Extraordinary potential
Every year, thousands of children of color with extraordinary potential enter an under-resourced school system. Rather than having their intelligence and talents buoyed, they are deprived of the stimulus and support needed to meet their real potential.
Seeing 2020 - is the model for a replicable, interdisciplinary arts intervention that incorporates high-quality enrichment and access into the normal school day for every child in a partner school.
Beginning in Fall 2020 with our long-time partner school, PS197 in Central Harlem, Time In has been providing its signature Opera + Art + Literacy programming for every child in the school from 3K – 5th grade graduation: 8 sequential years of opera through hands-on art, language, reading, creative writing, movement, live performance & storytelling which, combined with museum visits/gallery hops - all as part of the normal school day – leverage the city’s existing cultural resources, and open bright new vistas to its students, both imaginatively and physically.
The achievement gap
The achievement gap between rich & poor children is not simply the result of academic paucity. "Wealthy parents invest more time and money in their children, while lower-income families are increasingly stretched for resources." (NYT) Poor children are often disproportionately of color and are deprived of basic opportunities that their more fortunate peers enjoy: opportunities that facilitate intellectual, creative and social-emotional growth for real-world success.
In low-performing schools “negative cultures, students two to four years behind, staff who are untrained for these challenges” (NYT), coupled with the stressors that children face at home, speak to the need, says child psychologist, Dr. Janet Jackson, “for radical interventions that subvert conventional academic approaches.”
Boots on the ground
The children of PS197, like their peers in disadvantaged communities around the US, depend on smart, subversive interventions like Seeing 20-20 – created by artists and educators with boots on the ground, who truly understand the communities they serve - to radically level the playing field.
Seeing 20-20 is about ensuring that kids thrive. It offers the flexibility to respond to troubled grades or individual children when needed, the means to build a culture of respect within a school community, space for parent participation alongside their children, and skill levels that are enormously competitive in the real world.
Seeing 20-20 builds kids who are articulate, culturally literate, self-aware, able to comport themselves in all kinds of public forums, and feel at ease and welcome as participants in their city’s cultural life.
Photos by Kelly Campbell