Opera Piccola & SWEET Theater Founder

Final Post - I think

2011-06-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

The end of E.B. White's "Stuart Little" has a thought that's stuck with me for a long time. Every goodbye is a hello. A year ago at about this time in June, I learned that the company I founded could not afford my position as Artistic Director due to the economic crisis.

Since then, I've explored the worlds of unemployment insurance, career centers, resume revising, job sites, online jobs, certificate programs, substitute teaching credentials, etc. True to the news accounts, people my age who are laid off are finding it hard to start over in the job market. Growing up a baby boomer in a family without a TV until I was 13 years old, I like real - not electronic - books, and I check facebook only once a week. The innards of the computer are as mysterious to me as quantum physics.

Nevertheless, I'm grateful for a year to try new things. At my age (if I hear one more person say,"at your age, Susannah", I have a chance to.... and... mmpf.. what was it.. I had an idea but .. Sorry. whatever it was, slipped my mind. Stop. I know what you're thinking.

Never mind. To sum up the unemployed year: I worked on 3 or 4 book projects (who isn't a writer?), received certification as a Jazzercise instructor, taught a chorus/voice class at Oakland Technical High, and collaborated on creating a memoir play with Gina Gold of theginagoldshow.com. Thinking about selling my fruit pies on the street corner.

To get back to the beginning - or ending -- I'll be using a different blog address in order to write about arts, education, baby boomers, politics, religion, trends, and ... ?

My new blog address: http://susannahwood.wordpress.com Goodbye and hello.

Graduating High School

2011-06-10T15:57:00.000-07:00

The tall round-faced girl beams, breathing fast with excitement while her friends in younger grades admiringly surround her. The slender girl wearing silver high heels sighs. "How do I feel about graduating? Relieved."

Walking the floor, the rite of passage for high school seniors, features inspirational songs and speeches, balloons bouquets, and shrieks of joy from proud relatives. For the approximately 60% of urban public high school seniors who graduate, this is a wonderful day. These students earned the necessary credits to complete 13 years of K-12 schooling.

Remembering the excitement and sadness of my own high school graduation, I did a little informal interviewing in Oakland this week. Most of the seniors I spoke with seemed in a state of euphoric shock. For example, I was unable to interrupt one group of close friends who were lying on top of each other like puppies, laughing and teasing. Others appeared more sober.

"Senior year is extremely stressful. The teachers, home, my part time job. Everyone wanting more from you every minute."

"I don't know how I feel. I'm glad it's over but I'll miss my friends."

"Quite a few of us won't walk the floor; we lost textbooks and can't replace them, or we failed one class we needed, or messed up on our credits."

"I have one piece of advice for freshmen: stay away from all the drama - he said and she said. There's so much going on, and if you fall behind in your work it's hard to catch up."

As I walked around campus, I noticed both happy faces already looking at summer vacation and worried faces looking at final essays and exams. But seniors's faces glowed. They had finished finals, signed out, cleaned out lockers, gone to graduation rehearsals.

It hadn't hit them yet. High school graduation represents achievement; it also represents a goodbye to childhood, a loss of innocence. After the cheering, our young men and women face the overwhelming reality of the adult world.

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T08:24:00.000-07:00

"...All the cherished moments they have made possible for those they left behind... all the things that make us alive.. these are the gifts they gave us.. life... that is what our fallen have given us." The words of a uniformed speaker at the Memorial Day Ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery drift from the TV this morning.

I looked up Memorial Day, just to double check its history. I learned that the day was formally established in 1868 and originated in the practice of decorating the graves of those who died in the Civil War. It eventually became a day to remember those who had died in the "service of the nation."

By strange coincidence, this holiday originated during the Civil War, and people are still dying in a kind of civil war. Today people are dying in a civil war of poverty, of suicide from mental illness, of street violence. I don't know where his grave is, but in my heart I decorate the grave of Orlando, a young actor with mental illness who killed himself out of loneliness and depression. I decorate the grave of a gifted former student who died of kidney disease that wasn't caught in time. I decorate the graves of my students' friends and relatives who died by gun violence on the streets. I decorate the graves of the young people whose only job opportunity was the armed forces.

Here is a poem written years ago by East Oakland 7th grader Klarissa, one of my former students. Her words represent the hundreds of similar poems written by my students over the years, fitting for Memorial Day. Often the title of their poems was R.I.P.

My heart cries when
People die from cancer and other diseases
Every day
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,
Love leaves a memory no one can steal
My heart cries when
I hear that people are getting shot and killed for no reason
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,
Love leaves a memory no one can steal
My heart cries when
I hear that the economy is in danger
People losing their homes and lives because of the economy
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,
Love leaves a memory no one can steal

Substitute Teaching 2

2011-05-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

I wrote a month or so ago about subbing in Oakland public schools. It's difficult; like being a stepmother in a blended family. The students want their "real" teacher, not a "guest." At the same time, they expect the substitute to replicate exactly the style and methods of their regular teacher. An almost impossible task. I continue to search for ways that substitute teaching can offer the same satisfaction as teaching a class regularly.

Last week I subbed for a 4th grade class at Think College Now, a very nice elementary school in the Fruitvale District. It was a large class of bright, active, and talkative children. The extremely efficient regular teacher had left many work sheets and detailed plans for the day. All went well the first half of the 8:30 - 3:15 schedule. Circle discussion, silent reading, recess, conflict resolution, social studies, lunch, library, math, "fun" time. Elementary school teachers teach multiple subjects and also serve as life skills mentors.

Challenges surfaced. As the day progressed, the crowded classroom grew hotter and hotter. I opened the windows, which made no dent in the stuffy air. I turned on the large fan in the corner. However, I had to turn it off after only a few minutes. Overheated students crowded around the fan trying to catch the breeze, jostling each other and unable to do their assignments. Some of the children -- because of the heat or tired of studying - completely lost focus and gathered in groups to socialize.

For those who suffer from the character defect of pride, I highly recommend substitute teaching. A few children talked whenever they felt like it, perhaps thinking that since the Sub was not 'real,'they could act as if the Sub were invisible. About 45 minutes before the final bell, we all fell apart. A generous boy had brought small chocolate brownies to share with the class. After the first round of passing them out, the boy announced, without getting my permission: "Everybody line up if you want a second brownie." I was unable to stop the stampede that left the boy himself without a second brownie and a girl in tears.

Nevertheless, the class accomplished a surprising amount. They read many pages, in books and in their social studies magazine. They wrote 3 acrostic poems, they played several games of Four Square, checked out books at the school library, drew (art), engaged in group discussion, and addressed pressing challenges in getting along with each other. The school is clearly doing a great job; I noticed that almost all the students were really interested in the many books that were available to them - a huge accomplishment.

Appearances can deceive

2011-05-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

"Don't judge a book by its cover" and "the clothes make the man" are old -if opposite- cliches I grew tired of hearing as a child. As an adult, I learned the importance of attraction as promotion when I collaborated on creating theatrical productions. "What should we call this show?" we would ask each other. We'd brainstorm and toss titles in the wastebasket. "Too long; one word is better. That name won't hook an audience to come. Any title could be turned into a joke or an opening for a bad critical review."

Titles are marketing, not description. We all know that the pictures on paperback covers often fail to relate to the contents. Businesses research what will attract the "target" audience. Targeting. That word suggests the shooting range, or a dartboard. Every time I click on a website, a data path is created for a business to target my interests with a related ad. It's a bulls eye of I buy.

Listening to NPR this morning, I heard the words, "sometimes a surprise discovery forms one of the better life experiences you could have." Exactly. I like the surprise of my assumptions proved wrong. For instance, I observed a woman in a class of mine who looked like a professional athlete: strong, slim, well groomed, confident. In conversation, I discovered she was recovering from surgery that removed a brain tumor and felt confused from her hearing loss. Or another woman who on the surface appeared arrogant and distant was actually suffering from years of caring for a deaf child.

Why does any of this matter? As an artist and educator, I applaud life long curiosity, life long learning, life long wonder. When I'm manipulated by marketing an judged by my age or looks or internet use, I feel robbed of individuality. Someone stole my identity and shrink wrapped it.

Books for Children

2011-05-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

See Spot run. See Jane run.

Perhaps Baby Boomers remember struggling with these dry phrases in kindergarten and first grade. Today's short attention spans might applaud these three-word sentences that fulfill the template: subject- verb -object (although the "command" verb format eliminates the understood subject,"You," as in "You see Spot run.")

I'm getting my Certificate in Writing from UC Berkeley Extension, exploring different genres to see what I might pursue in depth. My current course is called "Writing Children's Picture Books." After taking other courses that revealed gaps in my creative imagination, I thought that I might do well with the minimal number of words and pages needed for picture books. Besides, I have excellent qualifications to write for the under 8's. I love teaching pre school through grade three, I read story books every night to my children when they were little, and I have spent many years writing scripts and performing for young audiences. Picture books should be no problem. Just let the imagination roll freely, right? Wrong! Although children's books now have longer sentences, they have a template. No publisher in his or her right mind would print something that strays from what he or she thinks will sell.

"Too much dialogue; eliminate 95% of it. You've got to have your story structure laid out before you start writing. There are only three kinds of children's picture books: concept, information and a story with a message. If the baby here is asking where his breakfast is, the editors will think the mother is starving the child." Hmmm... Anyone who's ever taken an arts class is familiar with the Critique and the challenge of deciding which comments are helpful. "I like that the situation here is real, but it wouldn't appeal to kids." "What are you really trying to say here?" "I'd like to piggy-back on what she just said..."

This class suggests to me that today's adults would freak out at the old stories by the Brother's Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson or Babar, in which parents die with regularity and children face inappropriate horrors, like the original Cinderella. Perhaps because children face more information than in times past about a scary adult world, today's writers must dish up fantasy with bright colors, happy faces and reassuring informational footnotes for parents. After all, in a year or two many of the children hearing these stories will be playing video games and will have seen 'Bambi.' Parents who buy books these days want their toddlers to learn college readiness skills as soon as possible. And disobedient story book children must very clearly learn a lesson by the end, even though our culture constantly tells toddlers' older siblings that "good girls like bad boys."

It's all very confusing. I'm not sure how I feel about story templates and selling. Is this art? Can children handle art? How utilitarian should art be? However, I've also learned in the class that it's okay to mention poop in a children's book. I don't think I will.

Bin Laden's Death and Ethics

2011-05-03T13:03:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the weekend that was: Friday, Saturday, Sunday. From pure innocent joy to the murky ethics of war. On Friday, the whole world rejoiced with the beautiful bride and handsome groom, the pageantry, the Bank Holiday for Britons, the soaring cathedral music, the two kisses. We needed a chance to celebrate, to party on.

Saturday in Oakland we basked in the warmer spring weather, the sunshine, the flowers. I saw more people strolling and window shopping on the streets than I'd seen in many weeks. Ah, the Bay Area Weather! "It's worth facing the high unemployment after all, if just for today."

Sunday was May Day, also the historical code words for "Help! Disaster," shouted on the radio in the old black and white movies by midshipmen from their leaking cubbyholes below decks. May 1st also used to feature Morris dancers with satin ribbons whirling around a Maypole. And I can't forget that May Day used to be a time for the Workers to reflect or even to organize for The Revolution.

Then Sunday night. The President makes a special announcement: Osama Bin Laden has been killed during an "action" in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Huh? I've almost forgotten about this bearded mythical media-ogre, rumored to be hiding in caves in between speeches on TV. Then the television and computer screens go berserk. The wedding parades are suddenly superseded by jubilant processions of victory dancers outside the White House, in Times Square, strangely similar to celbration after the final game of the World Series, or World Cup Soccer.

Wait a minute. We were all celebrating the Royal Wedding, examining the Dress, day dreaming about who Harry will marry. Now we're jumping up and down because someone is dead? We shot the enemy in the head and threw the body into the Arabian Ocean. Full stop. Yay hurray? Flashback: did Arab crowds cheer the exploding Twin Towers? I can't remember. Possibly, even probably. There's something chilling, something familiar, about this joyful vengeance, high five for retaliation-as-victory, the way we'd slap each other after getting a strike at the bowling alley. We explain to ourselves that killing Bin Laden was self defense, right?

But still, in my book, taking a human life is not like winning the World Series. I was brought up to believe that dancing on someone's grave was one of the worst things you could do. Perhaps Bin Laden danced on the graves of unknown numbers of Americans. Does it make it right for us to dance on Bin Laden's? Or do we then become like him?

Beyond Words

2011-04-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time using words, like writing, teaching, reading --every day. But this week I encountered two reminders of the power of non verbal activities. Is there something beyond words that connects all of us to life beyond human?

The first experience was a seminar at AgeSong Institute in Emeryville, led by Natalie Rogers (daughter of Carl Rogers), about her practice of Expressive Arts Therapy. Some things in our lives lie in our unconscious so they can't be put into words in conversation or in talk therapy. We can draw, sculpt, collage or paint images that reveal feelings, thoughts, dreams or ideas we didn't know we had. Rogers told us that engaging first in movement and dance helps us to access these images. I know that I respond emotionally and intellectually to paintings, photographs and film, but I rarely draw or do visual art and I rarely remember my dreams. I also know that we only use 10% of our brains, the rest lying in the unconscious. Ms. Rogers' presentation raised the question: what lies in that large un-used part of my brain that might surprise, delight, terrify and enlighten me?

Earlier in the week I'd heard an interesting conversation on National Public Radio about the brain. A scientist recounted the case of a patient whose brain was almost completely destroyed, with only a small part of the brain stem remaining. The person lay paralyzed in a coma, slowly dying and unresponsive. But someone accidentally played music in his room one day. Miraculously, the dying man moved his eyes and showed the doctors he "heard" the music!

Which leads me to my second non verbal experience, when I attended a Good Friday performance of Bach's St. John Passion at St. Paul's Episcopal Church,Oakland. My whole body trembled afterwards from the emotions of three hours in the presence of Beauty. Especially a cello/viola da gamba line, really an equal duet with the mezzo soprano soloist, in the aria "It is Finished." The cello melody wove and sang, umber, amber, tremulous, pure, soaring, cradling, dark, bright, flame, spirit, heart, consoling, dancing -- the words fail. I wanted to hug the musician, a Yo Yo Ma clone, to thank him for an experience that was somehow like being loved by a new parent, a better parent than any parent could be. My heart is full still.

SOS Stopping the Silence

2011-04-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

Stopping the Silence, SOS, and Oakland group founded by Kehinde Seitu dedicated to fighting sexual abuse. This weekend I perform with the group a monologue and a poem that I wrote. This family -- they're like a family rather than a performance troupe -- inspires me. These women are strong beyond belief, supporting each other in recovering from trauma and loss. The show takes place at 8 pm tonight and tomorrow, Saturday at Wo’se Community Church, 8924 Holly St. Oakland, CA 94621. A free conference will be held Saturday from 9 am to 4 pm at East Oakland Youth Development Center.

Today She
is the kitchen sink
draining stuff
old stuff
out of mind body time past
oozing
slow fast
through pipes winding under sewers' sludge
up, down, out -- stuff - goodbye
Go away pain, leave her
sparkling fresh cleanser TV ad clean
nice, sweet and safe

Today she
is the kitchen sink
you'd like her to do these dishes
piled up over here wouldn't you
but she doesn't feel like it just now
she thinks she'll wait.....
Oh, look, here comes Hope
hopping through the kitchen door
sayshaying a tricky two-step across the floor
Hope is turning the faucet on
ooohh... bet that water feels smooth and warm
Today Hope is helping her
wash the pain
down the drain
Today she
is the kitchen sink

Substitute or Guest?

2011-04-08T17:56:00.000-07:00

I've been working as a substitute teacher in the Oakland Public Schools for the past two weeks--high school. The substitute department told us to call ourselves "guest teachers."
Unfortunately, the students haven't grasped the beauty of having a Guest Teacher.Attitudes vary from "Hey-Let's Cut-Class" to "Hurray - a sub - it's Social-Hour." Classroom teachers leave great lesson plans and explicit instructions for the Guest Teacher in order to keep the curriculum moving in a consistent, forward direction. But students have a different lesson plan in mind.

When does this attitude start? Kindergarteners and first graders sseem to understand that the adult standing in the room is a teacher that should be listened to, even if she/he has a different face than their regular teacher. Perhaps by 4th grade the Myth of the Substitute has drifted into children's minds from whatever School Room Epic Poem it comes from.

Former students who are now in college gave me this advice about substituting in high schools:
1. Don't follow the regular teacher's lesson plan; students will refuse to do it.
2. Bring your own lesson plan, even if it's poetry writing in a Physics class.
3. Best option: bring a movie, sit back, and relax.

I refuse to give in to this cynicism. So far. But I'll let you know how I feel in another month or so.

Solo Recital at Oakland Tech High

2011-03-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

"Tonight was our recital. It was the first time I sang in front of a big crowd. And loud too. We did great." Sahiba, a freshman, shared on Facebook last night right after Oakland Technical High's small chorus gave its solo voice recital. (I've been directing the program at the school for about two years.) She was clearly proud and excited. In fact, she sang "Smile" wonderfully, even though pundits would have criticized the fact that she sang along with Michael Jackson on recording. As a beginning singer, she understood she wasn't quite ready to sing on her own to piano or karaoke accompaniment.

The whole event was unorthodox; our group of shy beginners didn't look remotely like "Glee." Some sang out of tune from nerves. One student, when he sang in front of people, forgot the words and needed someone else to be singing with him so he could keep going. One young woman who rarely speaks, in class or outside of class, mastered her fear and sang -- even though many of her notes were "wrong." The singers' faces showed determination, fear, focus, and total lack of pretense; they weren't ready yet to add "performance values" of facial expression and gesture. Just getting up to bare their voices in public was a huge challenge and victory because revealing our singing voices makes us unbelievably vulnerable. To sing means to let go.

