Tanisha Felder

Internship Summary

I was fortunate to have 2 interconnected internship experiences with Arts

Corps, a non-profit arts organization, and Seattle Public Schools. I began my
internship in the summer of 2013 with Arts Corps, primarily working with the
Creative School Initiative, a pilot program that was placing Teaching Artists in
content subject areas and measuring the impact on student achievement and
engagement. The philosophy behind the program was to address the question,
What impact could having stable, quality access to arts have on students and
school culture? Due to summer furloughs, my direct mentor changed from the
project manager to the executive director. This change allowed me front line
access to the decisions made around budgets, school and CBO partnerships,
and the skills and tact involved in creating a program that meets the need of all
stake holders. I presented at a state conference at the end of the summer with
the executive director of Arts Corps, Elizabeth Whitford, and the Visual and
Performing Arts Manager at Seattle Public Schools, Carri Campbell.

This initial meeting with Carri, led to her role as my co mentor at the district
level. I was fortunate to be given the role of Site Coordinator for the Creative
Schools Initiative at Orca, which gave me the experience of having the program
in my classroom, along with 2 others, and running the program on site. This
position involved negotiating budgets, teacher schedules, working with

prospective donors, and co facilitating teacher professional development. At the

same time, I began to attend meetings with Carri at the district office with
department managers each week. What soon surfaced was that Arts Corps and
the SPS arts department were working very closely together, and in fact SPS
was receiving counsel and guidance around their new Creative Advantage
program as a direct result of their work with Arts Corps. At this time Carri was the
Visual and Performing Arts manager, so it allowed me to see how this
department was interwoven with the other departments at SPS. Besides the
weekly meetings, Carri and I did not meet very often throughout the school year,
but in the spring of 2014, she was approached with the idea of offering an Arts
Institute for SPS career ladder teacher. Due to her heavy schedule, she passed
this onto me as my first project. Working with Beverly Beuhler-Harding at Arts
Impact, I collaborated on a 3-day summer institute that served 36 teachers. I
negotiated for each teacher to receive a gift bag full of arts materials that was
valued at $200 each. Teacher workshops were contracted out to Arts Impact
Teaching Artists, and my main role was to review the details of the event and
oversee the institute the days of. We partnered with Seattle Arts Museum, which
led to the connections of City of Seattle Arts Commission, Arts Corps, SPS, and
Arts Impact becoming new figures in my life. This institute began my summer
internship with SPS.
In summer of 2014, I moved into the Seattle Public Schools building. By this
time Carri Campbell had a new position, Director of School and Community
Partnerships, which meant no longer attending the weekly managers meetings,

but now meeting weekly with community partners of SPS. I began to learn the job
as Carri learned her job, having only been in this position for 3 weeks prior to my
start. I started seeing the importance of the community organizations had in
helping SPS meet their goals with students, primarily students of color. The
partnerships were well established but varied in accountability. My first project
was to create a tool kit that created consistency with the CBOs. This project was
headed by Nate Sanders and then given to me to fine tune. Nate left his position
before this project was completed. In the meantime, I began to work with the City
of Seattle/ SPS partnership Creative Advantage. This involved planning a
summer institute for Teaching Artist again at SAM. This time I was asked to
facilitate a workshop. The summer institute was a 1-day event that invited all
Creative Advantage rostered artists to learn about race and equity and social
justice through the arts. It became a powerful experience that led me to being
asked to facilitate another workshop in the fall and to join a professional
development task force for Creative Advantage.

Arts Corps is still in my school and I am still partnering with the Creative
Schools Initiative. I have kept in contact with all Creative Advantage staff, and I
have been asked for consultations around arts integration and race and equity
because of these connections. My internships began as an assignment and truly
became pivotal parts of my professional, and in some cases, my personal life. I
started this internship knowing that Standard 4 was my weakest area, and I have

truly gained much knowledge and experience in this area. I am grateful for the
opportunities.