Memo # 5: Why It Matters

Performing Arts In The Classroom:

 

 

“Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig”

 -Stephen Greenblatt

I’ve been thinking a lot about the healing power of writing. I realized that I constantly make the excuse that my school works takes up so much of my time that I have none for creative writing. I spend money on books full of prompts, story cube dice, and picture cards and have spent time perusing the internet for free prompts with the intension of waking up each morning and writing non-stop for thirty minutes. But I never do. Instead opting instead to stay up late and “de-bunny” the long work or school day by watching TV and then sleeping in to prevent a sleep hangover.

However, each week in our class, we have no excuse. We are given a prompt and we get an opportunity to write about what’s going on in our lives in relation to the framework given to us. I look forward to this because it’s pure therapy. Not only do I approach it with fear and come out with something I am often surprized and proud of but I feel as though the light bulb has been lit and some emotional purging has taken place. My shoulders always feel less heavy after class, after I’ve been able to search my soul and write it down.

I know that writing heals not only because of how it makes me feel but also because I talk about my experiences in class with all of my friends and co-workers. I received a text message the other day from my friend Karen that contained one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received that said this; “Today was the first time I wanted to write my thoughts down in a journal. This comes from you. It was a day things came together and I want to make a record of it. I am happy. Thank you.” I often talk about my classes and what I am learning in them but what made my encouraging writing stick with Karen? I believe this is because of my delivery. When I speak passionately about something, it’s a performance, an authentic one where I am playing me, but a performance all the same. This is because my words come alive in my soul firing me up to give speeches of advocacy.

The Significance Of Art: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aaSCptnSIE

I learned to be a passionate speaker through the art classes I took in growing up and later in high school. Dance, Theatre and Music showed me how words can have movement. How they can breathe life into the world and into beings. I was a shy teen because I was told that being different made me weird and so when I started to grow into my own I thought the best way to survive was to become a wallflower. The arts were always there to look forward too and it was through them where I saw that the imagination I had that made me different was what created art and writing that I was most proud of. My performances and writing were where I could truly to be me and I was always moved by what I was creating. The arts and creative writing guided me away from the wall and showed me what it felt like to be myself. It still does that for me to this day.

I learned differently than other students. I needed a hands on, options given, creative way to do projects. I needed to express myself. I could only show that I understand something through creations. I always did better on an essay question, a monologue or a collage poster that I did on multiple choice or true/false questions. There are many other students out there that are the same way. The education system was changing as I was departing its confining halls so I was able to escape relatively well-rounded but students of today aren’t as lucky.

Educational theorist too have noted that the system has tended to focus on only the logical and language facets of learning leaving other ways of learning, ways that can reach students like me, off their chart on how to grade intelligence. “Each schema the child holds is actually the sum total of all the impressions, associations, experiences and emotions that that child has about the topic. Therefore any visualization or imaging activity that a teacher guides children through will necessarily result in a wide variety of images about any topic because the responses totally depend upon the schema of each individual child and just how fully each child’s schema has been activated or brought to the conscious mind but the stimulus” (Cecil, 38)

 “Howard Gardner has made it that much harder for segregationists of education to support their logic of banishment when a child struggles in a rigid curriculum by discovering seven patterns for solving problems and fashioning products, also known as learning.” He starts with the two that traditional schools use; logical-mathematical thinking and linguistic capacities. But his last five which deal with culturally valued ways of knowing and acting in the world are banished from the curriculum.”

“These included spatial-representation intelligence (representing time, space, objects and spirit through symbols, drawings and other media), musical-intelligence (communication through song and rhythm), kinaesthetic intelligence (communication through one’s body to solve problems and make things, interpersonal intelligence (understanding the communication of others) and intrapersonal intelligence (understanding of one’s self so that choices can be made and they can act on those choices) (Kweiler, pg. 81). So in other words, when we are able to look at students from this much wider range of intelligence capacities, we increase the rubric for what makes a student smart while showing them that we understand the way they feel most comfortable communicating and showing us what they know.

 

Another problem is how separated all of the school subjects are from one another when in reality, we rely on all of them working together every day. “The school day is fragmented (you go to separate spaces reserved for science, math, etc.) but the arts provide an opportunity for students to come together and connect the various strands of their learning. This happened not only among the various strands of their learning but also across all subjects. The school musical, for example, obviously brings together learning and students in the visual arts for set design, musical training for vocal and band performance and theatre mavens contributing dramatic expertise. But students doing tech theatre are putting to use physics and mathematical concepts and acumen, just as theatre students are using the analytic skills they’ve acquired in their humanities and history classes to make sense of the script” (Davis, 92).

In the Common Core Standards emphasis on writing across all disciplines and for real purpose in order “to build a foundation for college and career readiness, students need to learn to use writing as a way of offering and supporting opinions, demonstrating understanding of the subjects they are studying, and conveying real and imagined experiences and events. They learn to appreciate that a key purpose of writing is to communicate clearly to an external, sometimes unfamiliar audience, and they begin to adapt the form and content of their writing to accomplish a particular task and purpose” (Calkins, 110).

