The Urban Gateways Blog

Archives for May 2010

May 25, 2010 :: , :: No Comments

Urban Gateways Partners with Chicago Corporate Leaders to Launch "Arts-Wired" Schools

Jenner & Block and Fifth Third Bank Adopt Schools to Prepare Students for the 21st Century

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS  – Urban Gateways: Center for Arts Education is pleased to announce the official launch of the Urban Gateways Arts-Wired Program, a whole-school change model which infuses the arts into struggling schools to transform them into high-quality hubs of learning with the support of corporate partners.  
Urban Gateways, Chicago’s oldest and largest arts education organization, recognizes the unparalleled impact of arts learning on a school culture and is partnering with like-minded Chicago-area schools and companies to transform schools in need. 
How does the Arts-Wired Program work? A corporate partner adopts a Chicago-area school for a period of four years, during which Urban Gateways delivers in-depth, customized arts programming.  Just as a school which is “wired” for technology raises the possibility for success in any educational environment, Urban Gateways will infuse four key components of arts learning into Arts-Wired Schools, in order to increase the academic achievement levels for all students. That arts programming includes:
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May 7, 2010 :: , :: No Comments

In The Classroom: Students Take Flight in Theatre Residency

In the Classroom is a new monthly feature created to take you inside a different Chicago-area classroom, introduce you to the Urban Gateways Teaching Artist who is working there, and share with you the experiences of the teaching artist and their students.

"Birds, Wings and Flying Things” – that’s the theme that the students of Hamilton School (K-8) have been exploring this year.  It sounds like a science lesson, maybe even history, but it has also been the focus of a 20-week Urban Gateways Artist Residency at the school.

Hamilton is one of the schools that participate in Urban Gateways’ Cultural Education Program (CEP), which is a multi-year grant partnership between UG and selected schools through which students and teachers receive training in one of four specific arts disciplines each year: dance, music, theatre and visual arts.  The goal is to give educators the tools to make connections between the fine and performing arts, social sciences and language arts.

This year, Hamilton students and teachers are exploring the discipline of theatre, and for the past few months, they’ve been doing so with Teaching Artist Maia Morgan.

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