And yet, hearing the tone, texture, colors, sweetness or roughness of each voice blessed us who listened. We looked briefly into the spirit of each young person, just as they are. We entered the miracle of self acceptance, if just for a moment.

Before the performance, I tried to explain my philosophy about singing to the audience of parents. I tried to explain that the reason to sing is because you love it and you love music, not to impress people or be a great singer. I tried to explain that each person's voice is unique and beautiful right where it is, that it takes time to find where your voice feels right in terms of technique, that telling people to "be quiet, you can't sing," is a huge mistake. But Anne Lamott said it better than I could, in her commencement address at UC Berkeley in 2003. I believe that she captured the reason why we sing. Here's a quote from that speech:

"Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are....... It's magic to see spirit largely because it's so rare. Mostly you see the masks and the holograms that the culture presents as real. You see how you're doing in the world's eyes, or your family's, or yours, or in the eyes of people who are doing better than you -- much better than you –or worse. But you are not your bank account, or your ambitiousness. You're not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You are spirit, you are love, and, while it is increasingly hard to believe, you are free. If you find out next week that you are terminally ill -- and we're all terminally ill on this planet-- all that will matter is memories of beauty, that people loved you, and you loved them, and that you tried to help the poor and innocent."

West Side Story

2011-03-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

Last week I lived in King's Beach, CA, next to Lake Tahoe, directing a project called "West Side Story Remix." The project, sponsored by an amazing organization called Arts for the Schools, consisted of a week of rehearsals for an adapted, student cast version of West Side Story, and four days of creative writing classes at Truckee High School. My heart/mind is still "processing" the impact on my life of a week of magic, tears and love.

It snowed. A lot. From a gray and green rainy Oakland landscape I was immersed in a pure white wonderland.

In a sports-oriented rural community, high school age boys were at first reluctant to join the cast (singing and dancing don't feel as masculine as snow boarding?). But when they did, they loved it.

A few days after we began rehearsals, a beloved boy at one of our project's high schools committed suicide. Students in the monologue writing workshops wrote about feeling lost, alone, and seeking. Suddenly we faced the fact that young people in our society need a different kind of support than just "stay in school." The project became much larger than putting on a wonderful performance of an iconic musical theater work. The transforming nature of the dramatic form called Tragedy began to connect us to our own real lives.

Our cast of 20 middle and high school performers were largely inexperienced. Many had never even been in a play before. As the week proceeded, I watched the miracle of our teens blossoming. Living night and day with the ancient story based on "Romeo and Juliet," thrust our bodies and spirits into the center of life's questions about Love, Loss, Hate, Betrayal, Hope, Redemption, Heroism. I believe that the audience for our one performance last Friday night was transformed as well. I believe they left the theater knowing the power of love.

Freedom

2011-03-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

Hopefully it won't fade from the news, the crisis in Libya. My heart reaches out, and I try to make sense of what's happening. The revolution's purpose is to get rid of a dictator,and also to achieve freedom, right?

The dictionary definition of freedom is "absence of restraint, coercion or necessity of choice or action." Pandora's box opens; by this definition no one is really free, since we can't do whatever we want if it involves hurting others or taking away their rights. Now in Libya the rebels are under fire. How can they agree on creating a new government, or even achieve unity when so much sacrifice is required?

I take basic political freedoms for granted and complain about the lack of habeas corpus at Gitmo, or the recent threats to collective bargaining. The day to day accounts of the chaos, death and pain happening in North Africa force me to wonder: what is so important that I would sacrifice my comfort and my life for it? As an artist and educator, do I just express my ideas, or do I have the courage and integrity to walk them?

Market Survival

2011-02-28T08:35:00.000-08:00

I watched the Oscar's last night. No, more similar to the days of radio, I listened to them while typing, doing laundry, and vacuuming and didn't miss a thing. The movies the pundits expected to win, "King's Speech" and "Social Network," interested me as examples of Creative Nonfiction, the current hot genre. And I agree they both did a terrific job of making a true story very dramatic.

Why do we love these popularity contests? I rate the Oscar's alongside a few other (popularity) contests that I rarely watch, like American Idol, Who's Got Talent, Iron Chef, Top Model and Survivor. The world loves a winner, whether in ski jumping or break dancing. Tension builds; fumble with the envelope; "and the Oscar goes to... " Glitter, stars in our eyes, believe in the dream of fame and riches.

Saturday I went with my chorus students to do a "flash mob" performance at Emeryville Public Market food court. Hardly a mob: we had 7 singers able to participate. At Oakland Tech, we had achieved a pretty high level of skill in preparing a break up skit followed by a wild rendition of "I Will Survive." Parents and I all knew we were taking a risk, experimenting, trying something new and uncertain. When we got there, sure enough, it was more crowded and louder than we anticipated. We couldn't find an electric outlet. My students suddenly got stage fright. People in the crowd could sort of tell we were going to do something because we were standing around talking about it-- surprise element gone. The final blow happened when the singers couldn't hear the recorded accompaniment on the boombox. Hey, they did a great job a capella anyway. Two young men from Vacaville danced along.

But it was not glitzy or slick. My students' faces reflected their disappointment. We failed to measure up to the proficiency of our practice sessions and failed even to come close to our expectations. Too many things were out of our control. So did we fail? We would not have won any prizes, for sure. Yet the people who saw and heard us enjoyed it. The workers in the nearby food stands loved it. The parents, friends and one grandmother who formed our claque loved it.

What makes it so hard to take risks and fail to meet expectations? How do we define winning? My son's soccer coach, Dave McKeithen, used to say during a season in which the team didn't win a single game: "Did you run fast? Did you sweat? Did you have fun? You're a winner!" In my eyes our brave band of shy beginning singers won the Oscar's on Saturday. From the beginning of the year they moved from being so quiet I could hardly hear them, from being so shy they couldn't even sing solo in front of each other (let alone an audience), from having a vocal range of only four or five notes to this: over an octave vocal range, good projection, and taking risks to sing in front of their scoffing peers at assemblies and singing without technical support in front of a huge crowd of strangers in a busy food court.

Check out the video on UTube under "Market Survival."

Play

2011-02-15T07:46:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day! Usually I like this holiday all right, but in the back of my mind consider it a kind of manufactured occasion to buy more stuff. But this year I participated in a performance art event that touched me deeply. The "happening" occurred at AgeSong in Oakland, a care center for elders with Alzheimer's related brain disorders.

I began a week ago by interviewing residents, asking them questions: what is love?; what's the secret to marriage?; what advice would you give to young people to help them have a loving, long term relationship? I reminded them about the high divorce rate and that some young people today feel marriage is a useless institution -- why bother? I taped the interviews.

We also decorated hearts and each resident told us one word to to write on a heart, words to express what makes a good marriage. I loved the words they gave: patience, wedding rice, laughter, kisses. I loved the interview comments:
* "You can't wait for your husband to care for you, you've got to care for him."
* "When times are hard you have to realize things are hard and separate a little, then come back and talk about what to do. It's hard work."
* "You've got to decide what you want to do in life, not just sit around making sugar cookies. I think we should all learn to dance, your husband, your cousins, everybody, and we'll all have great fun."

Yesterday I packed up a huge bag of hats, jackets, dresses, a ring box, and wedding veils. I put my fake wedding cake in a large stainless steel bowl. I'm proud of that cake, since I specialize in performing arts, not 3D construction. I glued boxes of different sizes together, painted them white and slathered them with vanilla icing. On top, I put candy hearts for decoration. It looked good enough to eat. I drove with my loaded car down to AgeSong.

Along with Patti, one of the wonderful activity leaders there, we staged a mock wedding ceremony. Jean put on the bright blue crepe dress with full skirt, low back and bow. Mary wore a green shawl, Ruben wore a gold glitter derby hat, Bill wore a tan felt stetson, most of the women wore tulle wedding veils. We sang the wedding march and made a procession with those who could walk or whose wheelchairs we could push. Rosie gracefully accepted her tinsel wedding ring. Someone agreed to hold the bouquet. As a combination bride and Justice of the Peace I gave a suitably metaphorical homily. "Love is sweet. And so we will put our marriage ingredients into our wedding bowl(I called out the words they had chosen the week before) -- trust, amore, dedication -- we stir up our Love Recipe -- and voila! What did we make? A wedding cake (I ran to the table where I'd hidden the cake and waved it in the air)!!"

Continuing in my role: "How do we end our marriage to our imaginary partners or to our best inner selves? We dance, of course." And so I got to dance with John, who smiled and smiled, and turned me under his arm in a graceful jitterbug. I wish I could have been as playful at my own wedding years ago.

God bless those who can play and pretend, no matter where or when, no matter how well or ill. It was the best Valentine's Day ever.

Achievement

2011-02-08T07:29:00.000-08:00

Educators talk about mastery, success, test scores and other monikers of academic achievement. We subscribe to the theory that if someone works hard enough they can succeed at whatever they do. I agree that persistent effort does bring results. I'm not sure that we all agree on the definition of success.

What about the student who loves to dance and works hard, but can't kick very high or memorize choreography? Or the student who loves to sing and works hard, but lags way behind the rest of the class in singing in tune? Sometimes that student would get an A, sometimes not. Most of us need goals and evaluations but I've seen too many students focus on getting a good grade instead of getting an education that prepares them to be caring, thoughtful adults.

Our culture sometimes holds up an absolute value for mastery. Success looks like a 10 in Olympic competition, a multimillion dollar stock portfolio, Nobel Prize, lead dancer in Swan Lake, American Idol winner, 4.0 GPA. Our students may one day achieve these things, but I think that we'd serve them better if we prepared our students to notice different kinds of success. For some students, getting up in the morning, taking a shower and making it to school on time is success because everything in their lives conspires to make them drop out (I once had a student who told me he didn't need to graduate because he was going to sell drugs like his uncle, but he did manage to graduate). In Oakland, we try to acknowledge student effort or ethics with a catch-all Citizenship grade: 'O' (Outstanding), 'S' (Satisfactory), 'U' (Unsatisfactory); or a choice of comments like, "a pleasure to have in class," and "steadily improving."

I don't have a practical assessment system figured out, although I like the way arts and many other educators now focus on portfolios, presentations and written reflections as measurements. Ideally perhaps - instead of a high school Exit Exam - a student might demonstrate what they are curious about, what new discovery in assignments excited them, why the required curriculum is or is not important for their lives, what made a good teacher, how they grew (or not) because of school. Is it possible to grade the quality of someone's thinking and personal growth, or should each person learn to assess these things in his/her own mind and heart?

Fame

2011-02-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

I'm collaborating on a play by a wonderful local actress, Gina Gold. One of the themes in the piece is the addiction to fame, to getting noticed, to being seen or heard, to ..to... to.. being loved.

In the theater world we understand the attraction to applause. Getting attention from an audience can be addicting; lack of attention from an audience can be devastating.

I notice that these days, non-theater folks seem to want fame too.

"I'm trying out for American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance and America's Got Talent." We can have a blog (ahem, like this one), we can see how many friends we've got on Facebook, followers on Twitter, connections on LinkedIn, how many hits on YouTube. My voice students long to catapult to Idol status; then they wonder why fame doesn't happen from singing a song fairly well along with a recording. Fame should be instant, like Facebook, right?

By the way, how are all the famous people doing? I wonder - when I read about the celebrities in rehab or on their sixth divorce. Is there something about the addiction to fame that makes us want more and more?

"The only reason to sing is because you love it," my 80 year old voice teacher, Margaret Sheldon, said to me years ago. We're seldom in control of whether we get noticed or not, so why not find something we love doing for its own sake? In a culture where we do things to "get" money or status or to "build" skills, I like the idea of "art for art's sake."

In fact, I think I'll take Mrs. Sheldon's wise advice even further. Maybe the only reason to live is because I love it.

Priorities

2011-01-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

My head is spinning. I'm trying to put things together in my mind before the State of the Union address President Obama will give tonight.

Here's a fragment of an interview I heard on NPR: "Education is everything.. but the white flight to suburban schools has left urban public schools mostly to Latino and African American students without political or financial clout."

Here's a comment our trainer made when we applied for jobs as K-12 substitute teachers in the Oakland Unified School District last week: "A substitute teacher saved my child's life. That's the truth."

Here's a comment made by a full time teacher in a public school: "I can't actually support my family on a starting teacher's salary in this district."

Here's a comment made by a young man I passed in a high school corridor: "I'd go crazy if I had to come to school every day."

Here's a comment overheard in a job line: "We're spending billions every day on the war in Afghanistan, right?"

Here are two headlines: "Job growth Shows Economic Upturn" and "Obama will propose spending freeze."

Here's a how de do, to quote from Gilbert and Sullivan, whose ironic insights in the late 1800-s seem oddly current, in a world where opposites are equally true and where priorities clash with our values.

I appreciate that we have a few people willing to enter politics, given the painful challenges. I dread hearing from our President and our Governors about cuts to education and social services. I hate that we tell our community and state college students how important their education is one moment, but that we don't have the funding to offer the classes they need the next My head spins.

The sun shines today. Students remain intelligent and hopeful. President Obama will offer us some good ideas tonight. I will continue to embrace ambiguity.

Shootings

2011-01-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

On April 4, 1968, I was in Chicago on my spring break from college. Staying with friends on the Southside near the University. It was already dark as I walked that night from the train to m my friends' apartment. The streets buzzed with groups of people shouting, cars full of people driving around and around. "What's going on?" I asked someone. "Martin Luther King Jr has been assassinated," the man said.

At that moment, I felt the same stabbing pain in the chest and dizziness I had felt only a few years before, on hearing of the Kennedy assassination. Someone told me that news on November 22, 1963 in an elevator and I almost fainted then, too.

Thankfully assassinations are still not commonplace; the word itself feels alien in my mouth. One dictionary definition reads, "to murder (a prominent person) by surprise attack, as for political reasons." JFK, Martin, Robert. Those of us who lived through these horrible shootings remember exactly where we were when we heard the news.

But are assassinations as rare as we think? We don't call drive-by shootings assassinations. We tally our homicides here in Oakland and compare them to the tallies in comparable large cities. The recent shooting of Representative Giffords reminded us how easy it is to get a gun and of the travesty of the "background check." My own high school students have scoffed at the idea. "Anyone can get a gun any time," they said. In fact, some schools have metal detectors at the front door and now we have body scans to detect plastic guns or explosives at airports. We don't use the word assassination for these murders - the aspects of prominence and politics, are missing. But in a way homicides on our streets are political, and shouldn't we view each human life as "prominently" valuable? Street shootings and violent crimes link to poverty and social injustice, which are political. Altars of flowers and teddy bears on street corners testify to the prominence of another young person gunned down.

When I first started teaching high school drama, I was shocked to learn of the frequency of gun violence in students' lives. We were playing a warm up exercise I called "the community game," in which we stepped into the center of our circle to identify common ground. Towards the end of the warm up I asked, "Step to the center if you've ever lost a friend or relative through gun violence," ALL OF US stepped into the circle. Slowly over the years I became accustomed to my students' need to talk about neighborhood violence, to write skits about it, to mourn.

Martin Luther King Jr, who exemplified peace making and was aware of the threats against his life, showed us the way we should live. I am grateful he has his own holiday for us to reflect on his dream and his reality. May both come to pass.

Invisible

2011-01-11T07:37:00.000-08:00

We don't see a lot, in spite of social networking and instant Internet news. Sometimes a documentary or magazine article will reveal an invisible world, like say, rodeos, coin collecting or dog shows. The people and things within these worlds are a kind of closed circuit, revolving around outside our "trending now" everydayness.

The tragedy in Arizona suddenly brings to light one of these invisible worlds: mental illness. Clearly, the "suspect" shooter needed treatment years before the preventable disaster, but instead ended up isolated like so many in this mostly misunderstood world. We hide people with brain disorders in prisons, under freeway overpasses, residential hotels, a relative's spare room, or homes for the aging with dementia.

I spend most of my time in another invisible world: the arts. Sure, a few shining members of this world grace the front pages (of the Entertainment Section). But artists generally cycle unseen on two paths: 1) Create or perform work; 2) Work a "regular" job to pay off debts incurred in #1.

As an artist without a "regular" job, I've been keeping myself sane by engaging in various creative projects like radio drama with KPFA- Berkeley, writing poems and short stories, dancing, singing and actng. None of these activities pay even close to a living wage. Job listings in performing arts are - yes - invisible.

Seeking to become less invisible, I posted my performing artist resume on a popular online job site. Presto! I received three emails from various highly positioned employers. "I am impressed by your skills and think you're a perfect fit for our organization. Please contact me for an interview." Great! They saw on my resume that I can act, sing, direct plays and write poetry and will pay me to do these things! Or they want me full time as a drama professor at a college!

WRONG. The job openings for which I was asked to interview? An insurance company, a bank, a realty firm, full time data entry. Like Superman, we artists work undercover in such jobs. That man or woman in the cubicle next to you might even be one.

January

2011-01-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! New Year, new month, new beginnings. Resolved: meditate daily and be kind. I've already broken both resolutions. Add to version 4 of "final" New Year list: confront failure with grace.

The typical school year differs from the calendar year. In school, January is mid year; over five more months of getting up early, attending classes, studying for exams, writing papers, forgetting to bring an umbrella to school when it rains. "In the bleak mid winter, frosty wind made moan/ Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone," the carol goes. After the hype and anticipation of the holiday season, a bit of depression arrives, otherwise known as "seasonal affective disorder." Gone are the excuses to eat Grandma's fudge and Aunt Lucy's pecan pie (the fudge and pie are gone already anyway because we ate them all up). We're advised to exercise, lose weight, buy full spectrum light bulbs, volunteer at our local charities.