 “The arts provide a nexus for a range of disciplinary understandings. A musical composition, like a play, demonstrates psychological considerations in its expressive potential, historical considerations such as relevant styles and events, mathematical considerations in the relationship between notes and stanzas and narrative elements in the unfolding of the story it tells” (Davis, 93). In fact, narrative writing, along with persuasive/opinion/argument and informational/functional/procedural writing make up the three types of writing in the Common Core Standards.

Narrative writing can often become creative writing because it contains a part of you, the writer, in it no matter how small. We are talking about personal narratives, fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, narrative memoir, biography or narrative non-fiction (Calkins, 104). Often this kind of writing becomes plays or one-man/woman shows. The personal messages that are written out sometimes turn into pieces that need to be performed.

Narrative writing also lends its hands to the other two forms of writing; “narratives are important not only because they are, as Barbara Hardy says, the primary mode of knowing but also because they are an essential component in almost every other kind of writing. Listen to TED talks which are models of persuasive and informative speaking and you will find that mostly, those speeches are mosaics of stories. Read a terrific informational text and you’ll find that you are reading stories” (Calkins, 113).

When reading stories, emotions are brought to the surface as you journey along with the hero. The same experience can be had with music. When listening, students can “begin to write their reactions in a different way, using a vehicle of the contrast frame. This device provides a literary scaffold or temporary structure for the children to use so that they may begin to record their observations in an expository mode. While such a device is useful in helping all students to organize their ideas, it is especially helpful for those for whom English is a second language” (Cecil, 133).

The performing arts matter in the classroom because it helps to unify all of the other subjects. It matters because it shows students how to connect and understand the world they live in. It matters because it teaches students compassion and empathy for one another. It matters because it instils self-expression and confidence. It matters because it can be used as a way to reach students who can show us what they know by being creative instead of by choosing a, b, c or d with a number two pencil. It matters because it moves, literally, our body, heart and mind.

Through the arts, students can learn to see with fresh eyes the world around them and how to forge their way through it. Through creations, students are able to harness the power of their imagination and agency. Imagination teaches them how to answer the “what if” questions of life. Agency shows them to see that they matter as they put that imagination into motion. Through emotion expression teaches students to recognize and talk about how they feel and in turn empathy in order to understand how others feel. Through interpretation students can show what they think matters. They can show respect for what others think matters as well.

In the act of creating, a process must take place. This process includes inquiry as the students question the right and wrong of the informational text they are given as well as the motivation for why the character does what they do. Inquiry leads to personal reflection on how the student’s approach to the material is working and what else they need to do. Once they have all this down they can then perform for an audience showing that they care through engagement and responsibility by showing up and doing the best they can do.

 

The performing arts matters because it allows the student to learn, think, explore, feel and express others and their own stories out into the community. This allows for voices to breathe life into the air and rise up, encouraging others to stand up for individuality. As one student has said “arts are most the important thing if not because they are so wonderful and rich but because they impact everything” (Davis, 93). Imagine what kind of world we could live in with the ability to impact for the better?

 "Why the Arts?" Art Education Advertisement: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M5hs6ahcKU

Works Cited:

Calkins, Lucy, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman. Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2012. Print.

Cecil, Nancy Lee., and Phyllis Lauritzen. Literacy and the Arts for the Integrated Classroom: Alternative Ways of Knowing. New York: Longman, 1994. Print.

Davis, Jessica Hoffmann. Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. New York: Teachers College, 2012. Print.

Kohl, Herbert R., and Tom Oppenheim. The Muses Go to School: Inspiring Stories about the Importance of Arts in Education. New York: New, 2012. Print.

 

Picture Links:

http://gallery.mailchimp.com/101affe9c06def3cd53027c8e/images/YoungArts_matters_new_header_July.jpg

http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/oii/files/2013/03/Arts-Gallery.jpg

http://brightsidenewsblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/whats_the_story_logo.jpg

http://www.current.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/matter-1320-team-shot-420x280.jpeg

Memo # 4: Connection & Understanding

Performing Arts In The Classroom

 

Earth without Art is just ‘Eh’ 

Shayne is a teacher who runs a constructivist classroom. She has a student in her class with Down syndrome named Isaac. She immediately noticed in him a different way of communicating and connecting with his fellow classmates and the world around him. She understood that when he was fidgety or had outbursts that he was simply communicating, not misbehaving. When Shayne reads a book in class Isaac dances to it because that is how he feels it, that is how he understands it. “Isaac literally danced to books and his dance did change as books were discussed, acted out, reread and discarded for new books. His dances also changed how his peers and teachers saw the stories. Before Isaac, few of us knew you could dance to a book at all. Isaac’s literary waltzes established a new sense of communication that connected children, teachers and materials in a manner that was previously non-existent” (Kliewer, pg. 90). Shayne was able to acknowledge that his idiosyncratic performances were his way to connect to the class community which helped him to be understood.

Sir Ken Robinson tells of a similar tale about Gillian Lynne in his book The Element (in this TED talk he refers to the book as “epiphany”, indeed!) and during his world famous TED talk. Gillian Lynne was born in Bromley, England (yes, that’s where my name comes from) in the 1920’s. Her teachers noticed that she was always moving about during lessons and that it was a serious learning disability. Gillian’s mother took her to see a doctor who asked a bunch of questions and then decided to leave Gillian alone in the room with the radio on as he and her mother watched form outside.

