example, a professional painter might choose to apply to do a lesson in the Painting I course to address the course content: “a project that explores color theory and color mixing”; and the Colorado Academic Standard: “Invent and Discover to Create”. The professional painter would then come up with a learning activity where students would learn about color theory and color mixing through the creation of a painting project.

Visiting Artist Time Requirements

Visiting artists will be asked to attend three 1 hour meetings to collaborate with the instructors who’s classroom they are visiting. The first meeting will take place prior to lesson to address planning; the second meeting will take place during the time the artist is implementing their lesson to address how the lesson is going; and the third lesson will take place at the end of the visit to reflect and give feedback about the experience.
Visiting artists will be asked to spend three hours outside of the classroom planning, developing and prepping for their lesson.
Visiting artists will be asked to be the primary instructor in six class periods (75 minutes each) over the course of approximately two weeks. For example a visiting artist might be working with the 1st period Drawing class. The 1st period Drawing class is the same group of students who meet from 8:20-9:30 each day Monday through Friday (note: times are slightly different on Friday). As a visiting artist you would be ask to pick six out of the ten available class periods in a two week period to be the primary instructor in the classroom on a project. There is some flexibility built into this requirement so that you could plan for student work days in your lesson where you were not present in the classroom, if you wish.

For more information, download the pdf.

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