Guidelines

Overview
Creative Teaching Partners connect schools, cultural groups, social service organizations, and others with outstanding artists, interpretive scientists, cultural organizations, and folklorists qualified to conduct in-depth residencies, professional development workshops for educators, school and district planning projects, and youth development programs.

Creative Teaching Partners are individual artists, artist groups, interpretive scientists, and arts education service providers who have track records working in school and/or after-school settings and maintain active professional involvement in arts, humanities, or science disciplines and in their education work. These artists and educators have a commitment to ongoing professional development that enhances their artistic, scientific, and pedagogical skills.

These Partners also possess extensive experience working with schools to develop residencies, professional development opportunities for educators, and after-school programs. Folklorists in the program have skills in teaching fieldwork techniques, working with traditional artists in the classroom, and helping educators identify local cultural resources. Partners are well grounded in child development, state curriculum frameworks, evaluation, and assessment.

The panel reviews each applicant’s work in three specific areas of specialization:

• Residencies,
• Planning and Professional Development, and/or
• After-school.

Once selected, each Partner will be specially designated on MatchBook.org as a juried teaching artist.

Creative Schools Program & Creative Teaching Partners
MCC's Creative Schools Program provides grants for schools and school districts to strengthen teaching and learning in the arts, sciences, and humanities. Projects connect directly with school and district improvement plans, curricula, and educational goals. Eligible activities include: curriculum development; residencies lasting a minimum of five days; educator professional development; and arts education planning.

The MCC strongly encourages Creative Schools applicants to work with Creative Teaching Partners. This program provides potential Creative Schools applicants and grantees and other schools with assurance of the quality and experience of artists, artist groups, and interpretive scientists that they intend to contract. The MCC regularly showcases Partners on its web site and provides professional development, networking opportunities, and exclusive email updates

Disciplines
All arts disciplines will be reviewed this year. Multidisciplinary artists must choose one discipline for review by the panel. If you are uncertain which discipline to select, please contact David Marshall to discuss which review category best suits your work.

PLEASE NOTE: Although you may not apply in more than one discipline, you may apply for more than one specialization.

Deadline
All applications must be postmarked by the U.S. Postal Service, dated by carriers such as UPS, FedEx, etc. on or before Friday, November 2, 2007, or hand-delivered to the MCC by 5:00 p.m. on November 2. All application packages, including support material, must be complete upon submission. Late or faxed applications will not be reviewed.

Eligibility Requirements

• Individuals must be professional artists or interpretive scientists, at least 18 years old, and legal residents of Massachusetts.

• Organizations must have a Massachusetts office and be composed predominantly of Massachusetts artists or interpretive scientists.

• Applicants for Residency and/or Development & Planning Specializations must have a minimum of two years of experience working with students and/or educators in school settings.

• Applicants for the After-school Specialization must have a minimum of two years of experience working with youth in out-of-school settings.

• Individuals currently enrolled as students in a directly related undergraduate degree program are ineligible.

PLEASE NOTE: If you have never completed a residency, planning, or curriculum development project, or worked in an after-school setting, you may not be eligible to apply. If you are a certified art, music, dance or theater educator, you must have a credible outside of school performance or exhibition record. Please contact David Marshall for more information.

Following the deadline, MCC will review proposals to confirm applicant eligibility. Applications that do not fulfill all requirements outlined in the published guidelines are ineligible and will not be reviewed by the panel. Incomplete applications may also be ruled ineligible.

Review Process
A panel of educators, arts administrators, folklorists, and artists reviews all applications. You will be scheduled for an interview on the afternoon of Thursday, December 13 or Friday, December 14, 2007. Please reserve these dates on your calendar; interviews will not be scheduled at another time. MCC staff will contact you in November to schedule a specific time that is convenient. During the interview you will be asked questions generated during discussion of your application. The panel will assess all application materials (written and audio/visual) and the interview using the review criteria below. You may not bring work samples or props to the interview.

Review Criteria

The panel will use your narrative to assess your application according to the following review criteria:

• Qualifications as an artist or interpretive scientist, including appropriate training, experience and excellence in the primary discipline (40 points)

• Ability to create innovative, effective, in-depth projects/programs that promote teaching the arts or sciences and/or integrating the arts or sciences into the teaching of other disciplines. (20 points)

• Ability to tailor residency programs to the specific needs of students, teachers, schools, school districts, and/or organization(s). (15 points)

• Appropriate training and active experience working in school-based settings or with youth development programs. (15 points)

• Ability to evaluate program effectiveness and/or measure student/educator learning. (10 points)

Support Material
Support materials provide an important opportunity to demonstrate the artistic quality of your work to panelists; they play a critical role in the review process and in panelists' evaluations. Give careful thought to which material best represents your work as an artist or scientist and as an educator. Be sure to provide materials that represent your personal work as an artist or interpretive scientist as well as samples of work produced by students under your supervision. Please keep the following in mind as you prepare support material:

• All applicants must submit support material as documentation of their artistic quality or scientific credentials.
• Panels benefit from material that shows a range of work (i.e., a selection of scenes from different performances is usually better than a single performance).
• Audio/Visual material should reflect current activities and may not be more than two years old.

Access Policy
The MCC is committed to access, not only as a matter of state and federal laws, but also as a policy designed to encourage the participation of all segments of the Commonwealth’s population in MCC-funded programs. The Massachusetts Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity currently designates the following populations as under-served: African Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans, Native Americans, people with disabilities, Vietnam-era veterans, and women. The MCC also considers low-income communities, rural populations, and citizens over 65 years old as under-served populations.

Conflict of Interest
To ensure that all MCC review panels are free from conflicts of interest and the appearance of such conflicts, panelists are required to disclose any current or prospective affiliations they or their immediate family members may have with an actual or potential applicant. “Affiliations” applies to employment, board memberships, independent contractual relationships, advisory or policy relationships, substantial contributor relationships, or other financial relationships. In addition, panelists are required to disclose any past or current adversarial relationships with actual or potential applicants of a professional or personal nature. MCC staff and board members are not permitted to participate in discussions or votes relating to any applicant with whom they have an affiliation or relating to any applicants competing with that applicant.

Reconsideration Policy
An applicant may request reconsideration of an MCC decision on his or her application if the applicant can demonstrate that the MCC failed to follow published application and review procedures. Dissatisfaction with the results of a review is not sufficient reason for a reconsideration. The first step in the reconsideration process is to consult with the Education Program Manager to review the review the procedures that resulted in the MCC’s decision. If the applicant then wishes to pursue a reconsideration, a request must be sent to the MCC’s Executive Director, in writing, within 30 days of the MCC’s notification to the applicant of its decision. Requests for reconsideration will be reviewed by MCC’s board no earlier than at its next scheduled board meeting.