Soon she got up out of her chair and started dancing about the room. The doctor turned to her mother and said “Gillian is not sick, she’s a dancer.” He said that she didn’t need medication (at the time ADHD hadn’t been “invented” yet as Robinson points out) and instead just needed to be enrolled into a dance class, which her mother did. Gillian felt understood in her dance classes because it was full of people just like her, “people who had to move to think.” She said “I get days where I feel very low for no particular reason. I’ve never had therapy. I believe you have to deal with it yourself. My answer is going to dance class.” As you see in the video below, this recognition led her to nurture her talent and make a living through dancing and choreography.  

            Phillip Seymour Hoffman notices that “a very important part of being in school is not just sitting and listening but having a group of kids who begin to move and play in space with their bodies together and who know how to learn together. This is very important for the quality of learning” (Kohl, 110). Lisa Delpit puts the movement into motion showing how because the students movement is supressed at school that when they are in the classroom, they can’t help but move about. When the students do this, the teachers are failing to notice what their movements represent, instead subscribing to the idea that they are just acting out. “Suddenly the little boy who can’t sit still, jumping and tumbling around the room, can, with a new set of lens, becomes a dancer. The girl whose school papers are covered in scribbles becomes an artist. The boys who annoy their teachers by constantly tapping on their desks become drummers. Those whose notebooks are filled with raps become lyricists. The little girl who cries at the least affront becomes a thespian. The arts give us new eyes to see the potential for the expression of divinity, for perfection, in our children” (Kohl, 38).

            Shayne noticed Isaac’s need to dance out what he learning in order to understand and Gillian’s doctor recognized her need to dance in order to think instead of simply labelling them both with a learning disability. Through movement, they could understand what they were learning about and feeling. Through dance, they were both able to connect with the lessons they were being taught. “The ability to symbolize through dance, as in language, extends the child’s knowledge of the world and its ways. Whatever else dance may be, its strong interface between motor and cognitive activities makes it a unique way of receiving and expressing knowledge.” “Dance could be a natural part of any literacy program for long before words are used, aren’t children already competent at communicating meanings through movement” (Cecil, 109, 108)? 

            Another way to communicate through movement is through playing music. Moving notes around, composing melody, creating harmony is another way to move in order to feel. Deborah Meier “suspects that if we were wiser and more competent, we could see the most abstract of arts as the essential ingredient that makes us human-out search for ways to communicate what is deeply felt and what inspires out imaginative free play. After all, when we hear good music it creates feelings that wasn’t there a moment before” (Kohl, 114-115). Music can connect you to something that understands where you are and what you are going through. Music is one of those things that can build a community because together, you make the entire sound complete. “These students’ experience of immediate connection with a world of others with whom they work to create the best performance of music that they can resonates throughout the natural community-building connections that arts learning affords” (Davis, 81).

 

             Through the arts, not just dance and music but theatre, film and performance art too, understanding takes place and connections are made both within the students own selves and out into their community and world. “The intense engagement in the co-construction of an artistic production awakens students to a sense of responsibility that can extend beyond the word to the world of human issues represented in and through art”. To take co-construction a step further is to point out that the teacher must discover and understand alongside the student. They must not come to the table with all of the answers, they must instead be receptive to the ideas the students come up with as well. “A creative relationship in which you can formulate ideas together and take guidance from the teacher in the direction you have personally chosen helps the students view their teacher as a co-constructor of idea’s rather than the holder and conveyor of knowledge. This fosters sense of self-respect and the ability to find multiple meanings that students will need to find their way in the complex (gray, not black and white) adult world” (Davis, 101, 100)!

 

Works Cited:

Cecil, Nancy Lee., and Phyllis Lauritzen. Literacy and the Arts for the Integrated Classroom: Alternative Ways of Knowing. New York: Longman, 1994. Print.

Davis, Jessica Hoffmann. Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. New York: Teachers College, 2012. Print.

Kliewer, Christopher. "Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome." Schooling Children with Down Syndrome: Toward an Understanding of Possibility. New York: Teachers College, 1998. 71-96. Print.

Kohl, Herbert R., and Tom Oppenheim. The Muses Go to School: Inspiring Stories about the Importance of Arts in Education. New York: New, 2012. Print.

Picture Links:

http://www.rewritebeautiful.org/sites/rewritebeautiful.org/files/2010/08/holding-hands-peace planet-earth-painted.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/2950028745/48362c073fc3673a429e94c88706234a.png

http://www.gogamestorm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/understanding-chain.jpg

It's A Living Room Photo Blitz

PhotoBlitz Assignment

Date: 11/14/2013 ~ Start Time: 6:57 pm ~ Captured Dad’s hand in the shot to mark the start!

 

Whenever I meet a person, their hands are the first thing I check out-I just love them because they are used to hold and to create. Leave it to my Dad to find the world clock on his phone just in case we need the time in Vancouver! My Dad suggested taking a multi-use photo by getting his hand and the start time in one shot. We had just come back from a dinner date. We took this shot, hugged goodbye and he left as I set my alarm for 19 minutes. My Dad has worked in Quality Control since before I was born so he who lives on the use of his hands with small parts looking for small details. He is also a drummer so hands are his bread and butter. I fondly remember as a little girl going to Father-Daughter dances with him when he would give me his index finger and I would twirl around as I held onto to it. His hands are strong, worn, hard-working and loving to me. I hadn’t seen him in two months. It was a special serendipitous moment that he was around to help me out here.

