This blog focuses on ways that art, technology, and literacy can interact in all educational settings.
Monday, May 15, 2023
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Exhibitions and Celebrations of Learning
The teacher organized the tables in a circle (in a tight space, I might add). Each student organized the products they wanted to display across their desk. Some chose EVERYTHING and had very little space, others chose their favorite exemplars, and finally, one innovative student had many learning artifacts but chose to include an arrow pointing to her favorite artifact saying: "You have to read THIS!"
All students had a stack of feedback notes and went around the room examining other students learning artifacts and leaving positive feedback based on sentence frames projected on the board.
A debrief after such an event can help students process a portfolio approach and consider what is the most effective approach, not just as the creator but also as the consumer.The exhibition of learning gives the students sense of accomplishment and motivation. It can be a great source of metacognition as well. The same can be said for the teacher, a look at the variety and creativity gives the teacher a sense of accomplishment but also a tool to reflect on what could be better next time and what missed opportunities can be seized on in the next inquiry cycle or in subsequent years.
As an observer in the classroom, the excitement and pride of the students were palpable. Students were smiling, engaged, and proud. I highly recommend creating these moments for students and bringing in administrators and, when possible, parents and guardians to celebrate reaching complex learning goals.
Friday, December 9, 2022
Art TEAMS Successes and Lessons in Year 1
Many teachers have shared that the program is helping them reconnect to teaching, combat burnout, and feel rejuvenated. In their feedback and reflections, they attribute this to:
Sunday, September 11, 2022
Schools as a Malleable Material
The Art TEAMS project has an exceptional advisory council. This group of professionals includes Diana Cornejo-Sanchez, Megan Elliott, and Jorge Lucero. This group of thinkers and doers stretches our thinking and brings joy and engagement into our work. A key moment for me was when Jorge Lucero challenged us to think about school as a malleable material.
Jorge Lucero (Photo from Engage Art) |
This is exactly the role we see for Art TEAMS. While we explore using art and creativity to transform learning in classrooms, we are also seeking to start teasing out how to find malleability and push its boundaries to create better classrooms that will be culturally responsive, opening new futures and experiences for all students and their teachers.
In our work with teachers this summer, we came up with some ideas about how schools can be malleable. So I am sharing this list with you as a way to start a discussion.
1. Designing the building. While not a daily occurrence, schools do renovate and sometimes build new schools. This is a golden opportunity to rethink the design of the school and create new affordances for learning. The Pegasus Bay story is such an example.
2. Schedules: Time is a great material that allows new things to happen. Changing schedules by creating longer learning periods or conversely dedicating a few weeks to exploration are great ways to create opportunities for change and deep and self-guided learning. Even adding a few minutes of movement every day could be transformative.3. Changing mindset- a focus on a growth perspective for teachers and learners can transform the way we think about the way we teach, assess, and provide feedback.
4. People: the way we team, support each other, and leverage student strengths can help create a more vibrant and healthy.
I am including our original whiteboard ideation board and promise to keep exploring and writing about these ideas.
Sunday, August 28, 2022
Teaching Fast and Slow Lessons from Art TEAMS Weekend
This week the Art TEAMS teams got together again to start our Fall activities. We had a joyous day reconnecting and discussing the work we have started doing with our students based on the summer courses. The meeting has taught me a few lessons that will sit with us as we plan the interactions throughout the semester.
Lesson 1:
The impact of deep learning in the summer has already created impact on classrooms. Many of the teachers have reported implementing the Creative Research Journals and even starting the Inquiry Cycle. While it is hard to attribute the implementation to a specific cause. I believe that it was the mix of highly motivated teachers and the powerful learning we had in the summer.
Lesson 2:
Movement is still magic. We started the day with movement, and the teachers are hungry for more movement that is applicable for the classroom. We can make a real difference if we help teachers figure out this part of their work.
Lesson 3:
We always try to teach too much. We have provided our teachers with many tools. Now is the time to create more "air" in the curriculum and make sure teachers have enough time to share their work, plan next steps, and think deeply.
Finally a personal lesson from my reflection about the EMA project led by the Fabulous Gretchen Larsen.
When ideating, go slow and make sure that you spend enough time thinking about the centrality of your idea and my real commitment to it. I have moved too fast to really evaluate my commitment to the purpose of the design. Now I am slowing down and evaluating my project in early iteration. More soon!
