Quality: A Meaty Subject

What if I told you that I was gonna fix you a steak dinner, but when you came to my house to eat it the kitchen was infested with ants, the steaks had been sitting out all day and I served 'em on a paper plate? Very quickly, you’d realize that even a steak dinner can be an unenjoyable experience if the quality isn’t there. That’s why Big Thought holds Quality Panels - to make sure what Dallas is serving up in- and out-of-school is grade A, prime-cut teaching and learning…

The eighth triannual panel kicked off last Wednesday with a BANG! Fine arts teachers from Dallas ISD, community arts and culture pros, Big Thought staff and national arts education hotshots came together at the Meyerson Symphony Center (home of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra) to dig into arts programs in Dallas.

Our task was to go out into the community to watch teachers teach and children learn and then come together in groups based on discipline (theater, visual arts, music and dance) to talk about what we saw. We talked about strengths - how much better the training and support for arts education is now than when we began this process and what we can do to call attention to that. We talked about weaknesses - what's still not clicking, what we need to do to fix it and how we can share the responsibility.

It was an eye-opening experience for many - even veterans of the Quality Panels saw things that were new and different; and that, after all, is the point. We use this in-the-room research and observation to help us make arts education better both in- and out-of-school. It's not for our benefit...it's for the benefit of our community partners, who've stood with us for the last 20+ years to get fine arts back in the curriculum and in the hearts and minds of the citizens of Dallas. It's for the benefit of the educators, who deserve the support and opportunities to improve their techniques and discover new ways to reach children. Most important of all, it's for the benefit of the children of Dallas, who deserve an unparalleled education that prepares them for success throughout their lives.

Now: who wants that steak dinner?

Our Daily Reading List

At Big Thought, we believe it's important to stay informed about everything that's going on in the arts, education, public policy and the news in general. Our work demands that we be familiar with the trends in our industry and the latest research; to keep our knowledge current, we read several blogs every day.

Our Internal Communications Manager scours the web daily to send the staff and board of Big Thought the "Daily News" - a compendium of education, policy and arts-related articles and blog posts from the likes of Eduwonk, the Dallas Morning News' Dallas ISD Blog and Americans for the Arts' Artsblog, among others. These articles help us stay abreast of everything from TAKS score reports for the Dallas ISD to opportunities for advocacy on the state and national levels to studies on the benefits of charter and early-college schools.

Since our work is so deeply entrenched in the North Texas community, we also find time to read local news blogs like D Magazine's FrontBurner and SweetCharity, KERA's Art & Seek and the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park. In addition, since our work is centered on increasing the number and quality of creative learning experiences for children of all ages, we frequent local "Mommyblogs" like the Fort Worth Star Telegram's Mom2MomDFW and BurbMom to read about what local parents do with their children and what additional educational opportunities they're seeking. These resources keep us in tune with the sentiment of our local community, which is very important for our work.

Finally, we like to indulge our inner nerd every once in awhile with blogs like Imagine That! from Psychology Today and the TED blog. Imagine That! always features great new statistics and scientific evidence for the importance of imagination and creative learning on brain development - topics dear to our hearts, minds and mission. The TED blog brings us inspiration through their coverage of wide-ranging topics from education policy to healthcare to climate change.

If you are a parent, educator or donor interested in staying current like us, check out our brand-spankin'-new Daily Reading List on the right-hand side of the blog. It's still a work in progress, but it features many of the blogs and websites we visit daily to keep ourselves in-the-know. Have ideas/suggestions about other useful blogs? We love to discover new things! Leave us a comment to tell us what you read!