Choice Picture # 1 ~ CD Rack for converging lines

Music is my life and still this is a hard picture to share because I know people make assumptions about others based on their taste in music, it’s just another way we try to box people into survey marker boxes they are asked to check. Still, all of the music I have found, whether I still give it a spin today or not, has shaped who I am today and so I guess it makes sense to paint a picture from a list of artist and band names in order to get an idea for how someone is. I liked this use of converging lines because they don’t actually overlap one another. I also like the smoothness of the angles and the fact that the CD jewel cases have the same shape and sharpness as the rack that houses them. It’s almost symmetrical, it’s almost informal but not quite, after all you can’t box me in!

 

Choice Picture # 2 ~ Light Bug Mustache Mirror for making an ordinary object look interesting, almost supernatural

This picture makes me so happy. Last year I bought this light bug on clearance as a treat for myself after Christmas. You press a button on the top and it lights up your entire room with stars and a quarter moon in red, green or blue lights. It’s a personal planetarium. So I saw him on my bed and immediately went to the bathroom where I have window cling mustaches up on my mirror from a mustache game night I had months ago. I put him up to one mid-air and took a picture. He’s a flying bug with super cool style. I love how this came out because there’s no reflection from my back mirror and my hand is nowhere in the shot! I love how pensive he looks. I love that he’s reflective as he glances at his reflection. I should probably give him a name since I’m getting so attached!

 

Choice Picture # 3 ~ Vintage NYC Poster & Mercy Street Wall Quote for an idea of “Openness”

 This was a battle between two NYC photos. The other was a postcard of two people kissing on top of a taxi under a bridge, which stands on my bookcase, next to NYC guide books (I never noticed that before). I was going to use it to represent both human emotion (love) and openness because they are not afraid to jump up on a taxi in gala garb and kiss passionately out in the open. However, I continued to be drawn to this photo instead as a representation of openness, I think mostly because of the quote from Peter Gabriel’s Mercy Street above but more on that later. NYC is my favourite place to be and what is so cool about it is that when you are walking around, you are surrounded by shadow because the skyscrapers are so massive and in such multitudes and yet it feels like the most open place in the world. A place where you can be as wild as you want and it’s just accepted as a typical day in the city. A place where people’s dreams come true and where anything can be achieved. A place that was once flat, and part of it (the Battery) was non-existent and open to possibilities. Yet someone dreamed of building and cars, once only ideas in their head, and made them real. This is the most open place I have ever been to, both in body and soul!
 

Choice Picture # 4 ~ Pussywillows in a Vase for an interesting shadow

This one was an accident shot and those are always my favourite. I love pussywillows because they make absolutely no sense to me. They are furry buds that grow from the earth. They feel like bunny paws. How is that possible? So perplexing and yet so very fascinating! I also am a big fan of soft cuddly feeling fabrics and textures so naturally, I scooped these up at Trader Joes when I saw them. The best part is that I can’t kill them if I forget to water them for months! Again-I don’t get it! Anyway, these sit at the door, where the light isn’t that great but it worked to my favour. Look at stalk that’s to the right of the middle and focus on the bud that’s lower, on the right. Doesn’t it look radioactive and moving, spiky and alive? The shadow here is so ominous, so dark and mysterious. I can’t get over how un-menacing the scene is though because the buds look so similar to deer hoofs, which I guess is not frightening to me. It must be its cuddly, furry exterior that’s throwing me off!

Choice Picture # 5 ~ Teal Throw Pillow for dominated by a single colour

I think this could have worked easily for abstract as well. I just realized that it says dominant, not completely. If only I paid attention to the details of words. So here is my completely same colour photo. I’ve already made mention to my addiction to lovely, cuddly divine feeling fabrics and textures and my couch is the place where my friends take advantage of my ultimate comfort apartment theme. I can’t even describe the feeling of this pillow but I’ll try. It’s like fresh mowed grass that feels as soft as a baby’s bottom. Yes, I think I’ve done it justice. Simply put, it feels fabulous. I love how this pillow has all different kind of angles and directions, like nose hair and yet it’s still one colour. No different shades, just plan teal. This pillow is calling to me right now as I type this…it’s getting late: 10:30. Come rest your head, you’ve had a long day!

End Time ~ 7:16, 7:17 or 7:18 Um….Can you trust different devices?

So I’ll refer you to the beginning where I talk about saying goodbye to my Dad to warrant the extra minute I apparently took. I think it’s a trick though because according to my watch I was ahead of time. I’d trust the Mockingjay over a digital device anytime! I know, I know. Hey, I just realized that I started with a hand and ended with a hand-one that created the other. Wow, the life cycle is so astounding!

A Reflection on PhotoBlitzing

Is that a word; photoblitzing? Ah, who knows, it is now. I am really tired so I apologize for the loopy commentary but I had fun and I’m sure you’ll all have fun reading them, especially if you are a bit tired too. I already gave explanations to why I chose the photos I did and what I saw in them but I wanted to touch upon the questions they impose too.

