Riverside County Office of Education
Home MenuAmplifying the Arts, Volume 32
The Arts at RCOE has some free new arts resources to offer as we open the 2024–2025 school year!
Arts Plus+
First of all, we have four new integrated children’s literature and art lessons up on our Arts Plus webpage. They include The Hundred Dresses (SEL), The Thing About Bees (STEAM), Sandi’s Circus (Art History) and What’s Inside a Bird’s Nest (STEAM). You can check them out here!
Reader’s Theater
To provide some further integration, Louisa Higgins and her colleague, artist Karen Riley, have composed some Reader’s Theater stories for your use. Several of them correlate with our Arts Plus lessons, and all of them provide fun integration experiences with theater and language arts while being structured and supported for second language learners.
The Hundred Dresses Trunk Show
The Arts and RCOE and the S.C.R.A.P. Gallery have created a new art show based on the story The Hundred Dresses. Students, parents, teachers, and professional artists are invited to participate in this free opportunity. Selected dresses will be framed and put on display in a show that will travel to four different locations around the county. We hope you’ll participate!
The Art Deck
A new resource we just posted online is called the Art Deck. It is a fun, opening activity/ice breaker that is great for any sort of gathering of educators. Think about it for use at a staff meeting, arts advocacy meeting or any other occasion that you want to get folks talking about the arts and why they are so significant in education and in life.
Innovative approaches for equitable and exciting opportunities in the visual and performing arts for students during school closures from Riverside County Arts leads.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 2
Meridy Volz's "Art with Heart" program at Indio Juvenile Hall was an instant success, and she was determined to continue teaching even as COVID-19 prevented her from entering the facility.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 3
The Our Town Cultural Arts Program brings the cultural arts into elementary school classrooms in the Murrieta Valley Unified School District, engaging students in the traditions and cultures of the citizens who make up our community and the students who sit in our classrooms.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 4
Lady Lead (LL) was founded five years ago by Louisa Higgins, Visual and Performing Arts, and Sarah Scheideman, Artist from Palm Springs Unified School District as a way for middle school girls of promise to interact with female art mentors while doing an arts and crafts project.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 5
Riverside Unified School District's performing arts students join in a partnership project with the community.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 6
In the spring of 2020 the Val Verde Unified School District initiated a Student Quarantine Art Contest, inspired by the Getty Challenge. Students were asked to select a piece of artwork from Google Arts and Culture and re-create it.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 7
The Moreno Valley Unified School District’s Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) program was reinvented in 2015 as an investment for all students and has proven to be an exceptional program with its recent Golden Bell Award designation.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 8
In this month’s edition of Amplifying the Arts, we would like to celebrate the California School Board Association Golden Bell Award received by Murrieta Valley Unified School District’s VAPA program called Horizons Unlimited.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 9
Riverside County Office of Education, Visual and Performing Arts, is proud to partner with the McCallum Theatre Education to present its online series.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 10
Riverside County Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) is pleased to partner with Desert X to announce its student and family resources for the 2021 Exhibition.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 11
The Riverside County Office of Education is proud to support Mono County Office of Education (MCOE), which is one of the four collaborative counties in the Region 10 service region of the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSESA).
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 12
As we start a new school year, RCOE VAPA would like to share several noteworthy arts recognitions in Riverside County from the spring and summer, as well as a few new events just around the corner.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 13
Riverside County Office of Education Visual and Performing Arts partnered with Inlandia Institute to create the inaugural Riverside County Teen Poet Laureate event.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 14
In the Spring of 2021, Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator, and Peggy Burt, Arts
Consultant, began an in-depth study of the new Arts Framework, which was published in 2020.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 15
Riverside County Office of Education Visual and Performing Arts is pleased to partner with the Palm Springs Art Museum to promote their new online program.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 16
RCOE VAPA is partnering with CSSSA to get the word out about their Summer School for the Arts!
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 17
The past two years have seen our share of individual and collective trauma based on the effects of the worldwide pandemic. RCOE VAPA continually strives to make arts trainings available that are topical and relevant. One such offering is “Documenting Trauma Through Comics.”
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 18
Riverside County Office of Education is partnering with The Redlands Symphony to promote this year’s OrKIDstra music education program to you and your students; an original animated video of a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s immortal Peter and the Wolf.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 19
Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator and Jeannine Flores, Los Angeles County Office of Education Arts & STEAM Coordinator have just wrapped up their yearlong project on behalf of CCSESA. Their revised unit of the Creativity at the Core Module 12 is entitled Leadership in Arts Education.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 20
Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator and Jeannine Flores, Los Angeles County Office of Education Arts & STEAM Coordinator have just wrapped up their yearlong project on behalf of CCSESA. Their revised unit of the Creativity at the Core Module 12 is entitled Leadership in Arts Education.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 21
The Arts at Riverside County Office of Education is very pleased to be able to partner with KQED in sharing some free and valuable resources for Riverside County teachers.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 22
Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator and Jeannine Flores, Los Angeles County Office of Education Arts & STEAM Coordinator have just wrapped up their yearlong project on behalf of CCSESA.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 23
Arts as Life! is very low cost (only $23.00 per teacher/class) and open to all TK–12 teachers, administration, staff, and counselors.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 24
Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator and Jeannine Flores, Los Angeles County Office of Education Arts & STEAM Coordinator are continuing to promote their yearlong project on behalf of CCSESA.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 26
New for 2023 is the RCOE Get Your Style On Fashion + Art Competition. This contest gave the opportunity to link the worlds of art and fashion through a creation while showing off one’s creativity and design prowess!
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 27
Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator and Jeannine Flores, Los Angeles County Office of Education Arts & STEAM Coordinator undertook a yearlong project on behalf of the California County Superintendents. Their revised unit of the Creativity at the Core Module 12 is entitled Leadership in Arts Education.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 28
This edition of Amplifying the Arts highlights the RCOE partnership with the Palm
Springs Young Playwrights Festival (PSYPF). PSYPF promotes and encourages theatrical creative writing to all elementary, middle, and high school students within Riverside County.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 29
Each year, The Arts at Riverside County Office of Education holds two competitions that center on poetry; “If I Speak, Will You Listen?” Spoken Word Invitational and the Teen Poet Laureate competition.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 30
In the five years that the Arts at RCOE has been in existence, we have been striving to promote and expand the arts for the over 430,000 students in Riverside County.
Amplifying the Arts, Volume 31
The Arts at Riverside County Office of Education (RCOE) has many Students Arts Showcases available each year for parents and teachers to submit student artwork in art, music, poetry, film, theater, dance, and fashion.