These ideas indeed work well. But sometimes I prefer the animal kingdom's solution: hibernate. In January I find taking naps and going to bed at 7 pm helps. Being someone who doesn't dream much (or remember my dreams), I'm amazed lately by the creativity of my unconscious world. I'm also more appreciative than ever before of the brilliant visions no doubt hiding behind the eyelids of my sleeping students in class.

Ah, well. It's California, and in another month the fluffy pink plum blossoms will come out on our block. Global warming will bring early spring, the days will get longer and I'll have to stay awake at work. I think I'll just.. yawn.. put my head down.. here.. a ... second... l..ong.....er... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Resolutions

2010-12-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

We've opened all the gifts, maxed out the credit cards and bank accounts, devoured most of the rich food and drink, sent out our holiday greetings. What now? More shopping? I think not.

The New Year beckons with a promise of starting over. I love the idea of New Year's resolutions. Goal setting is good for me, and even better for you. What do I want to accomplish in 2011? I have two lists: the "normal" one and the "real" one.

Here's a draft, but check with me next week to see what the final lists contain. Feel free to send me your resolutions for further inspiration.

NORMAL RESOLUTIONS (DRAFT)
Eat five servings of fruits and veggies and exercise daily
Build my savings in order to care for my debilitating old age
Be kind to at least one person every day, and also my husband
Clear out all our closets
Donate to the local food banks and homeless shelters
Sign up for an educational class, like history or science
Communicate regularly with my friends and out of town relatives
Read at least three books about spiritual growth/faith
Never panic

REAL RESOLUTIONS (DRAFT)
Get out of bed almost every day
Remember to brush my teeth at least once a week
Update my resume from its last version in 1980
Give the car its annual hosing off
Meet one friend for coffee after trying for 3 years to get together
Change the bag in the vacuum cleaner
Look for the lemonade in all those lemons

Remxmas

2010-12-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

I'm singing carols this month. I'm also hearing them piped overhead, inside and outside stores. After weeks of this, words are spinning in my head like an out of control clothes dryer. Every once in a while, I wonder, why are we singing these words?

Why do we feel endless nostalgia over letting it snow, or dreaming of it for that matter? Why do we long for a crackling fire in a fireplace when we have 'spare the air days?' How often do we ride a sleigh or a horse with jingling bells on it through downtown?

Now, out of the whirling cascade of Winter Images, there emerges: Remixmas Carols.

I'm dreaming of a gray Christmas, just like the ones we used to know,
Where the folks were complainin' when it wouldn't stop rainin' --
Through the raindrops the lights and colors glow--

Jingle keys, jingle keys, jingle to the car
Oh what fun it is to drive in traffic near and far - ar.

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but central heating is so delightful
And since we can shop online, let's relax with a little mulled wine

Car horns blare, are you listnin?
In the rain, streets are glistenin'
A really wet sight, we're happy tonight,
caring 'bout what's really important.

Deck the rooms with pretty Christmas Trees
fa la la la la... etc
'Tis the season to help the needy
fa la la etc
Bring your groceries to a food bank
fa la la la etc
Sing about a fair, just Wonderland
fa la la la la la la la LA

Winter!

Community

2010-12-13T10:36:00.000-08:00

Where did the time go? I can't believe I completely missed writing a blog entry last week. Every year, the second week of December fills with school requirements, holiday performances, colds and flu; and every year I'm surprised.

Every year, too, I feel slightly depressed at this time, feeling the gap between the shining stores, bouncing TV ads, and ever-present requests by strangers and friends alike to have a merry holiday. I sat down yesterday and thought about the reason for the season in addition to its religious expression. Two experiences I had this past Saturday came to mind. That day I sang with SWEET Theater's caroling group (formerly the Piccola Carolers of Opera Piccola) at the Temescal Holiday Stroll on Telegraph Avenue. One of our singers was sick (didn't I mention winter colds already?), so the three of us in our 1890 hats and capes caroled in the small neighborhood shopping area between 51st and 49h Streets.

We sang inside Ruby's Garden and Peet's Coffee. We sang for a long line in the Post Office to wild applause. We sang for two little boys and a mom with a baby in a stroller outside the hair salon. Each time, some looked up from a laptop or from where they stood and smiled. Some stopped and listened, some sang along. And some said, "that was beautiful." The wonder of this random musical exchange with strangers on the street cannot be explained. But when we crossed Telegraph Avenue, something even more magical happened. A reggae band was playing outside of the cafe/restaurant, and we couldn't sing our traditional carols near their amplified sound. We stopped to listen a moment. Their rhythm sounded like the rhythm of the words, "jingle bells." So I started singing that carol to their melody. Instantly Jo Parks and Steven Gary(amazing bass and tenor) began improvising in perfect reggae style and in perfect harmony. For ten minutes, the three of us jammed with the four musicians, twisting and turning and echoing riffs back and forth while coffee drinkers peered out the window smiling and shoppers danced. Who can explain why I felt joy then? Was it a letting go, a connecting, a celebration?

Two hours later I returned to the same corner on Telegraph to meet some students in my Chorus/Voice class from Oakland Technical High School. The class practices about six times per month after school, like a club. After warming up and putting on our scarves, Santa hats and reindeer antlers, we began our caroling stroll on the same route I had just walked with our Victorian trio. Students had brought relatives and friends to listen; we gave many of them hats too, so our 10 singers sang with 15 teenagers, moms and younger siblings following.

Again, the magic happened that defies media stereotypes and replicates a tradition associated with past centuries. The hour we spent was not Glee, was not American Idol or America's Got Talent. Our motley group sang on the street for passersby in the same way that groups of neighbors used to go outside at the holidays and sing outside houses. The chorus of beginning singers can't sing in parts yet. They sang in unison in clear, young, quiet voices, faces concentrating on remembering the words. But strangers who passed by stopped to listen, because they were moved by the innocent hearts of these shy 14 to 17 year old singers, expressed in their courageous singing.

The thing I will remember most happened inside a small store called Sagrada, a beautiful warm shop with a glowing Christmas tree, stacks of colorful books and softly lit pictures on the walls. We needed a quiet place away from traffic to sing "Silent Night" and the store owner kindly invited us in, crowding between the displays. Kai, our student guitarist, sat on a wooden straight backed chair and started the song, focusing on each careful note. Nereida and Kenya sang the solos and the chorus joined the second time through. "Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright." The large group that followed us inside grew completely still and quiet, even the toddlers. For those two minutes in that hushed space we were one, a listening feeling community: the season.

Ostracism

2010-11-30T08:21:00.000-08:00

I've spent many years observing social interactions in hallways and recess courtyards of schools. As we enter a season that traditionally is about caring, sharing and peacemaking, I want to tell a little fable.

Once upon a time there was a misfit, a 13 year old boy who was not handsome. He was overweight, had hair that looked like his mom cut it with blunt scissors, and wore thick, thick glasses that distorted his eyes. Whatever outfits the other students wore, the boy always seemed to wear something that didn't fit in; if they wore cut-offs, he wore a suit and tie, if they dressed up, he wore jeans.

He always sat alone at lunch. If someone sat at the same table, they were careful to put at least 4 or 5 feet between them. After a while he stopped going to lunch. When someone sat next to him or walked next to him by accident, then the other students kept away from that person too - far away. The boy didn't talk much. He withdrew into himself and set up a kind of cloud of sadness around him, making others avoid him even more. He didn't get good grades and was always picked last when they chose teams. He was bitterly lonely, but he told his mom that everything was fine at school.

The boy spent most, if not all, of his adult years recovering from his adolescence.

This boy could be you and I. We've all seen people like the boy, whether male or female, in public school or at a senior citizen book club. What would it take for people to reach out and sit with someone who is ostracized and risk their own status? Is the responsibility of education only to teach curriculum, or is there something even more important? The arts teach empathy, but need to go much farther. We need not only to feel what it's like to wear someone else's shoes, but also to learn what to do as a result of understanding what that person is going through.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving. As a vegetarian in difficult times I have to think a bit about a reason for celebrating this holiday. The TV ads tell me it's about recipes, not overcooking the turkey, getting ahead on the holiday sales. My elementary school taught me to wear paper Native American (back then called "Indian") wreaths decorated with autumn leaves and to march down the assembly aisles donating my canned goods. We re-enacted the Pilgrims first Thanksgiving. My mom made "Indian" pudding, a delicious mixture of corn meal and blackstrap molasses, with a sauce that had real rum in it. There were the trips to see grandparents sometimes. But nostalgia only goes so far.

All right, I'm developing some present day meaning for myself. First, I benefit from being grateful. Psychology has confirmed this: make a gratitude list daily - at least five items- and you will feel better emotionally and physically. Second, the four day holiday gives me a needed rest before the downhill race to December 31st. Third, I can catch up on laundry, cleaning and homework assignments. Fourth, I can help out with one of the meals for homeless citizens. Five, I can avoid shopping and reflect on Life during the time I will save, not to mention money.

For students and teachers, Thanksgiving Week is wonderful. My students look forward to the food and to sleeping all day every day. It's wonderful until Monday, November 29th, which marks the season of the school year called Mid-Term, not Year End: exams, term papers, portfolio's, presentations. What was the blissful beginning of the school year has become the hard reality of Due Dates and Evaluations, with spring standardized testing looming in the shadows. Let me get back in bed. I plan to relax while I can. Happy thanksgiving.

Chickens

2010-11-17T08:44:00.001-08:00

I'm late I'm late with my Monday blog, because I added urban mini-farming to my list of arts education activities this past week. With my husband out of town I took on the care of our 4 chickens, organic apple department and tomato patch. Yes, this is an arts education activity!

At 8:00 am each morning I let them out of the nesting area. Ricky rushes out first, clucking gratefully, staggers around, then rushes back inside to get his hens, who have to emerge in the correct pecking order. That's right, if they're not in the correct order, they get pecked. Patriarchy! Can we get a Gloria Steinem for the Poultry Population?

Next I break up pieces of bread, egg shells, apples, into bits and scatter then in the chicken "run." It's gratifying to receive their soothing, clucking appreciations as they rush around examining the menu and discussing it. As I return to the house for my coffee, Ricky utters a mournful crow. How dare I leave them unaccompanied?

I can't see any ears on the chickens, but their hearing doesn't suffer. If they detect that I'm in the house mid-day, they call me in a loud chorus of crying cackles. I emerge from the back door and there they are, lined up shoulder to shoulder (do chickens have shoulders?), peering through the grating that's closest to the house. What do they want? I could pick some grass ("green salad") or even better, sit on a chair next to them and talk to them. This is a wonderful thing to do, because they agree with everything I have to say. I practice my monologues, complain, ask them questions about the meaning of life, and enjoy the free therapy. If we're lucky and Labor was successful, the four of them might call me in a different sounding chorus, a more triumphant trumpeting sound, announcing the birth of an egg. Ricky always supervises me while I collect the warm, pink orb.

Before dark, I scatter more bread crumbs and table scraps for our enthusiastic chicken children, so they will sleep in and not wake the neighbors at 6:00 AM. Of course I'm exhausted from my Farmer's Wife activities and my blogging has suffered. But never fear, the Farmer has returned and I can resume my restful former life as an artist.

Nesting

2010-11-09T07:14:00.000-08:00

It was cold this morning, the first day I put on gloves to go outside. We had a big rain last week, some of the trees have turned gold or red. If I didn't realize it before, I know it's fall now because we turned on the heat yesterday instead of relying on one more sweater indoors.

This is the season when the stores put out the holiday decorations, the Food Bank puts more barrels at the grocery store door, daylight dwindles and the birds overhead fly their formations South.

This year it's also the season for what I'm calling Re-Nesting. We don't expect it in the U.S., do we? The rule used to be like the story of the 3 Little Pigs: parents kick the children out of the home when they turn 18. Other countries expect the Full Nest, with in-laws, grandparents, grand kids, cousins, married daughters and sons all under one roof. Let's add to the crowd our children's friends, and friends of friends, who may have lost jobs or be between rentals. Recently our living room has looked more like a sports bar, with an assemblage of young men watching the Warriors or the Raiders. We bake oven-loads of potatoes to feed them all and keep the vegetarian house warm. We get the cots and mats out of the shed for the extra overnight drop-ins.

The result? A lot more fun. And ... more disagreements. As foreclosures mount, jobs decline, rentals stay high, then forced togetherness increases. If Re-Nesting continues to be a trend, then we should all advocate for the return of required Conflict Resolution programs in the schools. I also think that all of us over 18 should take Conflict Resolution or Chore Sharing Certification as a job requirement - like having a social security card.

Halloween

2010-11-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

Last night the spooks roamed the neighborhood collecting treats. Children love wearing costumes and knocking on doors. Teenagers love bringing the candy to school for weeks afterwards.

This week we'll celebrate Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, as communities have thankfully become more aware of the universality and beautiful difference of diverse cultures. We're invited to remember those we have lost, the imperfect saints who have gone before. Writing poetry or a letter to a loved one who has died can be healing. I beleive it's true that although the arts are not therapy, they are therapeutic.

I recently took some time to write an elegy for my mom, and hope that others will write a poem too. Here's mine, send yours.

Elegy

Now might I see you
shoulder pads
two-toned high heels
shaking hands at some event or
taking the hat pins out of your red felt hat
running your hand through your curly black hair

Now might I see you
cooking the flank steak on the table top broiler
clearing the dishes off the stained tablecloth
calling me from 3 rooms away to
“Spit out that gum right now”
Now might I see you on the move
all five foot four inches
dressing down the grocery clerk for being slow
sticking volunteer stamps on a hundred envelopes by the green couch
separating the wet garbage from the dry like they did on the farm
even though it was New York City

The last time I saw you
you lay in the great oak coffin like a wooden ship with brass fixings,
lavender sweater pulled tight over breasts pumped young with embalming,
red lips drawn in a straight line across the cosmetics on your changed face.
You would have liked the bathroom there, glittering sterile,
the rugs sinking deep, vacuum streaks in parallel lines
hushed lighting organized, respectful.
“In a better place now
We gather not to mourn but to celebrate the life”
the life never lying down like this

Now might I still see you even
those last 3 dementia years
my mother yet my child
those last 3 years that I
cried the tears you couldn't
spoke the words you couldn't
held tight the body you couldn't
my little girl those last 3 years

I put a lavender Mum by her cheek
from the packed bouquet over the propped coffin lid
It matched her sweater

She would have liked that

Elections

2010-10-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

The hype and fliers are everywhere. So and so failed to do such and such when he/she was in office. So and so is promising such and such but can she/he deliver? Emails urge me to vote for the candidate who will do the most for the arts or for education or about taxes.

While on a break from one of my writing classes in Wheeler Hall at Cal Berkeley on Saturday, I overheard a young woman wearing a Calpirg sweatshirt on the phone. "We can't let the oil companies get away with this," she said in an urgent yet polite tone to a voter.

How do we decide the myriad complex issues on the ballot? I read through the pamphlets, the sample ballot, the cards that came in the mail. I went to the Oakland Mayoral candidate panel at City Hall. The promises sound good. Everyone wants the best for our children, for our schools. We all love the arts. So what is the problem with making my decisions and putting my pen to my absentee ballot? I'm used to reading between the lines, trained in analyzing literature and poetry. But I find it almost impossible to read between the lines of the propositions, candidate statements and initiatives. What will the effects of this or that vote really be?

I care and so I vote. I will probably end up voting for what or whom I think will help the principles I hold dear, but I will also vote for any candidate I think I can trust. It boils down to trust, doesn't it? I can't know what it would be like to hold office and face all those conflicting needs and demands, but I vote in hopes that we can make sure our children have a good education, that we take care of our environment/ resources, and that we advance justice and equity.

preferences

2010-10-18T08:58:00.000-07:00

Why do we like what we like? The nature versus nurture debate has gone on for decades. Music is one of the touchy areas where "taste" appears to rule. But with music in high school today, is taste driven by familiarity or popularity? I wonder about this when I visit a seniors' home and the music is almost alwyas songs from the 30's and 40's. And I wondered during my chorus class last week.

Our group of singers is working on a challenging part song for Winter Concert, while also preparing some other pieces for various upcoming shows at Oakland Tech High. At some point, the class ended. But then it began. A few singers left for another rehearsal but the rest seemed to want to hang around, explore the piano, and talk. One young woman suddenly produced an anthology of songs from the movie, "Twilight." A few singers drifted over to examine it, and exclaim over favorite numbers.

"Want to sing it?" I asked one girl who was very excited about one of the songs.So I sat at the piano and played the chords or helped her with the melody while she sang. Hmm.. I looked around and there were twice the number of students in the room as had been present before she started singing. Students had seen the movie or heard the songs online, so they were familiar -- and liked. But do my students like the songs because the other students like tham and because they know them from having heard them often? Do we have to start exposing our children to everything at a very young age so that they will be more open to it as adolescents? Or can we start educating ourselves to be open to the unfamiliar, the strange, the different, at any age?

Walking

2010-10-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

My husband and I share a car, which means I walk whenever possible. The other day I walked up Manila Avenue near my home in Oakland. I expected it to be the usual walk of a few blocks to the library on College Avenue - nothing special, hot and boring. I was wrong.

Here's what happens if I use an artists' eye and really notice what's around me. Here's what happens if I allow myself to slow down and appreciate what I see, as in "Gratitude." I walked under a maple tree whose branches were quite low, almost brushing the top of my head. By some good luck I happened to glance up a bit, and there, hidden among the maple leaves that looked like upside down Christmas trees was a tiny, tiny wooden bird house. I mean S-M-A-L-L. No bird could ever squeeze into the teeny hole above the one-inch perch. Hung from a thin branch by an old brown string, the house shone with randomly spaced shiny stick-on jewels: red, green, blue, gold. The crayon drawings on each side reminded me of the scribbles my two sons drew at the age of one or two years old, and yet they had a purposeful air about them, as if a child had planned them carefully, tongue between teeth. The bird house hung there as if in a magic forest, shimmering with hope. I stood and watched it for ten minutes, amazed.

