This week we finally started our Art TEAMS grant with teachers. The project is developing self-driven creative learners who connect disciplines using arts and emerging media as a language to engage and organize knowledge and life experiences.
We will accomplish this by developing, implementing, and evaluating a professional development program for K-12 art educators, generalist teachers, principals, teaching artists, and museum educators.
This week was our first with this great crew of educators. In this professional learning opportunity, we have been careful to design a program that respects the strengths of all the participants and positions everyone as a participant and co-leader. I have to admit that I have not created this much physical representation of learning since my Graduate school days at UCR, nor have I created this much art since my elementary school days. I have found the interactions and the learning powerful, and I believe we are on our way to creating a powerful model that will provide an avenue for innovation.
Reflecting on this week, my lessons are:
1. We all require protected time to make leaps in our practice and transform our approach. I do know that summer workshops transformation is hard to bring back into the classroom, and thus we will continue to support and work with our team of educators for the next two years.
2. Art is fun even for those with a limited artistic ability (me). You just have to let go and be playful.
3. Exploring the affordances of materials and discovering their malleability is a truly engaging endeavor.
4. Movement. Movement is magical; in many ways, it is a discovery for me, a discovery that makes me dance with joy. Finally, I want to reflect on a moment of pride. In this grant, we insisted on supporting local Nebraska artists. We have found four unique and outstanding artists. I will talk about each of them in a different post but for now suffice to say that I have had a glorious week, and I cannot wait for next week to continue the work.
