March 14, 2003

Arts for Learning
Program Initiatives by Kentucky Educational Television

Ira Simmons
Coordinator of Program Development
Kentucky Educational Television

Take 400 broadcast hours of arts programming, reformat it for the Web, video, and CD, and you've gone a long way toward helping teachers provide arts education to Kentucky schoolchildren.

Ira Simmons, Ed.M. '92, Coordinator of Program Development for Kentucky Educational Television, premiered the Arts Toolkit on March 14th at the TIE Open Seminar. Under Kentucky's 1990 Educational Reform Act, arts history and appreciation are required subjects in the state's public schools. The Toolkit--which includes visual arts, music, drama and dance--makes lesson plans, archival materials, film clips, and text available to teachers, who can also find supplemental material on the Web (http://www.ket.org/artstoolkit/).

Simmons first came to the TIE program as a Master's student in 1991 with a very focused agenda. A seasoned print journalist with special beats in medicine, environmental issues, and education, he chose to equip himself with background and skills that would prepare him to work in broadcast television. A decade later, he has won many grants for KET, ranging from American Shorts, a dramatic series based on local theater production, to World of Our Own: Kentucky Folkways, a series of half-hour documentaries about local arts and culture. Extending his purview beyond program development, he has written scripts for many projects, including Street Skills, a four-part series targeted at adolescent new drivers, and he has also produced programs in history and the arts.

In a state where one-third of the adults lack a high school degree and many have limited access to urban centers, Simmons stresses that television plays a particularly important role. He emphasizes the indigenous component of each undertaking and has been pleased, for example, by the popularity of programming that reflects the variety of crafts around the state.

Participants in the TIE seminar witnessed the range of KET's programs, many the fruit of Simmons's effort. With samples of short plays by Arthur Miller and Lynn Nottage, an intense half-hour portrait of Public Theater Director George C. Wolfe, and the multi-format Street Skills, viewers found it hard not to agree with Simmons that good television is happening in the Heartland and that their own professional sights might shift beyond the Coasts. Further, the Arts Toolkit demonstrated how multiple formats and sound curriculum development can extend the life of quality programming for audiences who would otherwise be underserved.

-- Ann Peck (TIE faculty)