So sorry to have been offline, but the new year (Happy New Year!) will bring forward the fruits of our hard work in constructing a new way for artists to share their work: the Online Evidence of Teacher and Student Learning (ETSL) Database is an on-line space and a tool for collaborating on:

• planning an arts-integrated unit,
• documenting what happens,
• assessing student learning,
• reflecting on your own learning as educators.

The database is hosted online by the Empire State Partnerships (ESP). ESP was launched in 1996 as a joint initiative of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the New York State Education Department (NYSED). These agencies united with the goal of raising standards for students and integrating and reinstating the arts into classrooms throughout New York State. ESP is a program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and is fiscally supported by the Metropolitan Opera Guild. ESP is dedicated to identifying, supporting and developing promising practices in collaborations between cultural organizations and schools. The focus of the project is on the achievement of the New York State Learning Standards and contributing to the improvement of teaching and learning in New York Schools. My organization (The SchoolWorks Lab, Inc.) is the evaluator of these Partnerships and our role (Amy Chase Gulden, is an artist and our Senior Researcher) is to provide evaluations that constantly improve the rigor of arts-integrated work.

An ETSL Unit is a portfolio of documents, resources, and journal entries that shows how an arts unit works in a K-12 public school setting. Users can attach documents, photos, audio clips, and video. As the unit unfolds, users can continue to enter information into the ETSL Unit throughout the project and refine their "portfolio" as the work progresses.

An ETSL Unit generally:

• documents the story of an arts-integrated unit of study in one classroom,
• has a teaching artist and a classroom teacher as its editors and creators.

The goal of the ETSL Unit is to show evidence of teacher and student learning through data collection, assessment and peer-to-peer documentation and evaluation. The first year of piloting, 2007-2008 follows many years of hard work by the field of funded partnerships to improve their work. This year, 2008-2009 we have switched to a fully digital module hosted on the ESP Website.

ETSL is for anyone engaged an Arts-in-Education partnership. Currently, only recipients of the following grants can register for the the Online ETSL Database:

• ESP School-wide
• ESP Project-based
• Local Capacity Building Regrants (LCB)

If your partnership is not currently recieving funding through any of these granting opportunies, you can download the PowerPoint version of the ETSL Unit, downloadable below:

ETSL Template- PowerPoint Version

I hope you enjoy hearing and seeing this new effort in New York State!