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Chatting with A4L’s Aisha Noel

January 30, 2022 By Cindy Sherwood

We’re celebrating the work anniversary of Aisha Noel, our School and Community Relationships Coordinator who started at Arts for Learning three years ago. With the pandemic creating major changes over the past two years, her job has evolved and expanded with new duties, but she still has the same positive energy and enthusiasm as when she started.

When Aisha was first hired, she primarily coordinated after-school programs while a different staff member handled bookings and programs that took place during school hours. Now Aisha schedules programs of all types, while keeping in close touch with our community partners—schools, libraries, and community centers—something that plays to her strength of being able to relate to all sorts of different people.

“My job has evolved from what I originally did, and it’s always changing. It keeps me ‘unbored,’ because I like change, but I also feel more sure of myself now,” she says, noting that she’s been able to act as a resource for newer members of the A4L program team.

When schools shut down in March 2020, it allowed Arts for Learning to diversify its program offerings by developing multimedia options, something Aisha says she’s glad we’ve been able to incorporate.

Aisha helps set up lights during the early days of A4L’s recording of artists’ programs. She’s seen here with Aaron Kirkpatrick, former artistic and education manager.

“Even though COVID has been rough with trying to reschedule programs and all of the mitigation strategies we’ve come up with, I think we’ve done a great job.”

We did it with a smile and pride. And at the end of the day, this is for the kids.”

She says there’s been another positive change from the last couple of years.

“One good thing about the pandemic—you got time to slow down and think about what you want to do. Going back to school was one of them.” In September, Aisha started remote learning at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst to earn three certifications in arts management: Core, Professional, and Leadership. She hopes to finish within two years.

Aisha and her mother, Angela Noel.

Giving back to her community is extremely important to Aisha. “I want to show people that you don’t have to be a statistic. I grew up with a single African American mother in downtown Newport News, and I’ve been able to travel and do different things because art has opened so many doors, and I want students to have the same doors open to them.”

I want them to be able to see themselves in the Picassos of the world. I also want them to know that the world is much bigger than 757. It’s much bigger than the 23607 zip code, and they can do anything. They say music is the universal language. I would say art in general is the universal language.”

Aisha is from a musical family where everyone sings, but she’s the only one involved in theater. When she was in middle school, she wrote and directed a play for her church, which was presented as an evening of dinner theater.

“For them to support me and cultivate my vision… I think every kid needs that support from an adult, to cultivate their love for something, to really sow a seed for a person’s future.”

Aisha is a proud alumna of Heritage High School.

 

A mentor for Aisha was Laura Gilbreath Lloyd, her drama teacher at Heritage High School in Newport News who now teaches at Christopher Newport University. Calling her a “second mom,” Aisha says Mrs. Lloyd advocated for respect for all the jobs in theater, not just for performers on stage. That approach helped spark Aisha’s interest in arts administration, which included an internship at the Signature Theatre in Arlington. She wrote the following in tribute to Mrs. Lloyd last May for Teacher Appreciation Week:

“I am forever grateful to Mrs. Laura Gilbreath Lloyd, my high school drama teacher. She nurtured my passion for performing arts and cultivated a respect for art administration. Mrs. Lloyd created a haven for her students that allowed us to express ourselves, learn valuable life lessons, and mature into healthy young adults. It was truly a pleasure to be your student then, but I count it an honor to be your friend now. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week, Mrs. Lloyd!”

Performing in “It’s a Wonderful Life” with the Williamsburg Players.

Among other credits, Aisha has performed with the Williamsburg Players and in a production at the historic Attucks Theatre in Norfolk. She also completed a two-year acting program at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Washington, D.C.

Aisha and fellow acting students at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. 

Aisha says that theater is her “happy place” and that being involved in drama at school helped her overcome a disability she was ashamed of as a child–she’s completely deaf in her right ear.

“Being in theater allowed me to not be ashamed of it,” she says. “But it also helped me pronounce words better. I can’t hear words phonetically like everybody else does because of my deafness so being in theater made me practice, practice, practice those scripts so that my speech was better.”

Here at Arts for Learning, working with Aisha is a joy, something that our community partners who interact with her have discovered for themselves.

