Third Day of Conference - On Listening

Third Day at the Conference - On Listening

Today began with a little meditation. I attended Mindfulness in the Digital Age.  I shortened it; the actual title of this workshop is super long (twenty-one words) and I misread it.  I thought it was about students creating media around the concept of mindfulness. The workshop was really about the benefits of meditation for students. I agree. I meditate but I still like the idea of having students create media around the benefits of sitting quietly or moving slowly. A video of people listening to silence with their eyes closed. I think we will do it. I had rushed over to the workshop so when I entered late and immediately had spend a few minutes meditating it was absolutely great, just what I needed. Maybe I should require all my late students to meditate. Before the writing exercise yesterday, we also spent a few minutes with our eyes closed. I think I will start doing this with the AP English classes, as much for me as for them.

Every day seems to have a theme. Foster Dickson who gave an amazing workshop called “Start by Listening;  Ethnographic Experiential Learning within the Local Community” said that he felt like all of the workshops and speeches seemed to be talking to each other. Anyway, today seemed to about the value of listening.

Dickson said that a teacher had talked about how difficult it was to teach, that students didn’t seem to learn the material. Dickson said, “You decide what you teach. They get to decide what to learn.”

In the next workshop, “Bearing Witness Using Multiple Platforms: Lives Mattering,” Mark Williams of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington D.C. said the exact same thing, “Students decide what goes in their heads."

Foster Dickson and Williams and Kelli Anderson, also from Duke Wellington, all began by saying that all teaching begins with listening.  If you want your students engaged,  you need to ask, what do the students want for themselves.  Mark Williams said, “Lean in and listen to what the lesson of the day is.”

Kelli Anderson said, “It’s so important to meet the students where they are.” Teaching this way means the instructor is always learning and teaching in new ways.

Foster Dickson does these great projects where the students investigate lives from their community. They start in the cemetery and use documents from the state’s archives to find out what they can about this person who lived during another time.  Then they use this to write creatively. Dickson compared this writing task to building a wall where facts are the bricks and imagination is the mortar. The idea is that by investigating these lives they learn about themselves as well. “Empathy doesn’t only help you understand others, it helps you to understand yourself,” he said. That is very beautifully put.

Mark Williams and Dickson also said something very similar about researching using the internet.  As great a tool the internet is, "in the old days when you did research you benefitted from “finding what you weren’t looking for," said Foster Dickson.

Williams' speech was pretty amazing. He quoted lots of great writers and said some very interesting things. I tried to take notes but he spoke very quickly. It would be great if he was willing to put his speech online.  The Duke Ellington school showed a video called "Bearing Witness." I may have misunderstood but I think  that the video came out of a project that could be called “Introspection." The students make videos introducing themselves in imaginative way.

One young woman in the video says, “Defining myself rather than having others define me is the hardest thing that I try to do.”  This  thought is one I’m certain my students could relate to.

 I am inspired to try and do two videos. Peggy Cooper spoke about how the Duke Ellington School changed students. She said, “These kids become… and as they become they grow powerful. As they become… they change and they change the culture. These students become … the culture.” Ms. Cooper wields a powerful pause.

 I want to do an “Intro to Introspection” where the students create video about themselves that are quick, visual, and immediate. The other video I would like them to create is about how our  school, East Los Angeles Performing Arts Magnet changes students and the students can create this video collaboratively.  The students often talk about how being at a performing arts school has changed them so I will give my class the task of collecting words and images that document this change and then they can edit it together. Or possibly do a few of these short films in groups.  My new unit called Intro to Introspection will begin tomorrow.

Second Day of the Arts Schools Network Conference

A Passionate Second Day of the Arts Schools Network Conference

Today began with an awards ceremony. The speeches given were surprisingly good; I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised – performing arts people, after all. 

 A common theme today was that when you are teaching the arts, you aren’t simply teaching technique but helping students to express themselves. “Technical perfection with nothing to say has no value,” said Kevin Moriarity, the Artistic Director of the Dallas Theatre Center.  He stated that you need to provide students the opportunity to create, to take risks. And to do that, you need to have faith in them.

First up: Integration of Abilities Workshop

Dr. Paul Baker was a theatre artist who put the Dallas Theatre on the world stage. His influential book Integration of Abilities  is used as the basis for a class at Booker T. Washington School of the Visual and Performing Arts.

"The core of Dr. Baker's process is an exploration of the elements of form: space, movement, line, color, sound/silence, rhythm, silhouette, shape, and texture. The elements of form serve as a connecting force for Baker's Integration of Abilities and are referred to and used as a common language. The primary goal of the Baker method is to enhance individual creativity."

In today's first workshop we followed one of the integration exercises in which you start writing from any early memory. You just start describing it and see where it takes you. I began with the memory of an iron clothesline. I was too chicken to share it out in the workshop, but I’m copying it here.

"The iron pole held the giant stretch of clotheslines and separated our apartment building from the one below down the hill. Under it the old ladies sat on folding chairs whose latticed plastic left patterns on their thighs. Then snow covered it all. We rode our sleds straight down. Down straight through the enemy territory of the "lowers" to the railroad track that stopped us hard. Only now do I really see the danger, but we must have known, our movements were so furtive. My brothers were shouting at me to go home. It was their constant refrain. Three hundred feet always separated us as I followed them everywhere. The snowballs had rocks in the middle. We did not play. Between the Uppers and the Lowers it was war.