I explained this project to my Dad and he took a list of the ten choices. I told him I figured my apartment was the best place because everything I love is here, it’s a clear reflection of the chaos that make up my many interests. I’ve tried to make it the most comfortable place on earth so that my loved ones can come hang out and fully relax their bones. It’s also been compared to a museum because there are a lot of quotes, pictures, books and other things to observe and read. Dad agreed I would be able to easily find everything on this list “you have plenty here that represents human emotion, that’s for sure” he lovingly snickered. He was correct.

I thought I would go in order, taking one shot of each choice but it didn’t happen like that. I took three different shots for a few, single shots of others and multiple shots of the same thing over and over again to get it just right. I was definitely trigger happy. Flash, no flash in my dim apartment was hard to gauge. I took at least ten shots of a fiber-optic peacock in my bedroom. Speaking of that, I was shocked at how many different shots I took that I didn’t use. I was surprized at how differently I looked at those things completely differently, like the pussywillows or my teal pillow. I didn’t feel as rushed as I thought I would feel. I took many more pictures than I thought I would be able to. Twenty minutes turned out to be a very long time through the lens of the camera as a digital tool, which I cannot say for this laptop.

The photos that worked the best where the ones that crept up on me by surprize. My apartment is my sanctuary so I know what is around here and I had ideas in mind for some of these choices before I took the first time shot. Still, I was most pleased and proud of the shots that came in the spur of the moment like the vintage NYC poster and a shot I took of a clapboard and film strip hung at an angle in my bathroom (I don’t think I understood that one; “something at an unusual angle”). I obviously enjoyed this project, just like I thought I would. I may have enjoyed the commentary bit most of all! All in all, it was an experiment in honing our observation skills. It did just that! It's now 11:00, nighty-night!

Memo # 3B: Compassion & Empathy

Performing Arts In The Classroom

 

            Today I watched a TED Talk by Asa Beckham about coming out of the closet. She talks about coming out of the closet as not strictly something that gay people do but that we all need to do as human beings whether we are straight, gay or otherwise. She equates coming out of the closet with having hard conversations. By having these conversations, we let go of the stress we keep bottled up. This is important because our body can hold so much of that kind of stressed pressure. We all experience hard situations, no matter what level they are in comparison to others because it’s all we know, our experiences are all different. Someone’s house burning down may cause them as much pain and stress as someone else who has just lost their dog and it is our job to empathize with them, to try to understand, which we can do by relating. When our friend’s house burns down we can feel what they are going through not because we have experienced our house burning down but because we have lost our beloved dog and that level of loss is relatable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSR4xuU07sc

 

            With the performing arts, we do just that. We are able to feel empathy for characters and situations that extend out into the world. Students are taught techniques that get to that place where they can understand what the other person is going through and that makes the experience so much more authentic. A theatre teacher has said that “studying and participating in drama gives high school students opportunities to recognize emotions and practice different ways of interacting with each other, which are important parts of building empathy. For teenagers who are trying to fit in and negotiate relationships with one another, the ability to recognize emotions in oneself and others is vital for working in society” (Davis, 34).

 

            A fifteen year old student named Ryan felt useless to his friend, who had just lost his father when his friend pushed him away saying that he didn’t understand. During theatre class one day, Ryan really threw himself into the role of someone who had just lost a parent. He felt enabled and helpless. The pain brought him to depths of despair in a way that allowed him to “feel from the inside out.” It was during this exercise that Ryan was truly able to have an idea of what his friend was going through. Another student named Tina says that she liked theatre because it gives her “the time and opportunity to problem-solve in the fascinating arena of human feelings-to investigate a role and consider the sorts of situations that evoke one emotion or another. It’s hard work but I feel it is important to my development as a human being (Davis, 38).

“Students are deeply interested and attached to the process of giving form to their own emotions. They also welcome the chance to recognize and learn about the emotions of others. Adolescence is known as a period of intense feeling, deep sensitivity, stress, passion, egotism, self-sacrifice and devotion. On this account, students value the arts classroom as a safe haven for encounters with learning that is immediately relevant to their own personal development and growth” (Davis, 99). “When curriculum seriously included opportunities to find mutual respect in their various self-presentations and understandings, the dominance of black/white, right/wrong or in/out can be overturned with an expectation for gray; the discovery that a good question is more important than any answer and the realization that we are all together in figuring it out” (Davis, 58). Maxine Green sees the “arts as a counter to indifference and disappointment. The arts create a dialogue that opens the questions for you and in the interchange with someone else. And the recognition that there are multiple perspectives, many ways of looking at the world is an accomplishment to honest dialogue” (Kohl, 181).

            Frances Lucerna, who founded the Arts and Cultural Council for Youth and co-founded the El Punte Academy for Peace and Justice in Brooklyn encourages her students compassion by using the arts a way to make social change. “For us, everything starts with the creative process. It’s the way we bring people together to engage in dialogue. We talk about this process of ‘see, judge, act’ where we look at the world around us and look at the situation in our community or a certain issue that’s impacting us and then we have this dialogue around it and research it and then we create these action plans to make changes. As we open possibilities of thinking about these issues dynamically, we develop ways to express them and teach about them through the arts, whether it be through a mural, a drama, a one-act play, a piece of choreographed dance. We try to develop works that will translate the impact of this issue on our lives and suggest creative strategies for coming together to make change. (Kohl, 53-54)

Lecerna’s students really have taken action. They became toxic avengers as they did scientific research on a nuclear storage dump in their community and then took that information in order to create a form of guerrilla theatre that they performed in order to get the word out to the community so that more people could be informed and encouraged to take a stand. And then again when they led a 1,700 person peaceful march in protest of a fifty-five story high incinerator they wanted to put in their community. Through artistic ways, the students were able to fight for social justices in order to protect their own backyard. These were kids who were struggling with school and so dropped out and came to the El Pentue academy where they experienced a sense of meaning as part of their community and eventually graduated.