Nothing better could make my day, I thought, as I walked on. But a block further I happened to look down to my right and was surprised again. Scattered on a torn up bit of dirt and grass, stood 20 plastic dinosaurs, each almost a foot in length. They posed in singles, teams, varied species or genuses, as if frozen in mid morning battle or foraging or courting. The group had an intense quality like theater or film, as if some incredible event just happened or was about to happen; perhaps they didn't need their "operator" at all. Something here spoke to me of love and desire. A child longed deeply to bring these strange ancient creatures to life right here on this untended yard. I stood and looked for a while, imagining what it must have been like to live among a pack of dinosaurs like this.

Two days later, I walked back the other direction down Manila, wanting to check the dinosaurs and bird house again. The dinosaur world had been rearranged! I missed what happened! Then the bird house. It looked the same at first. But when I looked closer, another surprise hit me. A little green, white and blue wooden bird --no more than half an inch tall - hung sideways on the tiny perch, wrapped around and held there by yellow thread. She seemed so pleased to have her own lovely house in the woods.

I can't stop smiling. The hands, minds and spirits of the children who made the bird house and the dinosaur patch on Manila Avenue will keep the world going, in spite of global warming. Yes, with brilliant children like these, our world will be okay.

block

2010-10-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

Here I sit at the computer. It's Monday, the day I promise to post my blog entry each week, musing on the arts and arts education.

xxxoooo [[[[ ppp ttttt uuuuu llll

I'm enrolled in a Certificate in Writing program at UC Berkeley. Taking classes in writing should be helping, yes? Usually I can think of dozens of ideas to write about. This is the first time in ages that I can remember having the dreaded "writer's block." xxxxpppptttt;;;++++

I glance over to the desk next to me and see a poem by William Carlos Williams (did he ever have The Block?)
"so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens"

Blogless moment.

But wait. My husband and I have four chickens in our backyard. We were just supposed to be babysitting them until their real owners found a permanent place where they could care for them. Six months later the chickens - or their replacements in two cases -- are still here and the owners have faded away. Today the chickens, too, are experiencing a dry spell: actually they haven't laid any eggs for two weeks. Eggless. Blogless. Blog. Block. Similar. Send ideas!

Perhaps dry spells, writer's block, and lack of egg-laying serve a purpose. If the barrow isn't empty, then it can't receive any fresh liquid. But the term "writer's block" implies something is in the way, an impediment, not just emptiness. I'll check my tool box and see what I might use to chip away at the old Block.

Teaching

2010-09-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

I can't really define what it's like to embark on teaching a class. From long experience, I know we're starting a journey through the unexpected, in spite of the best Unit Plans. Teacher and students are clumsy at first, then become coordinated in a kind of dance. Are you willing to learn this? Why learn that? Do I really enjoy teaching this or that?

I'm working with some beginning singers at Oakland Technical High School, in an after school chorus/voice class. We only meet once or twice a week to accommodate high schoolers' busy schedules. One of our projects is new this year: creating improvisatory soundscapes or mood pieces for the school's Advanced Drama production of "Dracula." Working with random vocal and non vocal sounds opens up an avant garde genre beyond music, forcing us to explore what our ears hear. It's a great activity for beginners because no one has to blend, read music, match pitches, or do anything except imagine a mood and make sounds to express that mood. No right or wrong, just freedom to take risks and invent.

My students came in a week ago saying they couldn't really sing, they had no prior training. We'll use repetition, applause for the slightest effort, exposure to new things, discovering what each person brings in, straightforward technique/training, tons of mistakes. Somewhere along the road each student's voice will open up in a new way and our group will thrill to the sound of beauty. But there won't be a map or a template. It will be a unique journey and I love it.

RIP

2010-09-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

Rest in Peace, Ann Wood. My mom died this week. This was the first time in many years that I have looked at the obituary page of the newspaper. The passionate statements of loving relatives about a daughter, grandmother or father who also passed away this week were sad and comforting.

family

2010-09-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

This week I am keeping vigil. My mother, who turns 95 in October, is fast asleep in a coma. In a society where dementia, Alzheimer's, old age and death are not familiar, my mom has blessed me with the chance to be close at this time in her life. We all will go through this transition, but I am ashamed to admit how unaware I have been of death as I bustled through my small daily routines. May we all discover what is truly important.

BackToSchool

2010-09-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

"I've got 44 students in my period 5 class," says one high school teacher.

"Please be patient. We're taking a count, and sorting out class sizes," reads a message from the school administration.

"Why has my student been denied acceptance to the (name of great program)? Shouldn't priority be given to returning students over new students?" emails a worried parent.

School is back in session. The story isn't clear yet, but I wonder if some private school students have returned to public or charter schools due to the economy. Initial comments from the fray speak of overcrowding, canceled programs, and a little confusion.

Chaos is typical in public high schools the first few weeks of fall, as students are gradually assigned and re-assigned to classes. Getting the required credits to graduate is a complex business, and public school counselors are responsible for hundreds of students' schedules.

Yet as I walk through a few corridors and across a yard, I notice that except for a few lost freshmen, students seem happy and unperturbed. Developmentally appropriate behavior reigns, meaning adolescents are intensely interested in their peers. Hand holding, clusters of laughing teenagers, a few young men with skateboards, guitars or frisbees. What is not to like about high school, in spite of the fretting of adults?

Moving

2010-08-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

"Do you feel all right?"
"Yes, I feel all right!"

Jeff Giaquinto, leader of the amazing Brass Liberation band, called and we responded as we danced in the street yesterday. It was perhaps the most unusual Moving Sale ever held. We didn't know who would respond to our ads and emails that announced our move away from the East Oakland site we've occupied for two years. But we set up our Garage Sale Shop, were thankful for all the donations to sell, and hoped.

About 10 musicians dressed in black pants and bright red shirts stood in the street and on the curb out front, sending passionate music to listeners in upstairs windows and passing cars. An actual tuba. Trombones. Trumpets. Drums. Clarinets. Saxophone. Someone found an old, bent lavender umbrella decorated with streamers and pom poms, connecting us to New Orleans and the Katrina hurricane anniversary.

Neighbors and friends drifted in and out of the sale at Opera Piccola's headquarters on MacArthur Boulevard, finding great deals packed onto tables and boxes overflowing onto the floor with secondhand and new stuff. We sipped coffee, chatted, snacked and unearthed treasures from other people's lives. The sun shone on strangers getting to know each other. A woman held her baby on her porch behind the band. Another woman pulled her car up to the curb, ran across the street waving her handkerchief and joined the dance.

Our small, determined company is moving to a new and unknown location in order to share resources with another non profit. "I wish I'd found your place sooner," sighed one shopper, acknowledging how we can neighbors for months, even years, and not even meet. "We're still here, just not sure where," Corrina Marshall, our E.D. said.

We floated on the euphoria of throwing out doors wide and welcoming in the unexpected. This could be practice for the next phase of our existence in a changed world. Under the late summer sun, we practiced embracing uncertainty and it became a party.

Wedding

2010-08-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

The creative mind is one that takes risks and discover new things, transforming old models for new situations. Having been involved with the arts since I was a child singing songs or reading novels every minute I could, I've formed the habit of re-making. I can't help it!

Our older son got married a week ago, at San Francisco City Hall. Since only a few family members could attend the ceremony there (along with hundreds of other brides and grooms waiting their turn), we celebrated with friends afterwards. How many ways can we bless a loved couple starting out in marriage? We didn't have a year to plan; actually, not even a month. This was my first time being mother of the groom, and I was unsure of my role. However, I talked to our younger son, the Best Man, and friends of the couple, about making toasts at the dinner in keeping with tradition.

Then, aha! Idea. "Eureka, I have found it," to use Archimedes' famous term for the right brain getting a sudden solution. I looked up South Korean wedding customs because the bride's family was unable to attend from so far away. One of the customs grabbed me. We should give carved wooden wedding ducks to the bridal couple. Not only that: at the wedding, the groom's mother throws one of the ducks to the bride, who tries to catch it in the apron of her traditional South Korean costume. If she catches the duck, the first child will be a boy- so the custom says - and if she misses the duck, the first child will be a girl. The City of San Francisco doesn't allow things like this to be inserted into the brief ceremony on the palatial steps of City Hall. So... I decided to bring this custom to the wedding dinner.

After some searching, I found a beautiful wooden duck at Folk Art on Piedmont Avenue (okay, it was carved in Malaysia, not Korea). I could only afford one duck, but it was a start. The gathering at the dinner was shocked and thrilled when we announced the custom. Since the bride wore a shiny short white strapless wedding dress, not a traditional costume, she grabbed a white linen napkin from the table. "Ready?" I said. Amid cheering, I threw the duck (underhand, I'm not a pitcher) toward our nervous, beautiful daughter-in-law.

"Oh no!" the crowd cried when she missed. "Oh yes!" cried we feminists, who wanted the baby to be a girl. Since we'd already established a non-sexist approach to marriage by my son asking both my husband AND myself for permission to marry, my son hopped up and insisted on trying to catch the duck. "Hooray," cried the crowd when he caught it, although after all the food and drink I suspect they were unclear why we were cheering. Did this double catching effort mean fraternal twins? Then both bride and groom held the napkin at each end, together. They caught the duck! All this activity under a blessing of bubbles, the advertised "eco friendly" alternative to rice throwing.

The concluding Reception Remix Toast? A dramatic reading of an adaptation of "The Night the Bed Fell," by James Thurber. Since my husband and I met while rehearsing the opening scene of "The Marriage of Figaro," in which Figaro measures the room to fit a bed, and since the day before the wedding my husband had spent hours helping our son put together the couple's new bed from IKEA, we figured that beds and weddings went together. It was a stretch. But that's what we do. We risk, we stretch and explore. We seize metaphors. We re-make.

Deep

2010-08-17T14:04:00.000-07:00

"What do you see?"
"What do you think?"
"What do you wonder?"

Last week was busy. Among other things, I took an intensive class in arts integration offered by the Alameda County Office of Education Art is Education program linked to the California College of Art in Oakland.-- Arts integration is a fancy term for the art of connecting the arts to everything else you can think of. And yes, art does. This field of study results in amazing intellectual bursts, aptly demonstrated by the talented leaders of the course.

I have too much to do to make this blog entry a detailed report, and anyway, that would be done more effectively by the printed handouts from the course, taught brilliantly by Tana Johnson and Julia Marshall. I just have a few kind of sidelong impressions as I look back at the week.

The three questions at the top of the page are part of it, but not all. Those questions are a short way of reminding me to stand back from what I'm doing or experiencing and respond like an observer or scientist. Or artist. Or learner. I want to live my life "in the moment," but some of those moments I want to expand on, by knowing what I'm seeing, thinking, feeling, wondering.

But something else is going on here. Part of the structured activity was creating our own avatar or mythological creature with special abilities/powers. When it came to creating a graphic story (cartoon to my generation), after all the preliminary steps, something happened in my heart. When I looked at the one page I'd created, with figures and dialogue bubbles on blue and purple backgrounds, I thought someone else had looked into my psyche and interpreted it with Jung standing by. To my near-tears amazement, the "comic" was about a mother avatar and her little girl avatar, who was thirsty and had to wait for dream time. A mythical blue sheep appears in the final box, alongside a tilted little avatar, who says, "ummm. (Sigh)" The metaphors in this simple activity reached deeper than I can say without telling you my life story. Soul deep.

Live

2010-08-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh.. Ooooh!

There is nothing like live theater. Yesterday a play I directed was performed at the San Francisco Theatre Festival: "Cat in a Cell," by Judith Offer, with actors Gift Harris and Tamara Sabella. Some students of mine and Tamara's attended, along with various friends and relatives, and a large drop-in standing room only audience.

The performance took place in a small, intimate space without a stage, and only the living room lamp I brought with me for lighting. Beige masking tape on the gray carpet formed the "scenery." We placed the audience chairs close, in three sides around the performing area, so that we were all very close to the actors. Perhaps due to the intimacy, the students seemed almost to anticipate the subtle interactions of the actors a fraction of a second before they happened. They understood the smallest glance, the twitch of an eyebrow and they made sounds... ooooooooh... and laughed... and listened to the message about life.

The actors took energy from the responses of the students as well as from the warm laughter and rapt silences of the adult audience. The result? Community and fun are words that fall short. Pure magic. Impossible to define for someone else, you have to experience it yourself. Soon.

transformation

2010-08-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

I'm noticing that after school programs are getting into gear for the fall, and they are focusing on tutoring. Students sit at desks most of the day from 8:30 to 3 or later and then go sit some more for tutoring and homework help, until 5:30 or 6. Yes, these are the kind of hours children have academics in other countries, but it would be nice to consider the whole child instead of an academic race to an uncertain "top."

There are things that happened in my drama classes that transformed my students and myself in some inexplicable ways. One class in particular sticks in my memory, at the former Carter Middle School in Oakland. It was a difficult group that met after school; so difficult that two subs who took my class walked out. Most of the first few months, my lesson plan seemed to me to be mostly "snack" and "keep kids from fighting long enough to start an activity." We gathered under the harsh fluorescent lights of the unfortunately named and bleak Cafetorium, which had a small, cluttered stage and tables that unfolded down from the walls like the old Murphy beds.

We had just managed to start our warm up when Lila, a 7th grader who still had her baby fat, started to scream on the other side of the room. "What's wrong?" I said, approaching her. She lay down on the floor and continued to cry, pounding her fists and feet on the dirty tile. My mind searched for a way to get the class back on track. By a miracle, I had a small tape recorder with me and I pulled it out of my bag, pressing 'record.'

"This is KLOX Radio and we have a young lady crying here on the street. It looks serious. Let's find out what's going on," I improvised. "Excuse me miss, can you tell me what happened?" Lila cried louder after opening one eye in surprise. "Let's ask a passerby," I said.

I interviewed the passerby, who hadn't seen anything. The other students started to get interested. Soon I was interviewing a cast of neighbors from the block about why Lila was crying. Someone suggested she needed to see a doctor, so off we went to the clinic. The doctor's diagnosis produced no results, so off we went to talk to her family: parents, siblings, family dog and cat. Everyone suggested explanations for Lila's crying and possible solutions. Not even candy and cookies helped. Lila stopped at intervals for a minute or two, but then continued to wail.

Finally, just before it was time to leave class, there was a revelation. "Ladies and gentlemen, we talked to everyone in the community, and no one can explain why this young lady is crying. Tune in next week when we return to solve this mystery," I said, wrapping it up.

"I guess she just needed to cry," someone said quietly.

And with that, Lila stopped crying. By a kind of common sixth sense we all knew that something profound had happened. In that instant we breathed as one a sigh of relief and were transformed. Of course. Our middle schoolers came from beyond the freeway dividing the yuppie homes from their low income neighborhood and faced family stress, violence and inadequate resources daily. But more than that, when do we give each other permission to cry, to weep, to wail, even if we don't know why?

Our fractious class had created together an hour and a half improvised play, full of characters from our community, full of humor and pathos, with lines I would have been proud to publish in a script. And we created a play with each student showing concern- even love - for one of their peers in distress. Of course. Lila needed to cry.

Education

2010-07-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

This summer I've been browsing the internet and getting certain ideas today's education and the job market. Sites like artsusa.org and artsjournal.com have blogs and articles that among other things express concern for the viability of the arts in our dismal economy.At the same time, congress extended long term unemployment benefits

"How can we persuade 'them' of the importance and benefits of the arts?" is a common cry on these sites. The underlying assumption appears to be that there is money to pay for the arts if only every person in power were fully persuaded of its value. I disagree. A better question would be, "Given high unemployment and lack of funding, how can we keep the arts alive?"

Let me see what jobs currently have good prospects, I thought to myself, since a commonly held belief is that arts in education helps prepare students for future careers. Ahh. Somehow I got enrolled in something called JobAlerts, which sends me 5 or 6 emails a day proclaiming thousands of jobs in "my area." When I pursued these promising leads, I discovered that JobAlerts was informing me of TRAINING opportunities at vocational or graduate schools, which then would presumably lead to thousands of jobs. For example, for me, the emails claimed that training in medical billing was a hot prospect.

I turned to Google Search to find today's top career options, I learned the most promising fields were financial management, engineering and marketing/communications. Hmm, marketing included designers; that's art. Most top careers required a B.A., or Masters, often in the exact, specific area of the job.

Exploring Craigslist, I was enlightened further. In the education field, the main jobs listed were SAT tutors-- mainly math -- and preschools. Nothing about teaching arts integration, poetry or drama, my "areas." By the way, there are no theater or arts categories on Craigslist, Under TV and media, I found listings for video editors, and top models. Being over 60 and overweight, I will not be applying for Top Model any time soon. In other categories there were ads for cooks and experienced retail sales people,

I started to wonder about the future of liberal arts education and the difficulty in second guessing what job openings there might happen to be at the time people are seeking work. The best advice for our students appeared to be get a college major in the fields most likely to have job openings, and quickly. Or else get any B.A. and then get specific vocational training. At the same time, I contrasted the time-honored advice from respected successful people that the best way to prepare for your future is to "follow your passion."

My head spinning, I came back to the arts and to my parents' advice many years ago. "The arts are something you do on the side while you work in a 'regular' job." I worked minimum wage for a while in my twenties to support my "music habit." If this is what it takes to keep the arts alive, so be it. But I continue to believe that arts in education indeed prepares our students for future careers and most importantly, for life.

Founding

2010-07-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

(For some reason I can't type titles and labels that are more than one word, without English turning into Hindi. Searching setting and editing options brings no results. Fascinating!) Today's blog follows, hopefully in English as well as other languages.