I think this is a great exercise. It is really about having faith  if you try something of value will emerge. People are always too quick to say they can’t sing, dance, or do math.

Takeaway: Do this in PD with the teachers. Study Dr. Baker's book closely and consider if it is something we are interested in using at our school.

The most exciting part of today is a project that I would really like to  duplicate in some way. It is, again, a project that integrates the arts by design. Groups of students separated by art forms - musicians, writers, technical theatre people, dancers - work together to create a performance. They do not need to stay within their wheelhouse. Tech people can dance, dancers can create a lighting design but all help each other. They are limited to no more than 500 words; the piece must have a narrative drive (the audience needs to able to follow it and it should be cohesive). All the groups are given the same theme. At Booker T. Washington some past themes were symbiosis, weird science, and I can’t remember the others. They give the students about six weeks and about two days a week, and then one full day for a tech rehearsal. Then they all perform the pieces one after another. Though entirely student directed but the groups do have deadlines along the way. Teachers do not interfere, even though there is always the possibility of disaster and embarrassment. I absolutely want to do this; I don’t know if it is possible. At Booker T. High School every student is required to do this process at least once. The materials for this are online and I will present this project to my faculty and see if we can do some sort of beta version. The project is calling "Telling Stories."

It can be very difficult to give up control and only guide students by giving strict parameters, but that is what work in my film classes. You just have to have faith and you teach them skills  but collaboration, the give and take, the openness, these they can only learn by doing. However,  I’m not sure how they stop super strong personalities from taking over.

The meeting was at the Nash Sculpture Museum. Outside, I thought that one sculpture looked like Picasso. And it was! ( I had never seen a cement and gravel Picasso.)

Day 1 ARTS SCHOOLS NETWORK CONFERENCE

Inspiration from the First Day of the Arts Schools Network Conference

LeAnn Binford, Director of Big Thought Institute, Dallas, TX painted an incredibly positive picture of the state of arts in Dallas Public Schools. She discussed how the Big Thought Institute had created this vibrant collaboration between local business, corporations, the juvenile justice dept., parents, educators and the school district to infuse arts education so that it was there for every student. They are clearly supported by the highest level of school administration as the Dallas Superintendent of Schools,  Dr. Hinojosa joked about how Texas was notorious for accountacanabilism, referring to the drive to test students, but that Dallas was different.  Their program for arts education for incarcerated youth has resulted in a very low rate of recidivism. I was going to say the lowest in Texas but I am not sure I heard right, although I would believe it.

•        Takeaway from this: A renewed desire to work with businesses as well as our Arts Community Partners. I used to attend the Town Hall Meetings in Los Angeles that were designed to bring education and business together. I would like to look into that again. I work with Linked Learning and they are great at helping businesses partner with schools but our school is performing arts and we mostly partner with arts organization. I want to work with Linked Learning and others to broaden our partnerships, particularly in regards to my directing for media classes.

After the speech, we spent a couple of hours at the Booker T. Washington High School for the performing arts and saw this vision in action. That is one amazing school.  Incredibly articulate and poised, students guided us through the school. Afterward we wandered about the school on our own.

The most striking thing about the school is the student’s pride of ownership. The hallways are full of artwork and photographs. The students design all the hallway displays. Students were practicing music and drawing in the hallways. I could see how they were so supportive of each other. Students were helping each other create life size portraits for an arts integration class. The place was full of smiles.

•        My Takeaway from this: I teach video and my students submit and win awards but my students have created a bulletin board in the hallway celebrating and sharing their achievements. I know they would like to do it.  I also liked the displays of very artistic senior portraits under their arts specialization. I’m the advisor for yearbook, so I know the yearbook photographers would be into making that happen.

We stopped into the conducting classroom where students from the choral program and the band work together to learn to play together and also to conduct.

• ·      My Takeaway: It’s difficult for my small school to have a conducting class, but maybe we could arrange a special master class. I think it is very cool to have students take strong leadership roles. It doesn’t get much stronger than conducting and we really need more female conductors.

Every six weeks there is a special program at the school called PB&J where the students, share their work informally with each other and also formally, performing finished pieces in the theatre. It is really designed for the students to interact and share and build community. During this day, the academic teachers are given the time and space to create benchmark or interim exams, look at data, and work together to focus on the English, history, languages, and math for an entire day while the arts teachers and volunteers supervise the students. This isn’t to say that arts are not integrated into English and history. We say some amazing work in the English and history classes.

• ·      My Takeaway: I don’t know if it is possible but I would absolutely like to advocate this for my school, at least one day a year.

I saw a class, in action where the teacher was assigning a task where students would find an object that spoke to them. It could be a rock. They would use this object as the starting point for a story that might include music, dance, or visual arts. This was a class that integrated all the arts with English (and other subjects, I don’t really know).

• ·      My Takeaway: I want to make a renewed effort to offer more choice to students as to how they can show mastery and to document my efforts.

There was the most amazing opera class. I shot a little video but the mike on my camera couldn't handle the dynamics of their voices. They went from soft to this amazingly deep and high sound. The student tour guide told me that opera was more popular at the school than musical theatre and it was due to their partnership with the local opera. 

I also saw the arts teacher using an alternate space, with table and chairs, to give an assessment. She was the costume and set design teacher. I thought that was an interesting idea. I asked the teacher if the space was designed for that and she said that it was a study space and she just used it that way. It does seem like a good idea for theatre, dance, and orchestra to have access to alternate space like that when they need it for writing. The actual costuming shop class was really beautiful with old furniture and manikins.