Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School
School Description
'"At Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School (BCAM), we prepare our students for 21st century academic, creative, and professional success. Through an art, media, and technology-enriched academic curriculum emphasizing community collaboration, we challenge ourselves to think critically and create knowledge in pursuit of personal excellence and meaningful social change."
Contact Information
Website: www.bcamhs.org
Principal: James O'Brien- jobrien16@schools.nyc.gov
Additional ETA Contact: Nikyatu Jusu, art teacher- njusu@bcamhs.org
Four Year Plan Goals
Goal One: To have a yearly senior cohort of 15 students complete digital art portfolios that are competitive for art college applications.
Goal Two: To have a yearly cohort of 8 BCAM teachers integrate a Media Arts focus into their curriculum.
Approach
Goal One: The school creates a Senior Portfolio Class to provide a year long art/media curriculum in which advanced art students can develop digital art portfolios used for art college or university applications. BCAM offers a series of arts electives for all students taught by academic teachers and small group of experienced community artist-educators that they've worked with for years. Students are identified and recruited from these classes for the Senior Portfolio Class in the 11th grade. ETA support is used to purchase art supplies, equipment to digitally capture images for the portfolio and per session for teacher planning and prep time.
Goal Two: In order to better integrate the Arts & Media theme throughout the school, BCAM convenes 3 professional development courses a year- introduction, support and debrief/best practices- that help academic teachers develop and implement a unit that incorporates media arts into their curriculum. Structures are developed to create consistency and standardization across each course. ETA support is used for facilitator fees, participant stipend and workshop materials.
Art Partnerships
Goal Two: Professional development facilitator- Christy Herbes, former BCAM art teacher and current Youth Education Program Director at The Center for urban Pedagogy.
Outcome
Goal One: BCAM will have established a Senior Portfolio Class- as well as a systematic approach for identifying potential students in the 11th grade- that provides an opportunity for advanced art students to develop digital art portfolios that will make them more competitive applicants to art colleges. As a result, the number of students applying to art colleges will increase.
Goal Two: The diverse cross section of teachers from different departments that participate in the PD courses will have several curriculum units that integrate the arts and there will be consistency and standardization for arts integration across courses.
"ETA support significantly supported the breadth and depth of our capacity for the arts by allowing us to enact 4 years of visual arts integration PD for 20-25 teachers in total. It also provided us competitive state of the art materials and tech for our senior portfolio which allowed between 50-75 seniors to develop portfolios to arts colleges."
Four-Year Plan 2012-2016.