We wish Aisha a very happy third work anniversary and a fulfilling and productive year ahead in both her career at A4L and her higher education!

Always in search of adventure!

Fun facts about Aisha:

  • Favorite types of theater: Greek and commedia dell’arte.
  • Favorite role played: L’il Bit in How I Learned to Drive.
  • Favorite TV show: Criminal Minds.
  • She loves reading and just finished Michelle Obama’s Becoming, calling it “phenomenal.” “I really like seeing what inspires people to do what they do.”
  • She loves travel and adventure!
  • She and her mother are very close. Aisha calls her “my heart.”

 

Filed Under: Staff Spotlight

A Chat with Molly Stanley, A4L’s new Learning & Community Engagement Manager

October 28, 2021 By Cindy Sherwood

When Molly Stanley first saw the job listing for this new role at Arts for Learning, she grew excited. She and her husband Ethan, a lieutenant in the Navy, along with their newborn baby, were in the process of being transferred from California to Hampton Roads. As someone who had worked as an arts teacher and who had a master’s degree in arts administration, Molly found the opportunity intriguing. Plus, as a new mom, she was searching for a career with greater flexibility.

“If I wasn’t going to be teaching, I still wanted to work in education because that’s what I’m most passionate about, along with arts administration.

This position was like marrying the two things—arts administration and teaching art.”

Molly began her teaching career several years ago when she worked as an art teacher at a Title 1-designated elementary school in North Philadelphia. Although she grew up less than an hour away, it was a different world from her rural home in Blandon, Pennsylvania.

“I gained a lot of perspective and learned a ton while I was there [teaching]. It was a really hard year. I thought because I knew my craft and knew how to teach art that I could do anything, but I wasn’t aware of what trauma responses looked like in the classroom and so my classroom management definitely wasn’t good.”

From Philadelphia, Molly became an art teacher at a middle school in Maryland.

Molly helps a student at her middle schoolin Maryland
Molly helps a Vietnamese-American student translate a passage at the middle school where she worked in Maryland.

The school also was in a high poverty area, but she says she had many more “tools in her toolbox” and learned how to be a successful educator while forming close relationships with her students and her partner teacher.

During her second year of teaching, she and Ethan married.

Molly says goodbye to the preschoolers she taught in California.
Molly says goodbye to the preschoolers she taught in California.

As a military family, the two first moved for a few months to Washington state and then to southern California, where Molly taught preschool and worked on her master’s degree on-line, earning it a week before she gave birth in May to baby William. That coincided with Ethan receiving orders to come back to the east coast for what is expected to be a long-time assignment.

Molly started at Arts for Learning in September, where she’s been putting her curricular knowledge to good use, writing classroom guides for our Spread Kindness (Not Germs) video project and more programs. She has big goals for her time here.

I’m hoping to be able to put out quality content and curriculum that aligns with what teachers need, as well as what the art form is, whether it’s a music program, a dance program, a visual arts program, or some other art form.”

“I want to be able to provide a smooth transition into either a teacher being able to take that content and teach it themselves or assisting teaching artists in making that content as relevant as possible to what the kids are going to need,” she says. “Specifically, like with Spread Kindness (Not Germs), the first project I was given, I made it my goal to try and make sure it’s as user friendly as possible and that anyone could teach it.”

So far one of the most satisfying parts of Molly’s new role has been pitching the Spread Kindness project to fine arts supervisors from different school divisions and discovering how enthusiastic they are about implementing the music videos in their classrooms.

As for the hardest part?

“I’ve never not been a teacher. I’ve always been a teacher, and I know what to expect as a teacher. But it’s also been the best part because I’m learning how to function in an organization that isn’t a school. So it’s been interesting getting acclimated to the job and also at the same time it’s super exciting because there hasn’t been one part yet that I haven’t enjoyed.”

Fun Facts About Molly:

#1 Though she doesn’t have much time these days between the new baby and new job, Molly is a visual artist who typically draws using colored pencil. Architectural portraits and landscapes are favorite subjects.

#2 She’s primarily of Irish descent, and even though she comes from a “big, proud Irish family,” she’s never had the chance to visit Ireland. Her maiden name was Molly McKenna Flannery.