We sat at his kitchen table. Fred, a wonderful volunteer from Volunteers for the Arts, was helping me fill out Opera Piccola's mysteriously long Oakland Cultural Arts grant proposal. It was 1989. I remember that Fred's tiny table had one leg shorter than the others, so it jiggled as we examined "four year budget history," and "schedule of proposed activities." It was my first grant proposal, and miraculously, we received $3,000 to present school assemblies and library shows around Oakland.

A few months before, my best friend Margaret Arighi had won our non profit status by filling out more endless government forms. In a whirlwind of administrative activity, she was immediately elected to the high status post of Treasurer of the Board of Directors. This august body was composed that first year of any friend I could find to lend his/her name to our letterhead and attend monthly meetings at Margaret's dinner table. Incredibly, each friend/member had complementary skills.

Our Business Center was the bedroom of the Oakland home where I lived with my husband and sons. "You brought the check register?" Treasurer Arighi asked for the bookkeeping records that back then were kept in our checkbook-- until my car was burglarized and the checkbook stolen with our month's records in it. Quicken and Quickbooks had not been created. For years I used a typewriter and white-out to create our annual brochure. Proud of my expertise with scissors and glue, I cut, pasted, and xeroxed these amazing documents, followed by labeling, bundling and lengthy discussions with the less-than-impressed clerks at the Oakland Bulk Mail Center.

Our regular Staff Meetings were loud and exciting, as our combined total of 4 sons munched cereal, banged plastic hammers, called and leaped in the background. We filled the teapot at least three times and Margaret instructed me in the exciting routines of "Cash Expense List" and "Budgeting for Next Fiscal Year." For someone who had barely passed high school math, I stunned our Board with my almost exact estimation of our income and expenses every year.

Several people recently asked me how to found a non profit. After reflecting on our first year, my 8 Step Method is simple. 1) Gather together a few friends and folks with similar interests. 2) Fill out the non profit forms in gatherings supported by great refreshments. 3) Form a Board of Directors. 4) Create and love an amazing mission. 5) Schedule regular board and staff meetings (even if they are all volunteers). 6) Find funding. 7) Try to recycle paper-- the paperwork gobbles up entire forests. 8) Be surprised and grateful for each success; try not to worry about rejections.

ethics

2010-07-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

I heard a heated discussion on the radio this week about the woman sentenced to stoning in Iran. I had no idea how brutal a form of execution this is, undoubtedly cruel and unusual punishment.

The two sides of the debate boiled down to: can those outside a culture or legal system have the right to criticize or impose their view of ethics/morality on that culture? Does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have a right to apply? Women and men called in from all over the world on this radio program, presented by the BBC. The discussion also referred to the current debate in France, where there is a new law forbidding women to wear veils that cover their faces. One caller referred to a news report of a woman killing her daughter-in-law for having an affair (considered a crime in her culture); when the woman's daughter testified against her in the U.S. murder trial, the daughter was ostracized and event threatened by her community.

When we talked about these issues in my high school drama class, about 95% of the group thought that countries and cultures have a right to pursue the customs of their religion without interference. "It's their religion," they said. A few students thought it depended on the situation.

How far is too far? Was the verdict in the Mehserle case right? Is what some people call our "occupation" of Afghanistan based on saving human rights, or protecting financial interests? Is lethal injection a violation of human rights, and if so, do other countries have the right to invade us to prevent it? What about genital mutilation as a coming of age custom still in practice?

The next day, the news reported that Iran was not proceeding with the stoning sentence for the woman.

These are all questions that our education should prepare us to face. How are we doing?

vacation

2010-07-06T12:02:00.000-07:00

Apologies, am taking a short holiday this week. A reminder: teachers don't really get what may seem like two months off in the summer. They are life long learners who attend professional development in the summer or teach summer school or summer camp. I am enjoying the World Cup and the weather; more blogging next week.

Turnover

2010-06-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

June. A time for endings and new beginnings. Summer solstice turns spring into summer. Graduations and weddings. School year ends, non profit fiscal year ends. Boxes and suitcases are packed to leave one place and move to another. Many teachers are laid off, many leave the profession for other fields. Hopeful new teachers start credentialing programs.

This month, I packed up my students' folders, my teaching materials, my keyboard, snack supplies, pens, containers. I cleaned out my tiny cubicle “office” at Oakland Tech High School. I went back and forth in the heat, past forgotten text books and pencils on the floor, and loaded everything into my stuffed car. I said goodbye to my favorite colleagues and to my students, and drove through the gate with mixed sadness and relief. At home, I went through my folders for Elmhurst Community Prep, for Berkeley Arts Magnet, for San Leandro High, my chorus music, my poetry samples. I recycled old papers, filed copies for next year, wrote final reports.

So many times in life we do this. Pack up, finish up, shut the door, say goodbye. I remember at the age of 21 loading my used old Turtle-back Volvo, as I said good- bye to my parents and the East Coast and moved to my new job as a news reporter in Chicago. Not for the first time or the last, I felt the sadness of ending a chapter of my life and the excitement of a new beginning.

On June 30 I will finish a 21-year chapter as founding Artistic Director of Opera Piccola. I will work for Opera Piccola as consultant and teaching artist, but no longer as Artistic Director. Founders usually let go leadership at some point so that their organizations can move into a new future. The challenges of a changed global economy make this an excellent time for me to exit Opera Piccola's stage so that new leadership can bring on exciting new directions.

Opera Piccola will continue to provide ArtGate, the award winning arts education program in the public schools, directed by Corrina Marshall and Candace Workman. I will be presenting Opera Piccola's multicultural Community Performance shows separately, under a new name: SWEET Theater; Susannah Wood Education Express Theater.

Endings and beginnings. The seasons turn.

Change

2010-06-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

Just watched "The Cove," and it got me thinking about change. So much is needed: global warming, turf wars, education policy, poverty, hunger, human rights. This documentary did bring about some change in Taiji, Japan. But slaughter of thousands of dolphins will continue there in that tiny killing cove six months out of every year, unless -- what? More children die of mercury poisoning from eating dolphin meat? Murky,underwater images stick in my mind of swimmers in wet suits with wire cutters opening fences that imprisoned the amazing animals.

What changes are needed in public education? How might we free more children to enjoy learning, to love discovering new things? Is it possible without massive socio-economic change? We hail the few schools where students are ready for the Ivy League "even though" in low income neighborhoods. But why do third grade children from wealthier areas where parents have college degrees write at the same level or better than some high school juniors from low income areas where families did not attend college? We like to find out whose fault this is: the teachers, the lack of resources, the parents, TV, the students themselves? How did those few schools and students succeed? And how do we define success in public education anyway? Most long time teachers will tell you that success should not be about test scores.

In the movie, change was driven by a few passionate, determined, persistent people who had emotional and statistical reasons for pursuit of their goals. Their actions demonstrated a commitment to whatever it took: heroism. It started with one man, the former trainer of Flipper, who had an 360 degree about face when Flipper became depressed and "committed suicide" in his arms. Very slowly he gathered collaborators around the world, getting arrested many times in the process. It takes Heroes to change Systems.

Before and After

2010-06-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Are you going to teach this class next year?

June 7th, 6:30 PM. The cafeteria was warm, with lemony sunlight through floor to ceiling windows. The expected rust and white square tile flooring. Tables, old wooden chairs, wheeled carts with ketchup and mustard. Parents, brothers and sisters, and a few visitors gathered near the stainless steel kitchen to see and hear a small group of student poets and dancers. These San Leandro High School freshmen and seniors were beginners who said there wasn't much to do after school except to go to tutoring. They told the group that our program gave them a chance to make friends, have fun, be creative, and learn something new. They looked back and were proud of what they'd done by the end of this short six week program, meeting only once or twice a week. It wasn't slick, it wasn't professional, but they had persisted and it was good.

May, 2007. An old fashioned auditorium at Sankofa Elementary, Oakland. Kindergarteners and first graders burst through the door behind us and came marching down the aisle. "I AM SOMEBODY, I AM SOMEBODY," they chanted in rhythm with the drummer. They wore their African fabric waist bands proudly. The audience cheered as the children showed us their dances.

But before, when they started? They thought it might be boring or take up too much time from other things.Certain other students "got on their nerves." They felt shy reading their poems or dancing in front of the others.

Before and after. An experience of some kind of transformation. We look back and realize we created something, became something, persisted through difficulty and came out the other side. As the school year winds down, we artists who teach in after school programs once again experience our reward. Through the challenges -- absences, sudden room changes, crowding, noise, fights, freezing rain, broken heaters, illness -- when we share what we've done with an audience and look back, it becomes clear. And we want to do it all again next year.

Writing it down

2010-06-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

I'm late.. the inevitable dash to the end of school. But I need a moment to honor the essence of some poems written by my middle school students at Elmhurst Community Prep. This was a short project Opera Piccola provided at the last possible moment before summer break.

When invited to express "emotion recollected in tranquility," Wordsworth's definition of poetry, almost 100% of the sixth grade participants expressed passionate grief at death 'for no reason.' They were also asked to quote lines that were meaningful to them, from a book or newspaper, as part of the poem. If I hadn't known what country the piece below came from, I might think it was written by a child living in Iraq or Afghanistan. But then the quote from Martin Luther King Jr reminded me that wars have happened here too. In Eva's words:

"My heart cries when a family member is killed,when
I see bullet shots flying around
I have a dream; I have a dream that there’ll soon be peace

I have a dream; I have a dream there will not be a funeral close by
I have a dream; I have a dream that nightmare will be over!
I can’t forget those bullet shot sounds Boom Boom"

The Life I Chose

2010-05-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

"Yay, Ms. Wood, you're here!"
"Drama Class, yay!"
"Ms. Wood, look, I drew the chocolate factory!"
"I'm the Wall! See, I put my head in here!"

I've been doing a "side by side" professional development drama project with second grade classes in Berkeley. There's no doubt in my mind that I am seven years old at heart. I experience the exact same joy -- no, ecstasy -- when I pretend to be a character in a story. My exhaustion, back aches, and cynicism disappear. I'm jumping up and down, on fire, laughing, excited, full of ideas. Sure enough, when we did our skits for the parents this week the kids were on fire, jumping up and down too. The energy level and ecstatic joy were palpable in those class rooms.

When I asked my second graders the next day what they liked about our project (during an attempt at an evaluation "focus group"),they couldn't stop talking about being this or that character in the story. I felt as if my questions were a waste of their time. Yes, they liked the team work, speaking more loudly, writing scripts, reading scrips, playing theater games, etc. But, duh! It's about acting out the story and especially being the characters we like to pretend to be. As a good educator I'm supposed to guide them in realizing all the different academic and life skills they're gaining from the arts. Yes, we did some of that, but come on! Acting out stories is pure fun! Being a team is pure fun! Performing our stories for friends and parents is pure fun! !!!!

The children wrote me a big bag of thank you letters. One of the notes knocked me to the floor. Kendall (a genius in my opinion) wrote the usual encomiums, then added: "I know teaching is reall hard. But this is the life you chose." Wow, can he be my psychiatrist? That sums it up. The fun and playing with my seven-year-old peers of any age make it worth it.

Endangered Species

2010-05-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

Oakland Youth Chorus used to sing a piece entitled, "The Artist is an Endangered Species." How apt.

Yesterday, Opera Piccola's 15 amazing teaching artists gathered for our last staff meeting of the school year. Over and over, the stories they told inspired us with the way their teaching helps children and youth grow and learn. Dance, drama, music, poetry, visual art; story upon story. Kids who couldn't sit still and listen to each other play the drums now can listen and appreciate. Youth who were too shy to read out loud in front of anyone are now up on stage in a play. Small children who barely have any science in their curriculum are presenting a "launch" of the rockets they made themselves with our artist. And so on.

We ended the meeting with a creative eight-word "Life Story of An Artist." Lofty words encapsulated lives: commit, inhale, fly, discover, fail, bounce back. But the final word was "broke." Our society has made progress on appreciating the arts (as opposed to entertainment), but the money is not where the mouth is. So many artists I know do not have health insurance, do not have vehicles, lack printers for their computers, struggle to make expenses every single week.

Yet we have kept on. Will only the independently wealthy be able to afford the luxury of being an artist in the future?

Positive Negative

2010-05-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

Drama has been removed from education for a while now. But it always surprises me when people say that if you show a negative subject in a play, you are "glorifying" it. No matter that we have much worse "negative" topics and images in movies, tv and video games. Painful parts of the human experience come across so much more powerfully in theater, or so it would seem based on the reactions people have.

For example, a high school play has a shooting in it, audience members sometimes conclude that the presenters approve of shootings and/or violence. Hmm... On the contrary, in a school setting students and teacher work hard to make sure that their play demonstrates the consequences of said shooting, so that the audience can see for themselves the agonizing effects of violence on individual and community and.. make better choices! Likewise, does showing the effects of drug addiction in a play mean that the actors approve of drug addiction? No! From ancient cultures on, tragic drama's role was to purge painful feelings of loss and grief as the audience witnesses powerful stories of the human condition. Quite the opposite of approving the negative side of life.

I am interested to see the reaction to our Oakland Tech High School students' May 25 presentation of their original play, "Bad Habits; Addiction & Hopes for a Better World." It gives a peek into the drug culture of the pop music world and the effects of one young man's addiction, ending in his realization that he needs to get help. Does this story approve addictive drugs and gangs simply by showing the negative effects of the character's choices?

Perhaps if drama returns to the curriculum people will understand its powerful, transforming role in society.

Spring Sprint

2010-05-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

The mad dash to the end of school. The mad dash to the end of the fiscal year. The mad dash to close the books, plan next year, complete projects in the schools, celebrate, cajole, perform, write, submit grades, attend meetings, make props, send fliers, add, subtract, phone, fax, copy, staple, email, tweet, drive, load in/out, shop, respond to family complaints about why you're so busy; it's Non Profit Arts and Education!

Of course in the back of my mind is the global context, which could be named Bleak House. School principals are cutting their budgets. Grant makers' funds have shrunk. Costs go up, income goes down. Lay offs. Global warming and war exhaust the news.

But it's spring and the flowers are out. Last week the sun started to turn up the Bleak House lights, just a little. Metaphors turned over, and suddenly we saw the words of our students filling the proverbial glass to more than half full.

"Little did I know that although it was extremely short, (your summer program) would be a life changing moment for me – someone who lacked inspiration and passion in life other than indulging myself into eating, watching television and imagining myself living in different time periods. Opera Piccola made me see the world and people through a new perspective. Many thanks to the Opera Piccola program for giving me this opportunity to explore dance and trigger my passion and meaning for life!" ~Meisze Phung

"Opera Piccola saved my life. I was almost kicked out of school and really troubled You really believed in me ... you let me know that I made a huge difference to the company with the work I was doing." ~Graduate of our high school and intern program

"I'm still doing what got me started with you when i was just a little kid who wanted to be in the little play at middle school." ~Kenneth Foreman

Open Minded or Safe?

2010-05-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

Familiarity breeds contempt. Variety is the spice of life. Reach for the stars. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

High school students cite boredom and pressure as two major factors in drop out rates or failing grades. The slogans above certainly point to the importance of variety, newness, and creativity in human experience. Yet why does my group of Juniors and Seniors react so adversely to the unfamiliar? Unfamiliar class activities, unusual scripts, costumes from previous centuries, all bring choruses of protest. And speaking of chorus, the music issue. Yells of protest from every corner greet recordings or sheet music that are from the distant past or in a style completely unknown, as "not cool," or "not good music." Excited conversations grow from comparing notes on hits that "everyone" has heard. But shouldn't logic suggest the attractiveness of newness, of difference, to relieve the boredom that students detest. Why the love of the familiar, the already experienced, and where is the desire for risk and adventure in learning?

This trend is not just a high school phenomenon. I'm informed by market researchers that current audiences go online to see a show on YouTube or hear an artist's album before buying. They want something they already know they'll like.

Oakland school district administrators point to recent successes from adjusting curriculum to be more relevant to students' lives; connecting the material to familiar experiences. This is a technique we've used in Opera Piccola since our beginnings: "start where they are." And yet it's puzzling that we teachers have such difficulty in helping our students move beyond the familiar to the huge, unknown, fascinating world beyond. Perhaps the uncertainty of our world is just too much to take, and we long to stick to the safety of what we already know.
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Why Teach?

2010-04-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

As a theater artist, I think a lot about objectives, intentions, purpose. It's a concept that helps me sometimes, unexpectedly.

We've all been at the meetings that wander from individuals grandstanding about the wonderful things they do, to Power Point presentations, to "opportunities" to sign up or donate. I can often make sense of what's going on-- as I sit in a customarily uncomfortable seat in a room that's either too cold or too hot-- by trying to figure out: what's the main, important thing this meeting is trying to accomplish? What is the real objective behind the lists and big agenda?

Likewise, teaching. As I think about the current negotiations between Oakland public school teachers and the district, the upcoming one-day strike, relatively low pay, poor working conditions, pressure and stress on our teachers, I wonder: why do they teach, some teachers for 30 or more years? Same for the students, many who seem highly disaffected by high school. Why bother? Why even set foot in a classroom? Same for the school district administrators: why are they doing what they're doing? What would result if they were able to stay focused on their real purpose? Why do logistics, and the idea of how things "should" be, so often change our goals?

When I was a student about three quarters of the time I was just trying to get a decent grade and do what was assigned so I could pass or graduate, without thinking of the 'real' reason. But for a blissful one quarter (maybe even less), I burned with curiosity to know, to argue, to ferret out some sort of truth for myself. Concern about passing or graduation disappeared. A class felt like fun.

Similarly now, when I go in to teach a drama or poetry class, I'm thinking of requirements, expectations, product quality, grades, student behavior, etc. Is this the real reason I teach? I hope not. So much of my thoughts as I prepare and teach a class feel burdensome. What would happen if I entered a classroom to teach focused on my real reasons for being there? I like teaching because at the core of the experience it's fun, it's learning with my students, it's sudden discovery, it's connecting with the surprise of young minds, it's the joy of creating, it's feeling like we can transform our lives in the process of making a play or poem, it's finding out what is worthwhile in life, it's seeing something emerge from all of our ideas put together- some sort of Beauty and Truth.

