October 2020
The Pandemic’s Effect on Our Children
As Julie Shapiro, CEO of The Fund for Public Schools said when we met this June: “Morale amongst public school students is so low that even if these children live to be 100, they will never experience a time as demoralizing as this one.”
Remote fatigue, the stressors of the pandemic, the deaths of teachers, staff, parents and relatives, reduced outdoor activities limited interaction with their peers have created overwhelming obstacles to our children’s well-being, and to their ability to learn. Enrichment programming has been cut from the City’s budget. After-school programming has been cut. Hundreds of schools in hot zones have been closed at the last minute due to the high rate of infections, and 48% of NYC parents have opted for fully remote learning. As a result, children will be isolated from healthy social interactions with their peers. All across the city – and across the country - the options for enriched, joyful learning will be severely compromised for every public school child. The effects of these cuts, which Time In’s independently funded , special project, Summer in the City, worked miracles to offset this summer, are being felt dramatically right now, especially in so many of our chronically impoverished communities, where homelessness, domestic violence, and foster care figure prominently, and families do not have the resources to make up for what is missing.
Families need dependable options to renew their children’s successful experiences with learning, and to bolster their children’s social-emotional well-being during this period of crisis.
The Arts Hours
Responding to COVID-19’s debilitating impact on the 2020-2021 Academic Year
Access to arts and cultural programming has always been vital to the well-being of children, regardless of age, race or socio- economic status. The arts facilitate our children’s creativity. They are the foundation for constructive self-expression. They build higher-ordered thinking. And they engage and inspire children to invest in themselves with pride. The Arts Hours is a palliative intervention responding to the chaos and instability created in the lives of children, families, artists and arts organizations as a result of COVID-19.
The success of Time In’s special project, Summer in the City, which made close to 19K hours of independently funded, extraordinarily high quality, live, virtual arts programming available for free to all NYC public school students from July 6-August 28, 2020, brought with it a resounding demand from parents and arts organizations that this programming be continued. Participants ranged from mighty institutions like the Guggenheim Museum, the Morgan Library, the Hispanic Society of America and the Museum of the City of New York, to small, local organizations like Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center, The Clemente Center, The Bronx River Art Center, Dorill Initiative Summer Arts and The Time In Children’s Arts Initiative. Time In is proposing to renew these collaborations, and to provide programming that will become part of the normal elementary school day, not school wide or class-wide, but city-wide as a holistically integrated, child-centric intervention responding equitably to the extraordinary crisis in our children’s lives and learning that has been created by the pandemic.
The Arts Hours is a palliative intervention responding to the chaos and instability created in the lives of children, families, artists and arts organizations as a result of COVID-19.
Amazing Artists
Among the many distinguished artists with whom children had the opportunity to work were renowned painter Sydney Chastain Chapman, internationally distinguished casting director, Avy Kaufman, illustrator Joana Penna, pianist Lara Downes, choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi, Metropolitan and international opera stars Angel Blue, Janai Brugger, Isabel Leonard, and David Bizic among so many more.
The Mechanics
The Arts Hours will expand the highly successful live, virtual model of Summer in the City 2020 and be a thoughtfully-curated, holistically integrated portal for superior arts programming to be provided equally to all participating NYC public school children as part of their normal school day.
The Arts Hours will be an obligatory part of the remote school day. All classes will be live and virtual, engaging and intellectually stimulating. There will be no pre-recorded content.
The Arts Hours are configured to accommodate whole districts of elementary schools, individual schools from different districts, or individual grades in different districts, and will not be bound to a single school, grade or class. Like Summer in the City, The Arts House will create learning groups through which children interact on a level playing field with their peers irrespective of race or socio-economics.
All classes will be cross-grade allowing for a more intellectually flexible environment.
Public school support staff - teachers, social workers, administrators, paraprofessionals - will work alongside the most vulnerable students and their families to ensure that – like in Time In - ALL students participate equally.
Classes will take place once, twice or four times/week, MONDAY-THURSDAY, as part of a child’s remote school day for 20 weeks of the school year. Time In’s creative team will work with providers to ensure that outstanding programming is available throughout.
Suggested times for the Arts Hours would be 9:00-10:00 for Early Ed, 10:00-11:00 and 11:00-12:00 for middle and upper elementary.
Children will attend the Arts Hours on their devices using Zoom or other equally secure platform.
A simple and clear website for registration will be available to students much like the one we have used for summerinthecity.nyc The registration software gives students a secure link for sign in. An experienced program manager will oversee the entire program with the help of support staff.
All students will:
learn from distinguished artists.
Interface with a diverse group of peers from all over the city.
Develop real-world skills, new levels of mastery, and self-confidence.
The Silver Lining
Change will come to those who no longer sit and wait.
The pandemic asks us to act on behalf of our children, and to act with insight, inspiration and intelligence.
Time In’s extensive boots-on-the-ground experience in some of NYC’s most disadvantaged communities, plus our leadership and direction of Summer in the City, position us to take up the challenge.
The work we do together now is the change we, in turn, gift to the world.
Funding
We are seeking enlightened funders who are ready to join us make this transformative opportunity possible. Organizations with existing grant funding will support their own teaching artists. Organizations that are creating special, previously unfunded programming will be funded by funding sought for this initiative. Teaching artists will all be meaningfully compensated, and organizations will receive funding to ensure that they can cover their administrative costs.
Please help us do what our city’s artists do best: inspire, support, and awaken curiosity and imagination in the minds of our young people. New York City’s children deserve the best we can deliver. We stand ready and excited to serve.