The students discovered who they were and what they stood for. They found their purpose and place in the world they were helping to heal. They found their own personal power. “Once you get people hooked into their passion and connect that to a purpose, you get transformation that allows students to experience their own power. We believe in the idea of students’ limitless capacity for developing and becoming special, caring people. That is inherent in the creative process and in the arts. It’s a way of thinking and being in the world that allows us to connect that to ‘if we can change this, we can definitely change this circumstance. We are not victims, we are powerful people who have limitless possibility and potential; we just need to harness it and do it together and we can make a change’” (Kohl, 54)

 

Works Cited:

Davis, Jessica Hoffmann. Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. New York: Teachers College, 2012. Print.

Kohl, Herbert R., and Tom Oppenheim. The Muses Go to School: Inspiring Stories about the Importance of Arts in Education. New York: New, 2012. Print.

Picture Links:

http://3wordsfor365.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/compassion.jpg

http://parentspeak.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/emotions1.jpg?w=490&h=204

http://startempathy.org/sites/default/files/images/Ashoka%20sympathy%20to%20empathy.jpg

 

 

Memo # 3A: Connecting To Class Texts

Performing Arts In The Classroom

            I am able to connect both Troy Hicks Crafting Digital Writing and Kelly Gallagher’s Write Like This to the performing arts in the classroom. First I will explore the latter. Gallagher talks about real world writing purposes as a way to help students see why their writing matters and how it connects to the world. He breaks the purposes down into six categories; Express and Reflect, Inform and Explain, Evaluate and Judge, Inquire and Explore, Analyze and Interpret and Take a Stand/Propose a Solution (Gallagher, 10). These all relate to the performing arts purposes as well. The student writes the piece and then they can perform it but the process is the same in both aspects.

First the student needs to get out on paper what they are experiencing and how they feel about it (express and reflect). Then they need to think about what message they are trying to convey through their writing-what are they trying to show (inform and explain). By discovering how they feel about the subject, they are able to take a stance on one side of the issue or maybe they feel on the fence. Either way, they are uncovering how they feel about the subject matter (evaluate and judge). They must take part in research and development in order to back up the points they are attempting to make. Looking back at histories and testimonies that serve as the backbone of their argument (inquire and explore). Through their writing, the student can piece together what it all means as they join their opinions with the information they have found. Finding meaning leads to understanding (analyze and interpret). Once the student has done all of this work, they then have a strong footing for what they believe about the subject (take a stand/propose a solution).

In the performing arts, students go through the same steps in order to create a clear message to their audience. In writing the piece themselves, they are able to relate personally to what they are saying but even if the words weren’t theirs, this process would still get the students to the place where it would become their own words because through these stages, they would get into the mind of the character and the message they are giving. Navigating their way through these hard questions strengthens their commitment to decoding the meaning and finding respect in both perspectives. Maxine Greene, arts education and social change advocate, said that “there’s a transformation element in education and I think having the arts in education enhances that transformative element; through the arts your experience is enlarged and enhanced-you see more, feel more, understand more” (Kohl, 180) Through writing and performing their writing, students feel like their voices matter because their audience who watches them confirms that.

Gallagher’s “so what?” also plays well along sing the performing arts because it shows students why what they are writing, what they are saying and what they are performing matters. It shows them why they should care. Moises Kaufman, playwright of The Laramie Project, believes that it is writers and artist who must lead the enlightened dialogue as “art is a higher domain than politics because it addresses so many parts of the individual-the intellect, the emotion, and the spirit, which is why the arts create a very powerful discourse. We have this premise that we live in a democratic society where all people are equal and yet daily we are confronted by the fact that we are not. We live in a very stratified society, and we still have a great deal of poverty and we all don’t have the same opportunities and civil rights violations happen continuously. So at this particular moment in time we are failing miserably. But I think art is a good medium to articulate our failure and to do so in a way that reconnects us with our humanity” (Kohl, 142).

Gallagher is also a big advocate for mentoring writing in a way that shows the students that it’s not a magic process for them either. Troy Hicks gives a nod to this technique too. By showing how the teacher struggles in finding the right words, the student sees that it’s okay to fumble your way through in the beginning as they make mistakes. As Maxine Greene points out “the teacher can’t come into the room with the problem of Hamlet already solved. She has to come in with the same open questions, with the same wonder that students will feel” (Kohl, 180). “Where else do students learn that failure is not only constructive, but is sometimes the only way to move forward. An artistic enterprise’s outcome is always uncertain and that uncertainty has the power to let adolescents find virtue in things they thought they disliked about others and perhaps disliked about themselves. The strength of the ensemble built by an artistic endeavour carries over in positive ways to other aspects of the student artist’s life (Davis, 68-69).