How does that connect with contract negotiations? I don't know, but I know I won't cross the picket line because I am so grateful for what our Oakland teachers do every day. My sons went to Oakland public schools and experienced moments of care by teachers that got them through extreme challenges. Teaching is an art, whether you're teaching the arts or biology. Perhaps if teachers and district negotiators are able to focus on the main objective, on what is important about their work, some transformation will take place. There is so much Beauty and Truth in the Oakland schools. How can we nurture and treasure it?

Numbers

2010-04-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

As an artist, I'm not particularly fond of measuring, being required to fill out quantitative data for grant proposals and add up points for grades, in a process that sometimes seems arbitrary. However, numbers seized my attention this week, bringing a new respect for the humble digit.

Half listening to public radio on the car radio, my foggy consciousness heard: "I would say we have to have an economy that isn't based on growth." Hmm. Not possible, since the way we "measure" how well our economy is doing is based on a growth model, isn't it? That started me thinking, since we're all worried about jobs and budgets.

Then the newspaper: "Broken Promises," shouted the Tribune headline today. Thinking it was another senator's scandal, I picked up the paper. Hmm. I see. The promise of low cost, higher education for all in California has slipped away compared to 50 years ago. For some reason, I decided to type in 'US Economy' on the internet.

A New York Times article reassured me that there are fewer recessions now than there used to be. Great, I had no idea! Wikipedia was a little less optimistic. There were lots of different sections in that article and -- wow! Look at all those percentages letting me know what went up and what went down! To my surprise, this article had a section on Education, my area of interest, being a part time arts educator. Hmm. We're 15th out of 29 rated countries in college completion, just above Turkey and Mexico. This is so interesting, I could do this all day.

But then, sadly, I scrolled to the section on Employment. I knew most of it already, from my own job situation and the struggles of those around me, old and young. But the numbers? The numbers I read today were harsh, if true. What do we as educators in the Oakland Public Schools make of it? Perhaps our new Superintendent is right: the focus of our high schools from now on will be in training and placing young people in jobs. The numbers I read are for the entire U.S., so California would be a bit different, but here they are:

"The unemployment among African-Americans continues to be much higher than white unemployment (at 14.9% vs. 8.6%).[46] The youth unemployment rate was 18.5% in July 2009, the highest July rate since 1948.[51] 34.5% of young African American men were unemployed in October 2009.[52] Officially, Detroit’s unemployment rate is 27%, but Detroit News suggests that nearly half of this city’s working-age population may be unemployed."

Point of View

2010-04-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

Ask two witnesses to tell you exactly what happened, and more often than not you'll get two very different reports. This is the wonderful thing about teaching in the arts: instead of starting with an adult picture of things, we get to ask the children (or teens) first what they think. And it's always wonderful to notice differences in perception.

For example, a second grader recently greeted me with the remark, "When I saw you, I thought you were a beautiful princess!" But from a teenager in my high school class: "Ms. Susannah, you could be on that (TV) show about 'what NOT to wear!'"

It's really one of the best things about teaching.. the surprises from discovering students' points of view. When asked why students drop out of high school, a random sampling of my juniors and seniors reported differing reasons:
1. they can't handle the pressure and the work is too hard so they drop out
2. they're lazy, have other interests, and don't want to do the work so they drop out

My lovely second graders were quite knowledgeable this week about ocean life, describing it eloquently with hands drawing shapes in the air. "I've SEEN coral, and it's wavy up and down like this. It's soft." "I should be the one to draw the coral. It's a big block. It's hard with holes in it and the fish can go in the holes." When exploring how to show setting in a play, the learning happens in the wondering and questioning. One answer leads to another question and another answer and so forth, in a process that seems like a kind of forensics. Too often, I've seen the yawns and glazed eyes when I set out the total picture for my students ready-made. At times I have to simply teach basic skills or information, but when a class is really exciting, it seems as if we're all teaching each other.

Where does appreciating another's point of view end and deciding on the "right" course begin? For example, in the case of determining what is torture at Guantanamo, or which services to cut in order to solve the budget deficit. Will our educational system prepare our students for solving life's complex problems?

A New Day?

2010-04-04T18:44:00.000-07:00

The mainstream media is announcing a new day of the "improved economy." Heartened, I spent a week attending official meetings that hinted at future hope. I went to a strategic planning meeting of the Oakland Unified School District, a Broad Based Coalition meeting of the Oakland Unified School District, and an Oakland City Council budget committee hearing. Our government agencies hard at work.

The fact that these bodies allow public comment/input, and appear to listen, is extremely laudable. The fact that these august bodies are talking about distribution of pennies to bail out the sinking boat of education, the arts and city services(don't you love to mix metaphors?), is horrible. Cuts, cuts, cuts and more cuts.

The programs and plans discussed at all these meetings were wonderful. The language soared. The hopes and dreams soared even higher. The charts handed out gave a feeling of things being done, progress being made, problems solved. This is what we're going to do and isn't it wonderful? I can hardly wait for these things to materialize, these things being announced.

But why is it that the directors of Oakland non profits talk about cutting positions, cutting programs, possible closing? Why has the Oakland City Council proposed a 50% cut in funding to arts organizations and artists? Why are many schools laying off arts teachers in order to keep "more basic" programs running?

The new day is back to the old day: wealthier areas will continue to have more resources and options for their children; poorer areas will continue to have less. All the high sounding speeches about equity and focusing on those "needing intervention" are no more than clanging cymbals. Artists will continue to create, as we always have, but I wonder how many children won't discover the arts because their parents don't have the resources to pay for them?

Fact or belief or truth?

2010-03-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

As this week of importance for Jews and Christians begins-- Holy Week and Passover-- I've been thinking about belief, fact and truth. How do we help students prepare for the future beyond just ingesting information and building skills for citizenship or the workplace? Is educating the "whole child" a realistic option?

This week I heard an interesting exchange among students in my high school drama class who are normally not very engaged (just in the class because counselors told them they needed these credits). I had asked them to do a quick-write about one of the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The students at one table started talking about the right to freedom of thought. Two students said they believed that God made the Earth and its inhabitants. Another student said she was an atheist.

I didn't handle this the way I wanted. What I later wanted to do was to extend the discussion, to say, "Hey, I'm so glad you're looking at Human Rights and seeing how they apply to you personally. I applaud the fact that you are thinking. And by the way, do you think it's worth it to kill someone whose religion believes differently from yours?" I missed the chance to talk about Darwin and the history of this topic in our country, and the importance of respecting each other's beliefs, and the importance of separation of Church and State.

It reminded me of another incident that occurred in the early 1980's in my work in Oakland publc schools. We were doing a musical show that traced historical periods in the U.S. I happened to quote writers about early America, all of whom said that Native Americans immigrated to this continent many thousands of years ago. After the concert, I was confronted by a delegation of fifth grade Native American students, who accused me of prejudice and mis-information. For them, quoting various historians was quoting falsehood Native Americans were here from the beginning of history. There was no immigration from elsewhere. This was clearly a fact in their minds, not a belief. And perhaps it is a fact. I am grateful for what I learned from these passionate students.

As a drama and creative writing teacher in public schools, I find matters of belief come up fairly often. It seems important to allow students to talk about these things-- topics that are important to real lives. What is the truth? As long as we are not forcing our own belief system upon our students, I believe it's valuable to let the study of one topic bring up discussion about another, to respect different beliefs, and to explore choices. If we are so afraid of exploring beyond the prescribed subjects, we will miss opportunities for minds to flower.

Perhaps we can plant the seeds of tolerance, and learn the lessons of wars over religion. Perhaps this week I'll be able to make up for the opportunity I missed last week.

Education reform

2010-03-21T17:44:00.000-07:00

A while ago I wrote about teacher/student burnout and the cuts to education in California.
Something connected happened in a second grade drama class I was teaching in Berkeley yesterday. We were playing a warm up game called "Brain P.E." in which kids have 10-20 seconds to make little lists, as a precursor to using spontaneous thinking for improvisation. When I asked for a list of 3 things they'd like to change about the world, one boy wrote, "No School," as well as "no violence." A few hours later, I read five brilliant essays by Mike Rose in Truth Dig online magazine (recommended!), titled "Why Send Kids to School?" His comments feel important, because with a new national policy under consideration for schools, I want to know how it will affect my students.

Remember, I also noted that teachers have been pegged as the problem in the high stakes education game. Recent studies reported that the schools that were "successful" when No Child Left Behind started are still successful, and many of those that were "failing" in the past are still not doing well, in spite of massive restructuring. Could it be that teachers are being asked to fix society's and the system's ills? Well, here's what Rose says:

Rose: "When children are raised in communities where economic opportunity has dramatically narrowed, where the future is bleak, their perception of and engagement with school will be negatively affected.... the business community has not thought deeply about the profound effect economic despair can have on school achievement.... (nor have people considered) the negative influence of commercially driven verbal and imagistic messages that surround our young people.. that work against the very qualities of mind the community says it wants schools to foster... our young people grow up on an economy of glitz and thunder. The ads that shape their needs and interests champion appearance over substance, power over thought... highlight glamour and poise over knowledge and blur fact as simulation."

Me: But why do we need school for our children? Why not agree with my second grader, who finds school unnecessary? Can we all home school? Can everyone study online and settle for occasional live contact with a teacher?

Rose: "The answer given for decades... is that education prepares the young for the world of work and enables the nation to maintain global pre-eminence... but the tendency in current social policy is toward magic bullet solutions that are simplified responses to complex problems... the current philosophy of education is an economic one: the primary goal of school is to create efficient workers."

Me: Some truth here. For example, when I asked my high school students why they should finish school and go to college, the unanimous answer was, "to get a good job and make money." But somehow this idea (they've learned it from adults) results in school being perceived as a kind of holding pen before being released into an automatic High Paying Job, or the NFL, NBA, WNBA, etc. There's something missing. What about curiosity, the pure fun of looking up a new word to see what it means, or being able to imagine solutions and try them out? And how would an economic purpose for going to school relate to the experience my Chorus students just had, doing a solo song recital on Wednesday? Words escape me to describe the joy of hearing each individual voice, touching lyrics, beautiful melodies emerge, the sound so true and lovely, in spite of nerves and the stage of technique each singer showed. Can going to school to get a job result in the human experience of shedding tears in the presence of beauty and truth, or the excitement, pride, and opening of hearts of those singers?

Rose. "In the current talk about school reform, there is one phrase you will hear in every proposal: 21st century skills. These include the ability to use a range of electronic technologies ... to think critically and creatively and evaluate the product of one's thinking. The ability to communicate effectively and collaborate with others. .. what's new about these skills?.. Some of these you'll find in Aristotle. But there are topics you won't find in these lists: aesthetics, intellectual play, imagination, the pleasure of a subject, wonder. The focus of the 21st century skills lists is utility and workplace productivity..... But, the one thing that's become clear to me after 40 years of teaching is the multiple purposes and meanings that education can have. It provides intellectual stimulation.... protected social setting.... connections to adults... our world gets bigger... a place where we define who we are."

Me: Amen to Mr. Rose's conclusions. There are so many reasons for our young people to go to school, not the least learning to appreciate the rich, diverse cultures on our planet and our common humanity. Not to mention, building the values and character it takes to become a responsible, thoughtful, caring adult.

2010-03-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

A while ago I wrote about teacher/student burnout and the cuts to education in California.

Something connected happened in a second grade drama class I was teaching in Berkeley yesterday. We were playing a warm up game called "Brain P.E." in which kids have 10-20 seconds to make little lists, as a precursor to using spontaneous thinking for improvisation. When I asked for a list of 3 things they'd like to change about the world, one boy wrote, "No School," as well as "no violence." A few hours later, I read five brilliant essays by Mike Rose in Truth Dig online magazine (recommended!), titled "Why Send Kids to School?" His comments feel important, because with a new national policy under consideration for schools, I want to know how it will affect my students.

Remember, I also noted that teachers have been pegged as the problem in the high stakes education game. Recent studies reported that the schools that were "successful" when No Child Left Behind started are still successful, and many of those that were "failing" in the past are still not doing well, in spite of massive restructuring. Could it be that teachers are being asked to fix society's and the system's ills?

But why do we need school for our children? Why not agree with my second grader, who finds school unnecessary? Can we all home school? Can everyone study online and settle for occasional live contact with a teacher?

When I asked my high school students why they should finish school and go to college, the unanimous answer was, "to get a good job and make money." But somehow this idea (they've learned it from adults) results in school being perceived as a kind of holding pen before being released into an automatic High Paying Job, or the NFL, NBA, WNBA, etc. There's something missing. What about curiosity, the pure fun of looking up a new word to see what it means, or being able to imagine solutions and try them out? And how would an economic purpose for going to school relate to the experience my Chorus students just had, doing a solo song recital on Wednesday? Words escape me to describe the joy of hearing each individual voice, touching lyrics, beautiful melodies emerge, the sound so true and lovely, in spite of nerves and the stage of technique each singer showed. Can going to school to get a job result in the human experience of shedding tears in the presence of beauty and truth, or the excitement, pride, and opening of hearts of those singers.

There are so many reasons for our young people to go to school, not the least learning to appreciate the diverse cultures on our planet and our common humanity. Not to mention, building the values and character it takes to become a responsible, thoughtful, caring adult.

Market Economy Re-Interpreted

2010-03-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

Alright, I am an artist and a teaching artist. I spend a lot of time interpreting texts and teaching others to do so. There are gigabytes of literary interpretation in the world but still, some mystery remains. For example, the old children's rhyme: "This little piggy went to market" (working title for all I know). It remains unexplained. In light of the current non profit and economic crisis, I will make an Attempt, hopefully with the creative rigor the work is due. Let me begin. Ahem.

The ancient rhyme, "This little piggy went to market," sheds light on early understandings of the economic forces inherent in Western capitalism and had a profound influence on Adam Smith. The first line, "this little piggy went to market," clearly refers to the small stratum of the population with purchasing power. This first piggy represents the gainfully employed, perhaps with health insurance. Underlying the text is the implication that this shopper also had transportation, as it does not say, "walked to market." We also see here a monopoly, there being only one Market. This piggy's primary position in the text means that the Purchaser with money has status in the applicable culture.

The second line, "this little piggy stayed home," raises serious questions. Was the piggy ill, unemployed, lazy, or an oppressed female required stay home to do the housework and take care of the children? (The gender of the two piggy's we've studied so far is not indicated.) Or perhaps this second piggy had to stay home to fix the plumbing, which had flooded the bathroom. Note that the word 'home' will be the rhyming word, anticipating its importance in the text. In actuality, here we have the first hint of the ups and downs of the Market. The population stays home in an economic downturn. The poor stay home because of no money; the rich stay home waiting for deliveries.

The third line, "this little piggy had roast beef," points to the essence of the Market Economy: lack of equity. Roast beef is a metaphor for the good life, the American Dream of being high on the food chain. And the next line brings it pitilessly home: "this little piggy had none," a fourth line that speaks volumes. No elaboration, too bad little guy, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, no bail-out or even food stamps for you.

The last line is the most challenging of all: "This little piggy cried, 'Wee, wee, wee, wee, wee!' all the way home!" Was he euphoric from his shopping trip, on drugs, lamenting his smallness (wee bitty thing) or needing to use the restroom? Perhaps he was looking forward to time on the internet and history has foretold a misspelled wii. Or he's lonely and wants to find the 4 other pigs, or being an intellectual, he has read the story about the 3 little pigs and knows the wolf is around the corner. I will boldly offer my own answer to decades of confusion among generations of children. The fifth line clearly refers to one of two things: the last piggy either just won the lottery or he/she works for a non profit arts organization.

Ah, what propaganda hath our nursery rhyme wrought? As with all good literary interpretation, the final choice is up to you, the reader.

Teacher Student Burn Out

2010-03-07T14:18:00.000-08:00

The rallies and demonstrations on Thursday in behalf of public education came at the right time. This is the point in the year when teacher and student moods often reflect the gray weather -- thank goodness the sun came out today! We all feel as if we've been in the classroom for months and months and months (we have), but the end is not close. As an arts provider that is both in the class room teaching and also an observer of public education, I see and feel the pain.

Burn out. Students say they're bored, teachers say they're tired. It's common knowledge that teachers often leave a school after teaching for five years, and sometimes leave the field altogether after a few years. Why? Teaching is completely consuming: for some, it feels as if it takes every ounce of energy you have. And it's not just the actual hours spent teaching students or preparing lessons. It's calling the parents, grading, keeping up with the latest online charts, going to countless meetings, mentoring, student club advisor, senior project advisor, buying supplies out of pocket, etc.

So when bad things happen, like the recent round of thefts at a school, or students are fractious, we teachers are pushed over, beyond, under and around the edge. I spoke with one wonderful teacher who is leaving to explore the world of Not-Teaching. In fact, teaching is ruining her health. And when more money is spent on prisons than on education, when teachers are blamed for everything from poor test scores to student stealing, when chairs in classrooms have seats too torn and jagged to sit on, when parents threaten teachers for their child's bad grade, teaching looks indeed like a bad deal. Especially in winter.

But in the spring, when we can see the last day of school coming and students are starting to demonstrate that they've learned, teaching may once again look like the Noble Profession it really is and should be. In some countries people stand up when a teacher enters the room and the arts are considered essential to life! Can we just shift our own country's priorities and money back to the arts and to education? Perhaps then we'll see less winter burn out and fewer great teachers leaving the students they really love, to do something else.

