Monthly Archives: April 2012
Calling Greater Cincinnati Student Performers!
Empowering young people to pursue their passions, to use their creative skills and to bring out their strengths is one of the greatest gifts we can pass along.
The Cincinnati Arts Association is doing just that with the region’s largest solo arts competition for students – the 
Overture Awards Program. This year it is initiating a new opportunity for Tri-State teens in grades 9 to 12.
The Next Pop Star Competition is designed for singers and dancers who perform popular music and dance. Most of them will not have studied privately. It will offer a chance for them to compete with others who share their enjoyment of these art forms. Applications from students who have competed in the Overture Award Program in the past will not be accepted.
25 dancers and 25 vocal music students will be allowed to compete on a first-come first-served basis for no longer than five minutes. There is an application that must be filled out but no application fee. The application can be found at http://www.cincinnatiarts.org/Overture_Awards
Two winners, one from each discipline, will receive a $300 prize. The event will be Saturday, June 2, 2012 at The Aronoff Center from 9:00 a.m.to 1:00 p.m. Students will receive a letter with a specific time at which they should report.
The Arts Association will provide a keyboard and a CD player for students’ use and they can bring an accompanist.
Guidelines for both disciplines can be found on our website, cincinnatiarts.org/overture_awards. Click on the Next Pop Star link.
Please call Carolyn Phillips with any questions at 513-977-4168 or send an e-mail to cphillips@cincinnatiarts.org.
A word about competition from the Cincinnati Arts’ Association:
Successful working artists agree that self-discipline, hard work, determination, and one’s ability to deal positively with criticism are the best indicators for success in the arts. Many brilliant high school performers have gone on to lead very traditional lives. Many people whose talents went completely unrecognized in high school have gone on to have brilliant careers in the arts.
This year’s Overture Awards will provide just one of many occasions in which a young artist’s creative efforts will be judged. A realistic picture of how a competition works and a healthy attitude about winning and losing will help keep stress to a minimum and allow contestants to keep the competition in good perspective so that it can be a useful learning experience.
Do You Know The ABC’s Of Pet Behavior?
NOTE: I have a new pet behavior blog located at http://www.SoMuchPETential.com/blog. Thanks!
(past Hyde Park Living column)
Do you know your ABC’s?
Well that’s a strange question you may be saying to yourself. Isn’t this a pet behavior column?
Yep, it sure is. And the ABC’s I’m talking about are not related to spelling words. They are instead what I have been taught to help me understand why a behavior occurs so that as a pet owner and teacher, I can effectively set my animals up for success by influencing their behavior in the most positive/least intrusive way.
Let me back up. What I really would like for you to get from this column is a basic understanding that blaming an animal for doing anything you don’t want him to do is simply counterproductive. All behavior happens because it is serving a purpose for that animal. We may never know at any given time what our animal is feeling or thinking when he jumps on us or chews up a garden hose but we don’t need to know to still set our animal up to succeed. Using the ABC assessment, we can modify the animal’s environment and modify his behavior without any use of force or punishment.
The science of behavior
Applied behavior analysis is a systematic approach to solving behavior problems by changing the environment in which the behavior occurs. It involves looking at the very specific behavior (such as a bird biting or screaming) and the related environmental context that signals and reinforces it. We ask, “What happened *immediately* prior to the behavior (antecedent) to set the whole ball rolling?“ And, “What happened *immediately* after the behavior to reinforce it (consequence)?“
There you have it…the A (antecedent), B (behavior), and C (consequence)’s.
All too often when our pet is doing something we disapprove of we don’t even realize that we are responsible for reinforcing the very action we don’t want to see. Or in the heat of the moment, we end up punishing our pet – which can have detrimental side effects (the subject for a future column) and serves no teaching function.
Using the ABC assessment tool allows us to consider how we can rearrange the antecedents so that the problem behavior is never set into motion to begin with – and we can set into motion an acceptable behavior instead. Then we can reinforce the heck out of the acceptable behavior. Guess which behavior you’ll see more of?
In my next column I’ll work through a specific example of using the ABC analysis in solving a pet behavior issue.
Ryan Courtade Works With Passion
Ryan and I met a number of months back through mutual friends, and I knew when he spoke of the work he does that he would be a topic for a future blog post.
I have always truly admired people who follow their heart’s passion in life. Ryan is one of those special people.
It was while serving in the military, he told me, that he realized he wanted to do something in life to foster the success of young people. “I saw a lot of men and women come in who weren’t given a fair chance in life. They had a chip on their shoulder with a need to prove themselves,” he recalled. “I want to make sure everyone has a fair chance in life, not just to go to college but to gain life skills also.”
Fast forward to 2010.
It was May of that year when Ryan got word the tax exempt status he had been working so hard to achieve, finally came through. It was official – there became the Northern Kentucky Youth Foundation and at its helm – Ryan as its volunteer executive director.
The Foundation’s focus is on bringing people (volunteers, parents, teachers, students and organizations) in Northern 
Kentucky together to work collaboratively to help young people grow to their full potential. Its goal is to provide positive changes and policies that impact youth and create a better community, learning environment and future.
A youth council consists of 13 students in grades 7 through 11 from Boone, Kenton and Campbell Counties. They meet monthly to discuss issues in their schools and how they can take leadership. Over time, Ryan told me, the council members will create chapters within their own schools to affect positive change.
A new project.
Much of Ryan’s time lately has been on an anti-bullying campaign in schools that will be launched this fall. “We spend so much time focusing on the bully or the victim,” he said. “This campaign will be about empowering those who are watching the bully. As a culture we need to change. If someone is getting picked on, we want people to stand up and not tolerate it.”
The campaign will include a video with discussion guides, a television PSA, a website resource for parents and teachers.
