Partnership speaks volumes
"When they hired me, no one had that clear a sense of what this was going to be," said Kathy Lowe, the library's director. But by December of that year, the space had shaped up nicely, due to an unlikely partnership between the schools and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The schools exchanged the empty space with the BSO for its dense collection of books and DVDs on everything from dance to visual arts, transforming what was once a collection of barren walls into an education resource center rich with material like Duke Ellington biographies and monologues from the neo-classical theater.
The center is the first of its kind to cater to students and teachers in both arts programs and an academic curriculum, taking advantage of the building's two-school setup, said Myran Parker-Brass, BSO director of education and community programs.
"In terms of this kind of partnership, I don't think there are any others," she said.
"It goes beyond just being involved in the building, but we're part of the cultural and academic life of the school."
While Parker-Brass acknowledged other schools combine arts and academics, like many arts schools and magnet schools, she said the difference in the BSO's program is that a cultural institution is partnering with the school to provide the resources. Plus, in the case of the strictly academic Fenway High School, the union opens up a whole new world of studies to the students that they normally wouldn't be offered.
The center has become a magnet for teachers across the state interested in fusing arts and academics in a similar fashion, attracting some 600 educators with its resources and staff-run seminars.
And its concept is spreading southward. On Jan. 9, a group of five teachers and their superintendent from Nicolas Sevilla Guemarez High School in Toa Alta, Puerto Rico, traveled to Boston to learn about the center and devise a way to incorporate a similar program in their school.
"This is a beautiful project," said visiting biology teacher Teresa Clavell, whose school hopes to implement a similar center by the fall. "It's a fascinating program. Our school is academics only. We have special schools for arts, but no school combines arts and academics."
The center's hybrid of arts and academics was more of a happy accident than a conscious effort. In 1996, the BSO received a $500,000 federal grant to establish a place for area teachers to review materials the symphony had collected, Parker-Brass said.
Unable to find a place to store the collection, Parker-Brass contacted Boston Arts Academy headmaster Linda Nathan.
From there, the progression was natural: the orchestra had learning materials but no space to put them, while the schools' library had plenty of space but no materials.
After partnering, the BSO, which covers most of the bills including the staff's salaries, sat down with teachers to decide what content should be added to their growing collection.
Students at the school use the library often, and so do the teachers. The librarians and educators plan curriculums together to make full use of the library's collection, Lowe said. And the attention to the library's mission has paid off last spring, the institution received the country's highest library honor, the School Library Media Program of the Year Award.
"A lot of people are trying to infuse arts into academics in a superficial way," Lowe said. "We're trying to find real-life approaches, to get deeper so that arts and academics have the same integrity."