Mutuality

2010-02-28T09:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I've talked before about Opera Piccola's interactive folk tales for multigenerational audiences, and how amazing those experiences are for us actors. This past Friday we performed our African tale, "The Stolen Aroma," for two different Oakland groups: a school for troubled children and a family homeless shelter. This is a show created for our company, with text by Oakland's own Beverly Jarrett and jazz composer Wes Riley.

There's no way to tell who had more fun-- Gift Harris and I (the performers) or the fifteen children who played the roles of the Cooks and the Elders. You might expect that children needing a special school, or homeless children, might not be the best choice to improvise complex audience volunteer roles without any preparation other than, "help the puppy," or "do what Imo says."

Wrong!

Both groups of 4 to 8 year old volunteers were the best that I can remember -- and we've done over a hundred performances of this piece. The children zapped totally into being their charcters at once, and stayed there (some continued enacting multiple characters from the story afterwards while we were packing up; one 8 year old Cook suddenly talking to me in a perfect African accent that he had not had before the show). It's hard to describe the thrill of playing a scene with a child who stuns me with some new angle to the story with his/her improvisation.

"Don't go over there, I'm warning you," said one 6 year old Elder wisely to my character (Slough Dog). "Yes, I've been lost in the desert, and I was soooo scared," sympathized another Elder when asked. "No, you can't share the food," said one loyal 5 year old Cook, determined to be Employee of the Year to the rich, greedy Imo. "Even though Imo isn't coming back? I haven't had anything to eat in five days!" "Well, okay, but just one piece."

Adult actors study for years to achieve this magical melding of self and character in order to be faithful to a powerful story. Actor's Workshop, you should have been there at the group home and the shelter on Friday. I left floating on a cloud. "The children loved it," the Case Manager said as we left. They weren't the only ones.

Black History Month

2010-02-21T07:21:00.000-08:00

At Oakland Technical High School, where I teach Chorus and Drama through Opera Piccola, we had an amazing Black History assembly on Friday. This whole month in classes so many things have connected to this theme-- even when not initially planned to do so. Setting aside a whole month gives expanded space, opportunity and time.

I asked students of all ethnicities in my classes (African American, Chinese, Filipino, White, Latino) to say what Black History Month means to them. They all agreed. "It's about struggle and overcoming. ... thinking about our ancestors and the heroes who went before us...... to stop racism and hatred...... to try our best now because of what they did."

Music Teacher David Byrd: "What I love is that we accept as part of us anyone who has experienced oppression. I want people to know there are Black people all over the world--India, Middle East, Asia, Europe, Cuba, everywhere-- so I have students learn Brazilian jazz this month."

Valentine's Daze

2010-02-14T15:36:00.000-08:00

I asked high school students (random sampling) how they liked Valentine' s Day. About half said, "it's cool, a chance to tell someone you love them." Another almost half said they hated it. "It hurts when you're alone." "Your girlfriend gets mad if you don't get her a bunch of stuff." There appears to be some pressure or else excitement about purchasing stuff. Good for the economy, good for love?

An older woman shared, "I just broke up with myboyfriend of many years. This happy happy talk is painful."

As I 've been reading about women's rights and feminism this week, a thought stands out. Valentine's establishes women as the princesses who must receive the flowers, candy, jewels from men -- or ... Like the wedding ceremony in which the father "gives away" the bride in marriage, the princess image is disappearing along with other historically patriarchal customs.

Or is it? Disney rakes in cash with ices shows attended by happy young girls in their princess costumes. At a recent Opera Piccola performance, when I asked for volunteers from the audience to help with our show, a little girl said excitedly, "Yes, I'll be the Princess."! Our Mayan folk tale only has costumes for frogs, trees, clouds and wind.

Glee

2010-02-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

"I just loved it so much I have to give every one of you a hug." At Grand Lake Gardens Retirement home.

At AgeSong, for Alzheimer's patients: "Did you see? Stanley said for the whole concert and enjoyed it! He doesn't sit still more than five minutes usually and he's always unhappy."
And, "We don't get serenaded like this very often."

"Can I dance? Your singing gives me- pep!" And: "This was wonderful. I'd like to write a letter to support the program. Who should I write to?" At Piedmont Gardens Retirement home.

Opera Piccola's small chorus at Oakland Tech High -- three young men and ten young women from ninth through 12 grades-- comes sleepily to practice once a week at 7:30 AM. By the time our fifty minutes of vocal technique and learning music is over, we're all feeling pretty good about the day ahead of us. We have to relax, breathe deeply and listen to all the pitches that hang in the air around us. Studies have shown the value of music performance on brains and bodies and emotions, but whatever the science of it, it's true. An interesting thing is that a singer doesn't really get to enjoy hearing his/her own voices while s/he is singing, because it sounds different inside the head from what the "audience" hears. It's better to be in the present, and let go the product.

Singing for the senior citizens yesterday, some of whom were quite ill with dementia, gave us the good feeling of the act of singing but also the good feeling of giving. Especially since our society regards seniors as people who've "lived their lives and had their chance," so we don't really need to pay attention to them. Their listening gave back to us and what a joy it was.

Is Feminism still alive?

2010-01-31T20:19:00.000-08:00

February starts tomorrow. Happy Super Bowl Sunday and Happy Valentine's. On Feb. 14th , 4-6 pm, we're celebrating Leap Year and Valentine's Day at Opera Piccola by asking the question, is feminism alive-- or dead? Leap Year comes in years that are divisible by 4, so we aren't there yet. The myth says that women may ask men to marry them on Feb. 29th. Is this unusual because women weren't permitted be the ones asking? Is marriage an anti-feminist institution?

It's great that artists have an excuse to think about big and little questions like these. Of course there are a million other subjects it might be better to think about in February. But our Second Sundays event happens to fall on Valentine's. It's a chance to stop and think about women's rights and our role(s) as lovers, mothers, daughters, workers, etc etc. Gives me a chance to ask my female students what they think. After all, the high school skirt lengths are way above the knees, some shirts are transparent and as the weather warms up, short short short shorts seem to suggest .. Liberated or sex objects? Pehaps there is no need for feminism in the U.S. because we've achieved our goals. We've certainly come very far since the era in which the TV drama, Mad Men, takes place. I was surprised at the bit of history in that show, in which it was assumed that secretaries were supposed to have sex with their bosses and other men on the job. We are protected now by sexual harrassment laws, right?

We're starting off the discussion on the 14th by reading excerpts from Shahrnush Parsipur's play, set in Iran in the 1950's, "Women without Men." There are still places where beating wives is thought to be normal and necessary, and worse. We're also reading some of a feminist play by Lydia Sargent: "I dreamed I saw My Death in Vogue Magazine."

The current lawsuit on Prop 8 raises other issues around gender, marriage, rights, love, parenting. February 14th, before you go out with your sweetheart, let's talk. Bring a poem, or a song. Is there still room for people to meet and talk, live?
Find out more at www.opera-piccola.org

January

2010-01-24T17:25:00.000-08:00

Small balls of ice are falling from the sky. They cover the high school football field in a white layer. I sit in the car in the school parking lot, huddled against the cold, unable to see through the windows more than a few yards. Suddenly young men and women run yelling, calling, past me. No jackets, racing through the sleet. They scream joyfully, slipping and sliding across the field on the ice. Throwing ice balls. The heavy wetness pours on them. Escaped from the warm class rooms into the frigid wetness. What happiness. If only first semester final exams and SAT exams didn't interrupt January pleasure.

Government grant proposals. 8 copies of each page on hole punched paper, thank you, trees and forests. Double spaced. 3,498 characters, no more! Incomplete proposals will not be considered. Proposals submitted after 3, 4, 5 will not be considered. Provide SASE if you want your work samples returned. Online submissions only. Drop off submissions only. Postmark deadline only. No coffee stains, please.

Why isn't this student attending school? Oh, didn't you know? He transferred out to a program in cosmetology. She transferred out for emotional reasons; her brother was shot and killed. Oh, his father wants him to attend a continuation school so that he can graduate faster. Oh, she moved away from home and we don't know where she is. Oh. Oh. Oh. "But it's only a few weeks just to finish the semester. Can't she / he just finish up the semester and get it completed?" "I guess not...i couldn't reach him/her to get all the facts...."

Ms. Susannah, remember me from last year? When are you coming to our class? umm.. not sure (the funding?).... Ms Susannah, can you come and help me with my day care job at.. Ms Susannah, we need a youth development program here, but our funding is almost non existent... Susannah, let me know how much that performance pays. I have to figure out if I can take off my job that day to perform... . Susannah, I hear you know this student really well, she's failing Spanish and not showing up, can you talk to her? Grades are due, please read the following information guide on how to add up students' points. Susannah, can you do another free performance for us in February? March? April? May? June? Susannah, can you have coffee next week to talk about providing a workshop for us-- sorry our funding got cut. Susannah, can you produce my play, it's great!? Susannah, sorry I can't work with Opera Piccola, I have to take a full time job..

January. Non profit arts.

Equity

2010-01-17T19:39:00.000-08:00

Thinking today of Martin Luther King Jr’s Dream of justice, non violence, equity. Where are we, in the light of the Haiti disaster, the state of education in the U.S., global poverty, ongoing wars? I firmly subscribe to his statement, "let us not wallow in the valley of despair." I too, dream and have seen dreams come true. But the reality is that equity is not apparent to even the casual observer in the Oakland public schools. I teach in both Berkeley and Oakland, and the difference can be painful.

It's no secret that many, or perhaps most, Oakland schools in low income neighborhoods do not have the resources of those in wealthier areas. The reasons for this are very complex, including parents who are active versus parents who are too exhausted to help out or to insist that the school function well. I'm concerned about the growing trend to "reward success" with more money while penalizing students, teachers and schools with poorer scores. It's the opposite of what is needed. Way more attention needs to be paid to each individual student who is dealing with death of a close family member, overwhelmed parent, lack of nutrition, lack of money etc. This kind of intervention takes time, staff and money.

Of course there are resilient students who rise way above impossible circumstances, and many students do well. But it takes time (and money) to sit down with students who appear to not care a fig about school.

from sex education to beauty & truth

2010-01-10T14:13:00.000-08:00

I asked my high school students to write, "If I ran a school.." Many wrote that sex education should be offered every year, that students should be able to take the classes they want to take, and that the school should be stricter, yet allow students to smoke weed and stand in hallways during class. I next asked why sex education seemed so important to most in the group. Students wrote that it was vital in helping to prevent STD's, to inform about an important subject, and to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Students in this admittedly very small sampling of high school students wrote as if it was a given that everyone is sexually active. And yes, over the years I've had 8th grade girls who are pregnant in my classes in middle school. Yes, every year at least one of my high school students has been pregnant. But, how true is it that students are all having sex? It's not only about sex, in spite of raging hormones. Everyone wants love.

At our Second Sundays play reading and open mic event this evening, I was reminded of this. A young man dropped in to the open mic portion of the evening, pulled out his guitar and harmonica and stunned us with the sweetest love song imaginable, written by himself. There was nothing in the song resembling the 'between the sheets" attitude of current pop songs, just a longing for a girl "who would stay," and stay until "old and gray." A woman stood up and sang about how life goes on, every muscle expressing the pain of conflict between those who take and those who give. Another woman shared the beginning of a poem about how we treat the Earth: 43,000 tons of non-recyclable trash per day in the U.S. She told us how the facts listed on the web "are a poem," devastating, condemning.

Our Second Sundays experimental event-- a free evening in which any and all arrivals of all ages explore different plays and share poems or songs-- surprises me every month. It's so different from work-a-day ways we communicate, like "hello how are you" and task-oriented email messages. Each person who attends becomes part of a larger play-surrounding-a-play. In this intimate gathering, we each reveal ourselves, become vulnerable. Our poems or songs or our comments in the group's conversation, become beautiful because they ring true. A person may sing who does not have a beautiful, trained voice, but the beauty is this: they sing because they need to sing-- they need to express something in this way, not just to show off a pretty voice. Tonight, each of us in that small circle became breathless and silent in witness to moments of truth. It's timeless-- truth and beauty, beauty and truth.

happy new decade

2010-01-03T17:46:00.000-08:00

Remember the typewriter, the cassette tape (reel to reel, aghh!), the ditto sheet, the dial phone, the newspaper? We now take for granted competing with students need to text or listen to ipods. Is it better or worse now? Does our ability to remember anything decrease geometrically with the amount of information confronting us? What is really important to teach and what is really important to learn? Why should we continue to support the arts and why is there such huge need to advocate for the arts in the first place? Shouldn't the arts automatically be required in an excellent education?

On January 1oth our Second Sundays play reading and open mic theme will be "Art for the Next Decade." All are invited to contribute.. I face the new decade with more questions than answers. Perhaps I will find companions in asking, and perhaps better questions will emerge.

Archimedes of Syracuse discovered his Buoyancy Principle while stepping into the bath tub, not while drudging away at school or at his papyrus. Is this a clue for all of us about creativity for the new decade?

Holiday Music

2009-12-27T12:45:00.001-08:00

We have a program called Holiday Music featuring the Piccola Carolers. I've actually been booking performances for carolers off and on since 1975--- more recently through Opera Piccola. What does this program have to do with our educational arts company, which provides access to the arts for under served audiences? A capella music in four part harmony sung by beautiful voices isn't heard that often outside church or temple; you could say we're making this kind of music accessible to people who are literally on the street. But beyond that, I find other common denominators with our mission, like building community, expressing voices of diverse cultures, etc. The longer I teach and work in the arts field, the more interested I become in ways the arts can help in people's lives, and how the arts intersect with so many other fields (philosophy, neurology, health/healing, literacy, youth development, career readiness).

I had the privilege of singing soprano in some of our quartets this season, as well as conducting my high school chorus/voice class in some holiday music performances. Music, like other performing arts, often thrusts me into a present tense euphoria that is better than any artificial high invented. Weighed down by problems and debt, I nevertheless experienced an inexpressible feeling of joy, and entered into a time "zone" that had nothing to do with the clock.

I'm reminded of the popular video that was going around the Internet about the brain scientist who experienced a stroke. Her description of the absence of left brain linear thinking, and the boundary-less state of perceiving the world through her right brain sounded similar to some of my experiences with music. We sang for a group of elderly Alzheimer's patients who appeared almost autistic in their lack of ability to speak or respond "normally." My high school chorus could not be more diverse. Yet the music seemed to float us into a mysterious mist of what? Vibrations? Sound waves? A softening happened, a unity of hearts that can't really be put into a pie chart for our upcoming grant proposals in January. In the season of gift giving, this is a gift I wish I could give to everyone.

Getting Along

2009-12-21T17:11:00.000-08:00

Organizations, agencies or businesses that want their projects to go well apparently now appoint one person on the project team to be a "blocker." This is someone whose job it is to raise questions, object to the majority plan and generally inject alternatives into the group discussions. The theory behind it says that having a designated blocker prevents mistakes and produces a better end result. As Marty Nemko says, it's comforting when people agree with you, but you grow when they disagree. Yet so often we feel that people don't respect us, like us or love us when they disagree with us.

The blocker idea is actually quite comforting to me. It's similar to the role of the artist in society: to look at things differently from the established view and to prompt people to think. To encourage us to see things from a new perspective. Often when you're working with a group, there's a pressure to be nice, to go along with the flow, be a good team player. And I like that, too. But we need the blockers, even though they annoy with their seeming negativity and endless questions. I hope I can remember this thought and listen when a student tells me my method of staging a scene should be changed or a colleague tells me things have changed from last year. I try to remember this thought when irritated over the lack of "accord" at the recent Climate Change conference. Perhaps sometimes the wrestling over differing ideas, the struggle to answer difficult questions, is where deep learning and creativity takes place.

At this time of year, when I long to return to an illusory golden, perfect Christmas time that didn't exist, the amount of quarreling and tension at work and at home is highly unsatisfactory. The police of course know about increased domestic altercations during holidays. Why can't we all float along in a serene jello of agreement? Say 'cheese' and smile for the family or office photo just after a big argument over the budget or who empties the trash.

I'm stepping out of the frame. Give me the blockers with their doubts and questions. I embrace the struggle (for a moment, anyway, before I return to holiday bliss).

I'm late I'm late and it's all important

2009-12-14T15:05:00.000-08:00

Late, late, late: name of the game this time of year. No matter how much is cut, there's always too much to do. The eyes of teachers everywhere glaze over. We can't help it. We have to do more and better for the kids so we work longer hours than contracted.

This week my students performed, and Opera Piccola presented a staged reading of my adaptation of "The Grinch" at our Second Sundays play reading/open mic. My vehicle became a packed junkyard of scenery frames, bags of props and costumes, sacks of food and pizza boxes-- not to mention piles of papers, and handkerchiefs for my cold. Oakland blurred by my car windows as I dove (yes a car and its driver can dive) from home to office to rehearsals to performances to food stores to copy stores to schools to... to.. my 94 year old mom's "retirement community" building. I alternately froze or dripped sweat as I stumbled with my stuff from facility to car to facility to car. Load in, load out, drop off, pick up. Hurry, hurry, we start singing at 4:00 and it's 3:45 and we're in traffic! Call them! No, cell phone out of battery! We forgot the necklace prop! Use anything, here's a string!

Relationships are intense this time of year, vacillating from love to anger in a blink. After an acrimonious argument about whether or not to perform their puppet skit about substance abuse, my students figured out how to solve their problem. The result convulsed the audience, which grasped the stern moral of the scene while laughing hysterically. Although they refused to take my advice on the scene, my students ended up doing exactly what I would have wanted. At an elementary school, a teacher who had previously seemed irritated from overwhelm when I showed up, greeted me this time with a cheery, "We're ready for you." A parent rages on the phone about wanting to kick her rebellious teenager out of the house.

