Monthly Mentor

Stacy Fuller(February)
I am the Director of Education at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. In this role, I work with a talented team of fifteen museum educators to ensure the development, execution, and evaluation of the Amon Carter’s mission-focused educational programs and resources for various audiences. With experience as a museum registrar, in curatorial work, and designing professional development programs for educators, I have a passionate love for works of art and also accessibility—making sure that visitors of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities are able to enter, access, and engage with museum collections.

Go

Membership

Join the largest creative community established exclusively for visual arts educators, college professors, researchers, administrators, and museum educators.

Join NAEA Renew Membership

« Students and the NAEA Convention | Main | Shaping the Future of Your Professional Association »

January 06, 2011

The Power of Community

What is it about community that is so powerful? That enables us to accomplish things we wouldn't have thought possible? It is the seemingly "impossible" challenges in our work that make me such a fierce advocate for community. Your input has made it abundantly clear that you agree with me. Community has been given the top priority in the NAEA Next! strategic plan, with a powerful commitment to making our professional community ever stronger and vibrant.

There once was a fundraising organization whose slogan was "I'mpossible Dreams." That phrase perfectly captures the transformation of the "can't be done " to the "can't be stopped." But what I find most profound about it is the idea of empowering the individual through community. There's interesting yin and yang in that idea-and since we had so much fun with the Prezi format last time, I'm using it again to further explore the rampant potential of community and what it means for you and for NAEA!

In my first Cleansing the Palette Prezi, I asked you to share your thoughts about my visual Palette experiment, and you did, but your responses were almost entirely written comments. So this time, I invite you to be visual in your feedback-and I'll give you the tool to do it: the green "community tree" graphic that is featured in my second Prezi.

By empowering yourself as an individual in your educational community, you give yourself a voice and identity that is a powerful force for change and educational success. By bringing your individual empowerment to our NAEA community, you make everyone around you stronger and more able to take on the impossible.

That's a lot of potential accomplishment being released into the world-and I can't wait to engage with each of you and our increasingly powerful community. Join me in lifting our glasses to a 2011 filled with extraordinary promise!

-Deborah B. Reeve, EdD, NAEA Executive Director
From Cleansing the Palette, NAEA News, December 2010

Resources:
Engage in our vibrant professional community by viewing and responding to the "Cleansing the Palette" Prezi. View the Prezi at www.arteducators.org or click here.

To return to Palette on NAEA website:
www.arteducators.org/execdir

To download the community tree image:
www.arteducators.org/communitytree

Upload your Visual creations to the NAEA community Wiki: http://naeacommunity.wikispaces.com

Posted at 01:17 PM |

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00e5550df25288340147e153aec5970b

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Power of Community:

Comments

Post a comment

If you have a TypeKey or TypePad account, please Sign In.