 

            Right from the start, in his introduction, Troy Hicks says that crafting writing is an act of creativity. The performing arts are where students can turn that act of creativity into something that can see seen. By using digital formats like slideshows, videos and blogs, students can make their writing come alive. “When we talk and teach thoughtfully about the elements of digital writing-words, images, sounds, videos, links and other media elements-we are helping them be purposeful and, in turn, helping them to be creative” (Hicks, 19). They can film a scene, dance routine or music performance and put it out into the world. This moves away from the constraints of templates and lists that so limit the way in which students can show off their writing skills and instead allows them to explore ways of getting their message across using elements that free their mind. This open form communication enables the student to “get a feel for the setting, voice, tension, inner story or recurring detail that helps develop their writing with new lens” (Hicks, 12).

            Hicks talks about Renee Hobbs five step process in engaging students with digital learning. They are access, analyze, create, reflect and act. This is very similar to Gallagher’s six purposes. All five are essential in forming great writing and to performing a piece, any piece of art. First the student must understand the piece, find their motivation, brainstorm, think and then perform. I wrote that order of tasks from the perspective of a performance artist but I could have easily done it from a writer’s perspective as well. In a way to meet Hobbs process, Hicks has created MAPS which breaks down to Mode, Media, Audience, Purpose and Situation (Hicks, 21). All of these stages guide the writer to a place where they clearly know what their intention is and it also lends a hand to the performer in the same way. It’s apparent that the same processes and questions that a writer asks themselves are the same ones a performer must use and ask too.

            One way a writer and/or performer can really put this process to the test is by adopting a social cause and representing a side that advocates for a change.  Common core standards say that “students can adopt a variety of different perspectives to analyze how spaces and systems shaping events are constructed through historical and institutional/civic, cultural, psychological and economic forces” (Hicks, 24). As “these students’ experience immediate connection with a world of others with whom they work to create the best performance that they can resonates throughout the natural community-building connections that arts learning affords” (Davis, 81).

The Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the National Writing Project (NWP) all created a framework which outline the eight “habits of mind” all students need in order to be prepared for college. They are curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility and metacognition (Hicks, 26). Amongst a list of previous standards that high school students have to meet, Common Core also says 11^th and 12^th grade students must set out problems and establish it’s significance, sequence events so that they build on one another, create a particular tone, convey vivid pictures and provide a conclusion that reflects on what is resolved (Calkins, 119). Where else, aside from writing and the performing arts can a student use all of these techniques while understanding and enjoying the learning process? Nowhere, which is why the arts are so essential for students development. The arts are where the student’s words can come alive and move around grabbing the attention of anyone who is around!

Works Cited:

Calkins, Lucy, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman. Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2012. Print.

Davis, Jessica Hoffmann. Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. New York: Teachers College, 2012. Print.

Gallagher, Kelly. Write like This: Teaching Real-world Writing through Modeling & Mentor Texts. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse, 2011. Print.

Hicks, Troy. Crafting Digital Writing: Composing Texts across Media and Genres. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2013. Print.

Kohl, Herbert R., and Tom Oppenheim. The Muses Go to School: Inspiring Stories about the Importance of Arts in Education. New York: New, 2012. Print.

Picture Links:

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http://life-is-now.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/self-expression2.jpg

Memo # 2: Self-Expression & Confidence

Performing Arts In The Classroom

            I am struggling to find a balance with the number of texts on my subject matter I have uncovered. What really interests me are the books I found at the library that talk about this very subject that are dated between 1947 and 1974. Even then they were advocating for what the arts were fundamental in developing perception through working with the arts and encourage students to move away from what the watch on the TV and actually perform similar things themselves. But in order to really to guide myself on a steady and thesis based path, I have to limit myself to the number of books so I can truly dig in. Hopefully I can go back to them and splice them into my research. I will be focusing on what I discover in Why Our High Schools Need The Arts by Jessica Hoffman Davis, Strong Arts, Strong Schools: The Promising Potential and Shortsighted Disregard of the Arts in American Schooling by Charles Fowler and Herbert Kohn’s The Muses Go To School: Inspiring Stories About The Importance Of Arts In Education. I will look up organizations in Rhode Island and in the country that implement the arts and showcase the results. I will also sprinkle in some of Sir Ken Robinson and Eric Booth’s expertise as well as share visual aids.

 

            My thesis is how the performing arts can help students with their self-expression/confidence, compassion/empathy and connection/understanding. Through these boosters, the students will be able to engage writing assignments more fluidly and passionately. The arts not only create strong and capable human beings but also emotional and perceptive writers. “The arts provide multiple ways to experience understand and express the world and our relationship to it. They are one of the fundamental repositories of human wisdom. They educate and the imagination and develop originality. They represent significant ways for students to discern, express, communicate, figure out and understand the human universe” (Fowler, 4). In this memo I would like to explore how arts programs have helped increase students’ academics while focusing on self-expression and confidence.