What does the background mantra of "enjoy the season" mean in this whirl, where there is no time to stop and recognize? Moments of joy or tears emerge without warning. Hearing Maurice Sendak speak on the radio about a young French girl dying of cancer who can laugh at Sendak's drawings and comfort her mother in the same moment. Standing outside the Masonic Home in my caroling costume on a break, feeling hot spiced cider glow down my throat. A young boy who came late to the performance crying out "Oh, please!" when we asked him if we should do "The Grinch" play again so he could see it. Embracing fellow artists and students after a performance, feeling a happiness of closeness that flies in the face of overwhelm, loss or grief.

The Numbers Game

2009-12-06T15:27:00.000-08:00

Grades were due last week. The way it works these days, points are entered online for assignments and classwork. The grading program adds up the points for you and, presto! automatic grades! Sounds easy, but since I only teach one graded course, I haven't found time to figure out how to enter everything for the special "add it up" function. Instead I sweat through an arduous process in which I add up points on pieces of paper.

Is all this necessary? Luckily, the points I add up usually result in the grade I would have given the student anyway. It doesn't take long in many cases to figure out whether a student is interested enough to contribute to class work and really thinks when doing written assignments. But I go through this lengthy numbers process anyway-- perhaps in order to justify the grades to myself, parents and students. I notice that some students have mastered this numbers game. They miss class for weeks, but come back very apologetic, make up missed written work, ask for make up work and somehow get the points to add up favorably. Other students fail the numbers game: they attend class more regularly but don't do all the assignments and miss key class times, like the day of a quiz, or don't ask for make up work. More than half of my students appear mystified by their less -than-ideal grades: " I was here," or "I got an A, didn't I?" And there's also the issue of innovation. We tend to grade higher for those who learn what the teacher teaches in the way the teachers or textbook recommend. What about the student who doesn't agree, who actually cares enough to disagree with the textbook method?

Philosophically, I have questions. What is this system preparing our students for ? Sometimes it seems as if it's preparing them for a kind of Chekovian bureaucracy, where employees do the least amount of work possible to enable them to get paid and continue in a job. How do you translate into numbers a students curiosity, interest level, potential, or improvement? If you give everyone an A regardless of their effort or quality of work, is that fair to those who tried harder than others? It's almost impossible to give what I would consider a fair, just, grade. Yes, it helps for students to have goals in a course, to feel the work is important. But where is there the space to relate one's grade and numbers to one's deeper self, one's life?

An attempt to address the whole child is covered in this district by a Citizenship grade and Comment Codes ("consistently improving, a pleasure to have in class, good participation"). What do the grades, citizenship rating,and somewhat condescending comments accomplish? I fear we;ve set up a model of a competitive society in which winning is paramount. We love contests, raffles, sports, awards. "And the winning number is..." gets our adrenaline pumping. "What did you get?" the students ask each other, followed by a deflated shrug or a victorious smirk.

The political fallacy of the ancient world was "might makes right," which is now perhaps being replaced by "winner takes all." Small surprise that nations can't agree on climate control or arms reduction when embedded in our education are beliefs about being an adult: win over the other guy and more is the same as better.

How can we escape the focus on the numbers, the winning over someone else, or the "victory" over the unit requirements, and instead focus on actual education?

Imagination

2009-11-29T18:46:00.000-08:00

The word "success" in the education field is generally accepted to mean, good grades and test scores, or rate of graduation, or numbers going on to college. Yet I wonder if the term might be expanded. Most would agree that this kind of success isn't all our children need in order to be ready for adulthood.

On Sundays sometimes I catch a wonderful program on KALW radio, San Francisco, called Philosophy Talk. Today, "Knowing the possible is better than knowing the actual" was the first statement that startled me to attention. The discussion focused on the importance of imagination, citing the philosopher David Hume, who wrote about the thinness of reason and the basic benevolence of the individual. The show's expert noted studies that reveal that babies have the capacity for empathy. As I continued to listen, another statement leaped out of my radio: "Is success measured by happiness or by productivity?" News headlines added to the mix of questions rattling around my brain. Secret prison in Afghanistan, sanctions for Iran, divorce, melting ice cap, unknown millions of children who die of malnutrition in Asia and Africa, and on and on.

What is important for our children to learn in school? What should the role of the arts be in society? Do we need to prepare people to face huge global issues or to be good consumers? To be able to love others as themselves or to have a good job, a house, spouse and children? What is the role of those who don't fit into the American Way, like the mentally ill, people with disabilities, the homeless, the incarcerated, shut-in seniors? What is real success?

holidays in the schools

2009-11-22T09:24:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays? Why is that phrase fraught with mixed blessings in an education setting? Is it just the sugar?

More than 50 percent of my work as Artistic Director right now is teaching; collaborating on drama and /or poetry projects with grades K-12 in public schools. But I also get to see a snapshot of school "culture" when we perform our multicultural folk tales for school assemblies. Something every teacher probably knows: anxiety doubles just before school's out for holidays. When I remember this fact, I am much better able to give thanks for the joy of working with children and young adults, rather than feeling dismay at the challenges.

My first experience of the impact of days off on school culture was at Fremont High in 1993, when I was surprised to learn that students were often absent on Friday because it was the day before a weekend and on Monday because it was the day after the weekend. In this perception of the relativity of Time, Saturdays and Sundays sort of melted over into the days next to them. If you want data, you might look at the weekly list of suspensions. For example, the list for Oakland Tech High at the end of this week was twice as long as the previous week. When I was on campus there Tuesday and Thursday, I noticed students were twice as excitable as on other weeks and teachers twice as exhausted. When the closing bell rang Friday afternoon, heralding an entire week off for Thanksgiving, I felt as if the entire building, football field and portables breathed a huge sigh of relief, as they spit out students like watermelon seeds.

After Halloween, students are eating more candy, true. But in our warm up exercises in the high school class, few of the students were looking forward to the idyllic picture of turkey and happy family 'round the groaning board. Every Thanksgiving I get to review the inequity between the U.S. Consumer picture of Thanksgiving and the global reality of malnutrition and hunger. And I feel guilty about having too much to accomplish in class to make time to discuss the real meaning of the holidays with students. Am I just another person giving thanks that I'm not one of the people I just passed on the street holding a sign, "Hungry. Will work for food, God bless?" Is there something more meaningful I could say to people than "Happy Holidays?'

Loved as a child

2009-11-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

How many of us don't have a chance to be children? Many take care of parents, or take care of themselves in the absence of parents, then move on to take care of their children, jobs, spouses, and on. The co dependence theory warns the "caretaker" to take care of him/her self, while religion teaches us to give ourselves away in the service of others. But when my life falls apart, a little voice inside me says, "Mama! I want my Mama."

I saw a movie called "Wit" this week. Screenplay by Emma Thompson and Mike Nichols. I had expected it to be some sort of witty comedy, but instead was thrust into the all too familiar world of death forcing us to face our lives. Ms. Thompson, the main character, slowly dies of cancer throughout the film. I was profoundly affected, permitted to mourn, but inexplicably inspired to be present with my mother, age 94, because her health is declining. But what does this have to do with my Artistic Director work?

This week I wanted to provide my high school drama students with a different experience in the process of creating their original script on their chosen theme of "relationships." I brought in a big bag of stuffed animals, and a few actual puppets, for them to create puppet skits about relationships. When I opened the bag, the energy of the 16 and 17 year olds in the room took a quantum leap. One boy yelled, "a monkey, and it's purple!" He seized the soft brightly colored toy and ran to a chair where he sat cradling it like a baby in his arms-- he was serious, this was his baby. Another boy rushed to hold a plush gray and white dog with longish fur dripping into its eyes. He held it tenderly on his shoulder. "It's mine," he called. (Someone saying "I want the doggie" was trying to take the dog from him.) "I have to have this one," called another boy who has a bright red stripe on his brown hair, as he pulled out a lion puppet with a bright red tufty mane on top of its brown head.

And so it went. A girl who had picked a little white bunny with floppy pink ears held it the entire class time. She couldn't stop making it bop up and down, talking to the other toy animals. Also to my surprise, everyone wanted to be invisible behind the puppets, so they pulled a table on its side and squeezed their grown up bodies behind it, holding the toys over the edge.

The puppet skits were real, authentic, poignant and made us laugh our heads off, in spite of everything. They featured teddy bears that cheated on their girlfriends or boyfriends, bunnies and puppies that tried to peer pressure a kitty into smoking weed-- but the kitty went to college instead-- a little pregnant bear that kept throwing up, and a group of animals that ended a punching fight with excellent conflict resolution techniques.

Back to the movie. At the end of "Wit," as Emma Thompson lay dying in the hospital, in intense pain, her only visitor entered her room-- a former poetry teacher. The teacher took off her shoes, lay down next to Thompson, cradled her head on her chest and read aloud to her the children's book, "The Runaway Bunny." Thompson's character quieted, slept and passed on.

At the end of the puppet class, I asked students what they'd noticed about what we did that day. The boy who had cradled the monkey the whole time said, "I guess we like to laugh." For all of us, it was more than that, just as the teacher's cradling of the dying Ms Thompson was more than that. Something inside of us needs to be held and loved as a little baby, just as the students held and loved the plush toys. Something inside of those students needed to play and be children again. And they had the courage to do just that.

Appreciation

2009-11-09T19:20:00.000-08:00

There is something about a voice. Even if a person cannot speak, they have a voice to express something authentic, something that blesses those lucky enough to hear it. I can't get enough of the part of arts education that gives anyone, regardless of "talent" or experience, a chance to take the stage and reveal a deeper self. Second Sundays, Opera Piccola's monthly open mic and play reading event, met yesterday. Small but mighty. In the intimate setting, younger and older people felt empowered to stand up in front of listeners and express something that mattered to them, in words that reach deeper than everyday conversation. The human spirit has a voice brighter and more precious than diamonds or gold. I can't get enough of it. Send me a poem you wrote yourself someone! I'm addicted.

Violence and the Bystander Syndrome

2009-11-01T16:08:00.001-08:00

I hadn't intended to post twice today, but the recent gang rape of a 15 year old at a homecoming dance in Richmond brought up for me some thoughts relating to artists in education. My first reaction was horror and a desire to avoid thinking about the incident. Then, listening to my car radio, I heard on NPR an interesting piece about something called the Bystander or Observer Syndrome. This effect was discovered from research after a 1960's murder in New York, when bystanders inexplicably failed to help.

Those of us who teach in middle or high schools are familiar with the taboo against 'snitching" and also with the "instigator" role in egging on antagonists in a fight, so the Richmond incident was especially worrisome. Why would people seeing a brutal beating and rape fail to call 911 -- even when they could do it secretly away from the scene and avoid retaliation as a "snitch?" The psychological research reports that the more bystanders there are in an emergency, the less likely anyone will even notice it's an emergency or take action to help. Sadly, this partly explains how slowly Americans reacted to the emergency of Jim Crow, or to the present emergency of global warming

It seems incumbent on us artists and educators -- let alone the general population-- to make sure that we all are aware of this "syndrome." That we help our students and audiences to realize the need for each individual human being to be a leader, to take personal responsibility to act, no matter how many others may be present as bystanders.

The larger context is frightening. I am eager to get our troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. How responsible are we as a society and as a country to act?

Love and Death

2009-11-01T15:39:00.000-08:00

Surveys report that a large number of Americans believe in the existence of ghosts or spirits. And when I was in college directing a children's recreation program on a Menominee reservation I heard frequent everyday stories of warnings, appearances or visits by ghosts. I remained open but skeptical. I mean, thousands of years of philosophic thought and theology seem to suggest that all we can really know is the existence of a mystery, of transcendence.

When my father died many years ago, something happened I'd never experienced before. The night after he died, I was getting ready for bed and suddenly knew there was a presence in the room -- something was definitely taking up space. At the same time, I felt a prickly, almost electric feeling around me and somehow knew my father was in the room. I was weeping on and off during this, but the presence-- whatever it was-- was oddly comforting.

Often the off stage experience of a group of actors mirrors/parallels what is being said on stage in their play. On Friday my high school drama students performed a short poetic piece for El Dia de los Muertos/Ancestor Day. Many of my students, too, had seen ghosts or spirits. All held their loved ones who had passed away close in their hearts. In the middle of the frantic chaos of rehearsal no-shows, mistakes, blaming, thefts, yelling, arguing, I somehow saw something like love start to emerge among the fractious groups of students, as they let go of their resentments in order to perform the piece well. Perhaps the beautiful words they themselves had written, and were learning to present with ritual and music, started to sink in. The seeds of community, which is an expression of love, were born.

traveling with stuff for shows

2009-10-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

We're off to Monterey & Santa Cruz to perform The Flying Skeletons, a 40 minute show for ages 4 thru 12. Here's where I get to stay the child that I am, flying around waving things, talking in funny voices, dancing my heart out. Yes, it's grueling hard work, many rehearsals, but what a joy to be a child and be a physical part of a story. Everyone needs a chance to do this. Viva imagination. More later about El Dia de los Muertos.... coming at the end of the week.

Non profit anxiety

2009-10-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

The anxiety seems to increase proportionate to the media reports of the rebounding economy. Why am I not feeling the financial trickledown? Could it be the number of homeless clearly visible as I drive or walk around Oakland? Could it be the spate of thefts at one of the schools where I teach? Looking at an empty glass -- not even half full -- saps our energies, leaves us desperate for a drop of hope.

In class this week, I used an exercise I learned from one of our teaching artists that introduces the acting technique of intention / objective. We watched students saunter into the classroom in their typical mode. Then we watched them enter again, this time knowing that there was a dollar bill hidden in the room, and that the person to find it could keep it. As one student pointed out, the second time they entered "they had an agenda." Students really wanted that dollar.

Thoughts of upcoming government grant proposal deadlines, cash flow issues, fundraising that needs to happen, seize us with icy worry. Yet, the antidote to non profit anxiety? Our reason for existing in the first place. Art itself and the community it nurtures. Just one moment seeing a group of students who normally quarrel happily planning a skit together, or a woman having the courage to read a poem to others about childhood abuse, or a small child making up beautiful lines in his character as a cloud, opens up my heart and makes me glad to be alive.

Attention - deficit

2009-10-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

Went to a 'new' marketing seminar recently. The crowd of non profit arts folks were informed that we are no longer living in an Experience Economy, we are living in an Attention Economy. Unspoken addition: I am living in a deficit world, because deficit is one of the most frequent words I hear.

Those who study our behavior (today's anthropologists and sociologists) note that people's attention is overwhelmedmed and we must shift strategies accordingly. Do I blog, tweat, email, fax, use a stamp, phone, text -- or last resort visit in person -- to get my message across? An invisible Arbiter of How We Do Things is directing our lives by posting online "most viewed by thousands" reports, videos, blogs or photos. Broadway shows are producing Twitter versions of their productions because most people want to see things they've already pre-viewed, so they know they won't waste their money. As we sank lower and lower in our seats, our non profit group was further enlightened with the news that people age 12 to 24 trust online strangers more than their peers (and presumably, their parents). This news was supposed to encourage us because we can reach so many more people with... what?

What does live theater have to do with all this? As an artist, my attention deficit brain responded to the news by conjuring up images of rank on rank of shadowy torsos locked in embrace with computer screens. Maybe ocasionally the torsos sprout legs and peek out their doors to look for food or the rest room.

Another image mocks me: I watch my own funeral because I failed to launch an online community that satisfied unknown thousands' hunger for companionship, failed to be the most viewed on YouTube for a week, failed to reach geometrically expanding circles of friends on Facebook and Linked In. (Sadly, my funeral had a very small audience because no one posted the date on the right blog. Could someone put the video on YouTube? ) In the Attention deficit Economy I miss my own funeral because the live ceremony was too long and I need to keep up with all the social networking sites.

And yet, strange and wonderful. A concerned parent the other day informed me that "live theater has a much stronger impact on children" than TV or movies. Our live theater pieces might frighten the children more than the cartoon dismemberings and deep voiced robot villains they see regularly on tv.

Sorry, have to follow another blog and check yahoo news. More later.

library show

2009-09-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

We performed Chac, the Rain Spirit, by Richard Talavera and Rafael Manriquez, yesterday at Brookfield Branch Library in Oakland. What I love about these 45 minute interactive shows is the children in the audience. They are so hungry for this experience, which they hardly ever get: to actually play a part in a live play or musical. Somehow our approach makes it possible for them. Yesterday the third graders from Brookfield Elementary were standing up in the audience, almost taking flight in their anticipation of coming on stage, or just to get a better look at the story. Even after years of watching hundreds of hours of tv and films, our kids understand the power of a story acted out live right in front of them... They're the opposite of jaded or cynical. I'm still a child just like them. Can't wait to act out a story.

Teaching

2009-09-18T18:36:00.001-07:00

Wanted to add a photo.

Teaching Drama

2009-09-18T18:30:00.000-07:00

Sept 18
Sometimes teaching gets very exciting. This week in my beginning drama class at Oakland Tech High School, we played a theater game called "questions." It was supposed to be a warm up to thinking about meaning in theater. What do we want to say in our play this semester? But something happened. We really wondered. And we started to talk about the questions, sitting in a circle, in a windowless classroom at 4:30 pm. All tired. But my brain, at least, started to expand. Why do we need school? Why can't men have babies? Why are we living to die? Why are people mean to people they don't know? Why do women suffer more than men? Why do we have technology? Why is there violence?

Can someone send answers?

Second Sundays: Play Reading & Open Mic Poetry Series

2009-09-16T15:57:00.000-07:00

Got poetry? Want to talk about what's going on in the world? You should check out our FREE Second Sunday events, 4-6 pm at Opera Piccola, 2946 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland. You can park free in the Oakland Ballet lot next door.

Our first meeting was amazing. We were so moved when a young teen named Charlotte wept while reading her poem about losing her mother and brother. The play reading prompted some very interesting discussion about bullying, obesity, rape, racism and other challenging topics.

We need more folks to come and share their poems. It is so wonderful to hear the creativity out there!!