What is quality when it comes to either the practice or evaluation of teaching artistry?  Since there is no accrediting body to sanctify the profession, how do organizations, teaching artists, and consumers of teaching artistry know when quality exists? 

It’s an important question.  Some non-profit arts organizations do offer teaching artist training, yet many others hire artists that self-proclaim their status as a teaching artist with a wide variety of artistic and educational training, sometimes with very little of the latter.

Despite news of nascent economic recovery, teaching artists and other professionals in arts education might be wondering if and when the future will look brighter. Later this year? Next year? Before the world ends in 2012?

In good times, everyone understands the efficacy of the arts, but when pressures come to bear, well....you've all read the papers.  Now, tough times often mean tough decisions, to be sure.   But I hope to make a claim that there is indeed merit and value, on every level, to having a teaching artist work with our children in today's 21st Century classrooms.