Through a suggestion, I have found an arts charter school in Providence called Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts (TAPA). As you go to the homepage you are greeting with a ten-minute video of teachers and students who tell you what the school has to offer. I couldn’t help the tears of joy or chills on the skin when I witnessed what these students create and how they feel about learning. This is a charter 7-12 school in Providence. What excited me the most about it is that it is free and anyone is allowed to apply if they are a Providence resident. Admission is through a lottery so it is not based on talent, only passion and interest. The school has to hot all the academic standards of other schools through Math, Science, History, Humanities, Languages and Reading & Writing (English). However the arts are also considered an essential part of the curriculum. Their goal is to “create classrooms where the arts are, at very least, a catalyst for the other academic subjects, if not fundamentally interconnected or indispensable.” They use connections within all academic and arts subjects in order to cross learn the lessons. They show how everything is influential and connected. I can’t think of anything better than that.

In 7^th and 8^th grade the students explore all four of the performing arts; Film, Theatre, Dance, Music learning the basics of all of them as they feel their way around in them. Then once they reach 9^th grade, they choose one to focus on and hone the skills in that disciple. One girl in the video spoke about how she wants to be a part time dance teacher, part time journalist when she grows up. She writes lots of poetry and creative writing would like to incorporate that into her journalism. She shows here how she has learned to connect creative ways of writing into journalism. Another student speaks of how he wants to be a film star and a scientist and how cool it would be if he could do both. This school makes me believe he can. The teachers say that state testing has skyrocketed in Math and Reading because the students are actually interested in what they are doing. He believes that they have given them a reason to learn through the arts implementation. In the lessons, students are hands on. They are doing, not memorizing. They are relating the content to real world learning in order to see why these subjects matter. This pyramid below shows how they base all of their classes. They attempt to use the top tier most of the time but state that they only use the bottom tier 10-20% of the time. Again, showing how everything the students learn is connected.

 

In Strong Arts Strong Schools, Fowler shows how a SPECTRA (Schools, Parents, Educators, Children, Teachers Rediscover the Arts) program in Ohio helps to improve the students learning, just as TAPS does. SPECTRA have made sure that the curriculum has dedicated an hour each day to the arts. Just like TAPS, reading and math scores have gone up but so has attendance and good behaviour. In Why Our High Schools Need the Arts, Davis shows us how the Craftsman’s Guild, a professional training mentor after school program in Pittsburgh helps students feel inspired and encouraged so well that 96% of the students that attend the program graduates high school and 85% goes on to college while students who only attend their regular high school classes have a 64% graduation rate, making for an even lowered college route percentage. “The arts awakens possibilities in student thinking that liberate heart and mind and most importantly assert one’s personal potential, agency or power” (Davis, 22).

Rosie Perez, an actress and chair of Urban Arts in New York City which reaches 12,000 students in over sixty schools through arts programing, was an angry child who fought and never showed emotion. This is why she loved ceramics where she could pound out her anger in the clay. She wanted to play the clarinet but couldn’t afford one so the teacher encouraged her to play air clarinet until the snickers from classmates bothered her enough to give it up entirely. She almost missed a school trip to a Broadway show because she was too poor to buy a nice outfit. It was an experience which brought her to tears and changed her life. This strong, stubborn girl who never let her guard down didn’t care that she was crying in public because she was so moved by what she saw that day. After that day she wanted more out of school so she started to really enjoy her English and Social Studies classes where she could read and hear stories out loud like the one she saw that day on Broadway that so mesmerized her. She says the arts “allow you to become a critical thinker and use the right side of your brain. When that happens, you’re more inclined to be a reader because you want to absorb the drama. Your imagination is stimulated and it works so much better” (Kohl, 7). She started to become more comfortable in her skin by accepting her corniness through these experiences.

 

A music teacher in Why Our High Schools Need the Arts says “Self-Esteem, a critical part of teenage development, can be addressed through the study of music. Measurable and concrete goals are achieved through hard work, audience reaction/approval, and personal/individual achievements versus competing in the classroom” (Davis, 23). Another teacher recalls a student he had who was a foster child of a violent home. He said he always wanted to perform but that peers would taunt him about it. Encouraged by this teacher to pursue it, the student blossomed. In making his fellow students laugh, he build up confidence to make friends which built up an emotional strength to push on in school. 

“The arts offer students the opportunity to create something new and in that act of making not only to think beyond the boundaries and the lines but also to acknowledge one’s power to do so” (Davis, 21). Students feel empowered through the arts as they create and express who they are and what they believe. “Adolescents and their powerful emotions and self-discoveries are in sync with the anti-standardization of the arts” (Davis, 45). If they aren’t allowed to communicate in a way they feel safe with, which often they feel can be hidden in an art through words and/or movement and then they will feel silenced which will diminish their confidence. The arts help many students give life to their voice. This is why the arts are a key component to students’ self-expression and confidence!

 

Works Cited:

Davis, Jessica Hoffmann. Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. New York: Teachers College, 2012. Print.

Fowler, Charles. Strong Arts, Strong Schools: The Promising Potential and Shortsighted Disregard of the Arts in American Schooling. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.

Kohl, Herbert R., and Tom Oppenheim. The Muses Go to School: Inspiring Stories about the Importance of Arts in Education. New York: New, 2012. Print.

 

Picture Links:

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http://www.trinityacademyfortheperformingarts.org/images/pyramid.jpg

http://www.5minutesformom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/thrive-art-build-confidence.jpg

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