Benoit, Moran, Haulenbeek Honored
VAAE 2003 Fall Arts Education Awards
VAA Chair David Baker congratulates Award Winners Rachel Benoit, Mary Moran and Andrea Haulenbeek by Roy Gardner
In celebration and recognition of exemplary arts programs in Vermont schools, the Vermont Alliance for Arts Education (VAAE) honored three individuals during the second day of its annual Fall Arts Education Conference. Held on Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf Campus on September 24, the ceremony presented plaques to the three recipients of the VAAE’s annual art education awards.
Nominated by Vermont educational administrators and/or by arts educators and selected by a VAAE awards panel, the three winners included Rachel Benoit of Woodstock Union High School for the School Board/Community Award; Rutland City’s superintendent Mary Moran for the School Administrator of the Year award; and former Mount Mansfield Union High School’s music teacher Andrea Haulenbeek for the Arts Educator Award.
Although, these women have each followed different paths in the world of education, all three have shared a consistent commitment to building and expanding arts programs in their respective school systems.
Andrea Haulenbeek
A music teacher since 1969, Arts Educator Award recipient, Haulenbeek’s last 14 years at Mount Mansfield Union High School (MMU) are a testament to her commitment to a quality curriculum-based arts education program. During this time, Haulenbeek has taught choral, band, guitar, keyboard, as well as music theory classes. And she spent a great deal of this time spurring the growth of the MMU music curriculum by expanding existing programs and developing some of her own.From early in this tenure, her goal was “to develop a school within the school – a music department within the larger school where kids gravitated to music and had a community – a supportive not competitive place for new musicians all the way to the most experienced,” she explains.
About nine years ago, Haulenbeek helped some interested students put on a cabaret for individual and group performance at any skill level. This show now takes place every quarter and students are trained to emcee the event along with handle details such as the sound and light.Not only did she help provide a stage on which to perform, Haulenbeek saw it fit to give students the chance to record their music as well. Mostly through fundraising, MMU obtained a music studio that, in conjunction with her development of a broad curriculum for theory-composition-music-history class, gives students the chance to record their own compositions.
“I’m particularly proud of the fact that we’ve fostered composition and that so many kids are writing their own music and recording CDs,” says Haulenbeek. Refusing to limit her focus to only the upper grades, in 2000 she wrote and received a $6,000 grant from the Vermont Arts Council. This financial support led to the creation of an Elementary school string instrument feeder organization called Mountain Music Inc. In its fourth year, this self-sustaining and funding string program involves around 50 kids and offers group lessons as well as instruments to those unable to afford them.
Mary Moran
Mary Moran, the Superintendent of Schools in Rutland City for the past three and half years, has also been influential in promoting the formation of strings programs at the younger levels. Through her support in the hiring of personnel and purchase of violins so that all interested students may participate, Moran has led the way for a strings program that begins in the 4th grade and aims to achieve a full student orchestra in the high school.Recently, the American Music Conference honored the Rutland City Schools as one of the “Best 100 Schools for Music Education” in America. According to some of her peers, this designation is due in no small part to Moran’s leadership.
Upon receiving the VAAE’s School Administrator of the Year Award, Moran stated, “It’s an enormous honor. And to have been nominated by the teachers in our district is really just terrific.”
Under Mary’s leadership, theater and visual art are valued just as much as music. Together with the Paramount Theater in Rutland, the school has developed the “Accessible Arts Program,” which works to expose students to this live art at a low cost. “It allows a lot of our youngsters, who would never have the chance to go to live theater, to get to see musical and dramatic and comedic productions at an extraordinarily wonderful venue,” Moran explained.
Rachel Benoit
Theater has and continues to play a regular role in the work and life of the VAAE’s School Board/Administrative Community Award recipient, Rachel Benoit as well. “It feels a little odd to get an award for doing something that I really love to do,” said Benoit who is ending her second three-year term on the Woodstock Union High School Board.With regular hands-on involvement in school theater productions, Benoit extends her love and passion of the theater to every student with whom she comes in contact. For the past four years, on behalf of the middle and high schools in Woodstock, Benoit took on the role of costume coordinator for the Yoh Theatre Players where she supervised the costuming of every cast member – at least 50 in each production.
As her devotion to school theater reflects her love of art, her work on school boards and different committees reflects her commitment to ensuring that the arts remains equally available and represented “so that it’s not considered extra, it’s considered part of the curriculum,” says Benoit.
To Benoit, securing access to arts programs – for every child who wants it – is “vital.” She admires the success of Woodstock’s arts education program. “It is an all inclusive program and sometimes a lot of good things we have available to us aren’t always as inclusive as we’d want them to be.”
Her sentiment is one that each of these award winners certainly shares.
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