3,000 middle school students invited to Texas Stadium for the Third Annual Student Arts Celebration

by PegNews wire

IRVING — More than 3,000 North Texas middle school students and their families have been invited to converge on Texas Stadium tonight at 7 p.m. for one the region's largest annual celebrations of the creative spirit - the Third Annual Student Arts Celebration. The event showcases the work of students and teachers from across North Texas who have participated in Mobile Learning Institute and Make a Connection Thru Art classroom programs. It is hosted by Nokia and the Pearson Foundation, which together sponsor the two programs, and by the North Texas non-profit Big Thought.

The invited students, each of whom received Willy Wonka-like "golden tickets" of admission, represent the three school districts that participated in the programs during the 2006-07 school year: the Dallas, Irving and Keller Independent School Districts. The celebration is a chance for students to share their creative writing, visual art and digital films with students, teachers, and family members.

"This event is exactly what it says - a celebration," said Vannessa Nickson, Senior Manager, Community Involvement, Nokia. "We're celebrating all that these students have seen, been inspired by, and done themselves in the last several months. It's really incredible to see the digital films, poems, and art created by these young people-as in past years, the best part is sharing those through celebration. Year after year, we're amazed by the stories we hear from parents, from teachers, but the best is from the students themselves."

This year, the Make a Connection Thru Art program provided more than 1,200 young people in Irving and Keller Middle Schools the chance to take part in a field trip to either the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas or the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum. While touring the gallery, the students learned how artists took an idea or concept and incorporated that theme into their work. Back in the classroom, they were challenged by professional artists to explore a topic important to them and then, over the ensuing 10 weeks, they turned that theme into art.

The Mobile Learning Institute Classroom Residency program was again offered to just over 1000 students across Irving's middle-schools, and this year for the first time was extended to an equal number of students and teachers in Dallas. Teachers and students worked together to create and compose digital films that, in some cases, documented their classroom learning while others shared their interests and personal stories. Students had the opportunity to present their finished digital films to their classmates and to their school.

examples of local student's work resulting from both programs are published online at makeaconnectionthruart.org and mobilelearninginstitute.org.

Source: Pearson Foundation