Monday, August 22, 2022
On Listening
I am about to start my Fall semester. As I plan my interactions with my students, I am challenging myself to examine the practices we used in Art TEAMS this summer and see which of those would fit into my class. The first that sprang into my mind as I was planning the details of the work tomorrow was the use of active listening. In the picture to the right are two of our teaching artists from the summer, Caileen, and Fernando. While they both brought expertise, they also spent a significant amount of time listening. At the end of the second week, Fernando shared a powerful spoken word poem that showed how much he listened. His poem described his understanding of the teacher experience. His poem showed how powerful listening can be in understanding your fellow humans. Hence, in my class this semester I aim to enhance democratic practices with the practice of careful listening. Starting tomorrow, we will take time to make sure that we all learn to provide some space for each other to express ourselves without interruption.
Individual listening is an addition to the practice of opening circle in which everyone listens ad everyone speaks (in turn).
If many quote "Be the change you want to see in the worlds" - yes I know there are multiple versions of this sentence and an argument about who originated it. For teacher educators, however, it is also "Model the change you want to see in the world".
It is a new semester, another opportunity to practice and model what we preach.
Sunday, June 19, 2022
I am still learning
Our two weeks of intensive summer work have ended. It is early to talk about results but I can reflect on what I have learned. In the past two weeks, I have been fully immersed with our participants, occasionally I led discussions and activities the rest of the time I split between being a catalyst for discussions sparking directions and ideas, and participating. I was a learner, artist, and curriculum designer. I reflected on my teaching and made plans to do better.
I will try to name a few specific lessons:
1. Movement in magic- Sir Ken Robinson said in his famous Ted Talk Do Schools kill creativity? that education thinks only from the shoulders up. I agreed with his argument but as a university head-first person assumed that it was only marginally true for me. I agreed with his example that some people are dancers and should have the opportunity to move and express themselves. What I missed was that we are all dancers moving through the world (some like me more goofily), and that we can all benefit from movement (thank you Maggie).
3. Playfulness is learning- During the two weeks, I created art in what can only be described as playful ways. I used different materials approaches and media to mixed results. I failed spectacularly and shared my failures with as many people as possible. Yes, I aimed to model learning behavior but mostly through "forgetting" and letting myself just be in the creative moment. As a result, I learned a lot (still processing) and got a lot braver about sharing my work and sharing myself.
4. Emerging Media arts emerged- I have been worried that we did not infuse enough emerging media arts into the work. We decided to wait on digital tools and just occasionally included tools to bring forward the work into the realm of emerging media arts. Despite this "low infusion" approach the final projects and reflections included many products that included emerging media arts. Moreover, now the teachers are ready for a bigger taste of emerging media and eager to integrate.
In the coming months, I will add some more but this is where I am now, exhausted, satisfied, and eager to continue!
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Finding my way around Fargo North Dakota and other Metacognitive tasks
This weekend I went to Fargo, North Dakota for an athletic event. Navigating a new city is always a challenge, and I started by activating Google Maps to get everywhere in town. I quickly found out that relying on google maps without any idea about the general direction was a disorienting and challenging experience.
I ended up looking at the routes for destinations in town before I started every drive. In this way, planning made me more certain of where I was going and less dependent on the device as the sole (and not always most efficient) guide. In the work we are planning to do in the next five years, our Art TEAMS project, we have been discussing sketchbooks as a metacognitive scaffold. It is a way to represent inquiry in a layered visual form opening up eyes to connections and insights. This weekend's experience opened up a different avenue of metacognition that I have not considered in the context of our current study. That is the use of planning and directionality to illuminate the initial experience and ensure that we have enough of a scaffold to begin, so we (and our teachers) do not feel disoriented.I find that planning is often missing in students' work. They write an essay, code a program, or create n art product with very little planning. The lack of planning often adds to resistance to editing and revision, which are the keys to moving from a fail to a win. It is hard to get our students to plan, but it is perhaps the most important metacognitive skill that we can teach. Make a plan, execute, iterate, and then reflect. But it all starts with a plan.
The workweek then had a significant planning session led by Kimberley D'Adamo. it was a gratifying experience to start charting the path we want to walk, making sure we feel like we know where we are going and having a reasonable plan to get there.