#3 William is her first human baby, but she and Ethan first had a fur baby named Dixie, a Labrador Retriever, who now adores baby Will and wants to be by his side constantly. Dixie looked especially pretty decked out in flowers for the couple’s wedding ceremony.

Filed Under: Arts Integration, ArtsEd, Staff Spotlight Tagged With: 757 arts, art teachers, arts curriculum, Arts Ed, arts education, arts programs, curriculum, military families, new staff member, Spread Kindness (Not Germs), Teachers

Talking with Dañetta Evans, our New Artist and Programming Manager

October 15, 2021 By Cindy Sherwood

When Dañetta Evans decided to pursue the arts as a career, she says there was no “plan B”; she was committed to pursuing her passion, no matter what. She may not have been able to predict exactly where that determination would land her, but we’re happy to say it’s brought her to Arts for Learning as our new Artist and Programming Manager.

Dañetta is originally from Alabama where she earned her bachelor’s degree in public relations/marketing at Alabama State University and later received her associate of arts degree in graphic design from the Art Institute of Tennessee. She moved to Hampton Roads to attend graduate school at Norfolk State, where she first earned a Master of Art in Visual Studies and later her Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies.

While at NSU, she became interested in participatory art and how data collection can aid in community development and engagement. Then, she says, she wanted to learn more about the effectiveness of STEAM (Science Tech Engineering Arts Math) education. “I created some classes to see how effective it was and did the research in how STEAM and STEM worked and how I could add something to it.”

She also was the liaison between her classmates and the Boys and Girls Club of Southeast Virginia when the club wanted NSU art graduate students to create various art classes for different clubs. She loved it—“Not only did I get to do my own artwork, but I got to see the change in the students and the change in my classmates too.”

The art education part of it—it just took my heart. I saw firsthand the character development that took place in the students from the beginning of class to the end of class. I decided then—while I’ll always be a practicing visual artist, the education part was super important.”

Organizing community art events was a major part of NSU’s program. Among other projects, Dañetta helped organize pop-up shops at the NEON Festival in Norfolk, participatory art at the Hermitage Museum, and a 93-foot-long mural inspired by African American history that’s located inside Calvary Baptist Church in Virginia Beach.

At Arts for Learning, Dañetta’s role is to work with the artists on our roster to help develop innovative arts education. Creating community—as she worked to do at Norfolk State—is a major priority.

“I love to create community with our artists, when we come together, share resources, and if I can offer any sort of professional development. And also add to the roster—where do we need some extra artists to help step in?”

Those are the big goals: create community and grow the roster.”

If you’re an artist who’s interested in joining our roster, please click here for details on how to apply.

Fun Facts about Dañetta: She loves trains, especially the sounds they make. And she collect sounds. “Most of the time they’re stored on my phone so if I’m walking around and I hear something, I’ll record it. I think it started when I lived in Nashville. I walked out of a museum and the church bells were going and I thought, ‘Man, I really like that sound.’ So I just started recording it and continued to record the sounds.” And as an artist, who knows? She says “someday I’ll do something bigger with it.”

Filed Under: Arts Integration, ArtsEd, Staff Spotlight Tagged With: art education, Arts for Learning, Arts for Learning Virginia, arts-in-education, Boys and Girls Club of Southeast Virginia, Calvary Baptist Church, community, community art, Norfolk State University, participatory art, public art, visual artist

A Chat with our CEO: Kids, the Arts, and the Pandemic

March 3, 2021 By Cindy Sherwood

Tidewater Family Plus featured Arts for Living’s CEO, Chris Everly, in its March issue. As a parent, what did she tell her son when he was thinking about a job in the arts? Click below to read her answer! https://www.tidewaterfamily.com/learning-fun/art-folks-meet-christine-everly

Plus there’s much more, including how COVID-19 has changed Arts for Learning for the better.

Filed Under: ArtsEd, COVID-19, Staff Spotlight Tagged With: CEO Chris Everly

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Phone: 757-466-7555

State Headquarters

Arts for Learning
420 North Center Drive, Suite 239
Norfolk, Virginia 23502
Phone: 757-466-7555
Fax: 757-455-9859

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