The Great Recession and resulting state budget crisis have left school coffers with little to spare for extras these days. Just last month the Annandale School District cut $397,100 from next year’s budget to combat a projected $575,859 deficit. But four Annandale High School teachers have found their way around the dilemma to enhance their programs and student learning anyway. Art teacher Adam Sparks, band director Lee Peterson, choir director Michael Sellheim and technology coordinator Linda Erickson have managed to snag $10,856 in grants from the Perpich Center for the Arts and the Central Minnesota Arts Board to incorporate more media arts opportunities into their classrooms. "We didn’t think about going to the school board, so we knew we would have to be creative," Sparks said. The money will cover the cost of training for the three teachers to get them up to date with the emerging technologies available. It will also allow them to buy a couple new digital cameras and outfit the computers in the school’s Macintosh lab with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign programs. So what is media arts? According to Sparks, it’s an art form encompassing photography, sound, animation and interactive media such as web sites and DVDs. "The likelihood of a student becoming a professional painter or potter is very low, but there are thousands of jobs out there that require knowledge of computers; how to edit photographs, add videos to web sites, edit videos, etc." Sparks said. Graphic design course Thanks to the money, the art department will be able to offer a new course next year called Graphic Design. Students will learn how to use their design skills with various projects involving typography, advertising design, web design and packaging design. Likewise, Peterson and Sellheim will use the training they are receiving through the grant to bring a class called GarageBand to their students. GarageBand is a music composition program offered through Macintosh that allows students to create music with literally a click of the mouse, Sellheim said. Students with no musical background can cut and paste parts from existing songs to make their own composition. As a class they can then dissect their creations and learn about them, Peterson said. "It also stirs creativity and encourages music engineering, what makes music sound good," Sellheim said. The first grant the group received in March was for $6,360 from the Perpich Center for the Arts, which will pay for a two-year training program in which the three teachers will receive on-site consulting from experienced media arts educators and people working in the field. The second grant, which came through in mid-April, will provide $4,496 from CMAB for technology. "I am using way more technology in my classroom now than I did when I started 13 years ago," Peterson said. "It’s how kids are learning, they are growing up with it. The old way of doing things is not connecting with them."
