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.
Showing posts with label Arts Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arts Education. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Deep
"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.
"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.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
transformation
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.
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.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Before and After
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.
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.
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