Reaching Our Society Through the Arts is a community and school outreach program that provides Fine Arts masterclasses to elementary students. I founded this program in 2015, during the fall of my junior year at Davidson Fine Arts. Since its inception, we’ve served over 300 students in the Central Savannah River Area by partnering with nonprofits in the Augusta community to provide this fun, high-energy program bursting with creativity!
Teachers & Volunteers:
ROSTA teachers have traditionally been led by volunteering juniors and seniors in performing level courses at Davidson Fine Arts (DFA). Since I graduated from DFA in 2017, I have maintained connections with the school’s administration and my peer graduates to continue providing teaching staffing for the program. Each of them demonstrate extraordinary abilities in their craft as well as their academic studies, but they each have a heart for service and collaboration, which makes this program work so smoothly.
As the program’s director, I am responsible for coordinating and training volunteers to help the program logistics run smoothly. For this task, I have had the wonderful opportunity to collaborate with a variety of community partners, the most notable among them being Whole Life Ministries. Community partners provide funding, supplies, and volunteers for ROSTA’s programs and constitute a vital part of its success.
Featured Image: “ROSTA Staff 2017 at T.W. Garrett Elementary School” by Foster Williams. Reproduced with permission.
Teachers and Volunteers, ROSTA 2017 from L-R: (back row) Renee Toole, Jillian Toole, DaeSun Cupid, Kiara Heffner, Maya Rubio, Chandler Cannady, Vaughn Hilsheimer, Beverly Wilkinson, Javares Selby, Ashlie Bodie Fortson, Larissa Cowan Jacobson (front row, L-R) Erin Sneed, Alina Bacal, Katie Day, Mari Ellysza Valencia, Christina Leach, Jada Moore, Emory Allen, Samantha Mealing Holt, Kaitlyn Mills
Curriculum Development:
The most exciting part of the pre-planning process for me is creating the curriculum for each program. In order to develop the masterclasses for each area, I meticulously review the standards for fine arts education published by the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCAS) to inform the lesson plans for ROSTA’s programs. The conceptual framework of the NCAS helps me, like any other classroom instructor, to create lesson plans that accomplish learning objectives. While ROSTA is not a school, the process is very important for goal-minded instruction, group cohesiveness among teachers, and it provides a measurable way for us to measure the effectiveness of our instruction.
Using the exercises I have learned myself during my time at Davidson Fine Arts, as a volunteer with the Augusta Players, Inc., and from collaborating with generous teachers and artists, I create standards-centered lesson plans in music, dance, visual art, and theatre around the chosen theme. Lesson plans for each age group are provided to teachers, with room for them to make it their own and teach students in a way that is most comfortable and engaging for them! As I have taught these lessons and watched others teach these lessons, I have also had the opportunity to create learning tools, like the Dynamic Dial (pictured below), to help students grasp the concepts.
“The Dynamic Dial” by Kaitlyn Mills is licensed under CC BY CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Students and teachers at the institutions that invite us have responded remarkably to the lessons, and it always brings such joy to see them come to life!
Featured Image: “ROSTA 2016 Dance class with Emory Allen, DaeSun Cupid, and Javares Selby” by Foster Williams. Reproduced with permission.
Promo Posters
ROSTA also gives me a chance to do something quite different with my digital design skills. I create the promotional materials (flyers, posters, newsletters, signage, etc.) for each event. These are not usually tied to the theme, but are meant to represent the lively, fun, and creative energy that we bring to each program. I’ve included a few below for you to view. Our March program at Whole Life Christian Academy, the school for our community partner, was cancelled due to the pandemic.
