Endorsements

Venturing Together author Bill Rossi developed and managed arts mentoring programs for almost two decades in Seattle, WA, Albany, NY, and Chester County, PA in such diverse locations as city art museums, homeless shelters, therapeutic treatment facilities, peer support centers, and after school programs.  The Rossi Arts Mentoring Approach has received awards for excellence from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Gates Foundation, Paul Allen Foundation and many others.

This experience and success established the Rossi Arts Mentoring Approach as a best practice for challenged youth and adults.

The Rossi Arts Mentoring Approach stimulates, develops and nurtures the creative process in everyone - teachers, mentors and students alike.

Three of the most important characteristics of a successful human being are:

• a well developed sense of ethics

• the ability to think independently

• the desire to deeply understand oneself.

Rossi’s approach develops these characteristics by improving skills, cultural awareness, character, and psychological health. The integration of these elements creates the unique gestalt that lies at the heart of the approach.

The Rossi Arts Mentoring Approach is founded on the following understandings:

• good teachers teach how, not what, to think
• teachers should model their creative and life experience
• teachers must be in a personal state of inquiry and creativity in order to transfer that state
• creating a mutual learning relationship through mentoring is a very effective way to teach
• strengths-based education, responsive to the student’s learning style, provides a very effective way to learn.

This approach stimulates teachers’ creative process so they teach from the same perspective from which they want their students to learn. As a driving force in the creative process, teachers become mentors and guides, providing students with supportive relationships that build trust and a sense of belonging.

These relationships are beneficial to all students. They can also provide the turning point for at risk students by freeing their innate desire to grow out of their cocoon of isolation, self-consciousness and fear of failure.

This approach also helps teachers and students jointly discover the areas of student strength, thus ensuring the early successes that promote further creativity and motivate further study. Inspired by progress and guided by mentors, students develop their abilities and learn to apply these to other life areas.

Although the approach was developed in a musical context, the principles can be applied to any discipline. Here's an example of the approach in action in music:

Imagine a student and teacher together at the piano. The teacher is 100% present with the student, concentrating fully on the music and sensitive to where the student is at that moment.

A teacher working with this orientation is so involved that he almost hears the music the same way the student hears it. He’s listening, tapping, placing  his hands at the keyboard next to the students’ to express an articulation or a rhythm, or a phrase for the student to respond to, sometimes playing the exact phrase or an accompanying part.

The student begins to move with him, and for some time they're moving and playing together. It's at that moment that real learning begins. Not from the teacher showing, explaining, or outlining the theory involved, but from the experience of doing together. The student has jumped into learning the next step, and her awareness has been expanded in such a way that she will not only grasp the skill of playing but also the musical principle involved.

At this point the teacher can teach the principle (or theory) involved by relating it directly to the where the student is, giving the student a very meaningful and practical way of “getting it”. What's needed for that moment to happen is a high degree of sensitivity on the teacher’s part. It also requires that the teacher jump in and "get wet" with the student, not stay in the safe role of teacher.

When the teacher participates in this way he actually re-experiences the music and re-experiences the principles of the music, so he’s able to transfer that experience with a freshness and newness that are exciting for the student. This vulnerability and healthy, creative expression allows for a feeling of positive relationship that many students today need so badly.