Th!s is Our Chance

Film Festival

Lindsay, Alex, and myself – Helsinki, November 2020

One of the educators I met while in Helsinki, Finland in 2018 while attending the HundrED Summit was Alex Bell who is the founder and director of Portland Education. One of the first questions I asked Alex was, why would a guy from the UK name his consulting business ‘Portland Education’?  I quickly learned that he had gone to school at USM in Gorham and loved Maine so much that he wanted to honor his time spent in our beautiful state, hence, the name. After the summit we stayed in touch with Alex. The ‘we’ is my colleague, Lindsay Pinchbeck, who I traveled to Helsinki with as Ambassadors.

Alex is a likeable guy who has big ideas about education and believes in the power of the voices of children. He was working with a group of educators in a different part of Malawi which paralleled our project in Malawi. Alex has a few projects going on in other parts of the world.

For one of the projects this year Alex teamed up with volunteers, educators, and organizations in the US create the world’s first free online film festival about how to confront, examine, reimagine and create our education ecosystem. Alex says: “If you’ve got kids, are a kid or care about the bigger picture of education in our society, then you really are going to want to watch.” The film festival will include some amazing and beautiful films all about young people and education.

Th!S is Our Chance film festival runs October 6-27, 2000. Sign up at THIS LINK.

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

https://www.facebook.com/OurChanceFilms

https://twitter.com/OurChanceFilms

https://www.instagram.com/ourchancefilms/

Alex promises a family bucket of popcorn if you sign up to attend TH!S IS OUR CHANCE film festival.

Green Skin

What would you say?

While growing up I remember the popular hidden camera reality television series Candid Camera. I’m sure some of you are familiar with  it or have heard of it. The show ran from 1948 in to the 1970s, was created and produced by Allen Funt and at some point his son Peter co-hosted the show with him. In this episode Peter visits a New York City public school and interviewed first graders, and was aired in 1965. He shared with students that they were getting a new student in the next week who had green skin. Out of the mouths of young children their responses tell a wonderful story. The children gave Allen a lesson about understanding, tolerance and much more, that is worth revisiting today. Perhaps you’ll consider a way to use this in your own classroom as a conversation starter that may lead to some form of art making. I know I’ll be sharing it with my middle schoolers this fall.

 

Creating Online Community

Upper Elementary and Middle School virtual classrooms

Start off the year by combining creativity and a willingness to utilize technology for the advantage of getting to know your learners and you’ll be creating a classroom culture that will serve you well throughout the year. If you’re starting the year virtually these ideas from an Edutopia article written by Susan Yergler should serve you well. We all know that unlike in March when we were forced to go remote overnight starting this year with new students provides a different challenge. Below are the authors suggestions for students in grades 3-8 to feel a sense of belonging. Use these activities during the first several weeks of class – short and meaningful to help create the culture.

ICEBREAKERS

• Share a drawing or an object that represents their personality or interests. As you move around your virtual classroom from student to student, they will hold their item or drawing offscreen while the rest of us try to remember.
• Students complete one-pagers or a Frayer Square on themselves on a shared Google Slides deck and then present to the class.
• Include favorite pastimes such as Hangman, interviewing partners in breakout rooms
• Flipgrid introductions
• Students enjoy a round of thumbs up/down with slide shows of foods, sports, and other images. Instead of (or in addition to) the “two truths and a lie” game, try “two objects and a lie.” That calls for students to show two objects that belong to them and one that doesn’t. After completing these activities, a fun way to cement these impressions is by playing a Kahoot! or Quizizz game about the members of your class

CREATING CLASSROOM RUL.ES AND EXPECTATIONS 

• Collaborating on a list of classroom rules. Ask them how they envision the virtual classroom that supports their individual learning and the community.
• Consider using a plus-delta chart, so that students can indicate what worked well in remote learning in the spring and what they would like to change this school year. You can use a digital idea-sharing platform such as Mural or Google Jamboard to collaborate. The list of rules and expectations will can be displayed on the class’s virtual classroom wall or resource page.

CREATE CLASS TRADITIONS

• Establishing classroom traditions can happen online similarly to what happens in a classroom space. Depending on your class size perhaps a bell-ringer or a short journal-writing assignment or a song, dance or art making exercise. Students can be assigned different roles in the tradition you’re establishing.
• At the end of a class there can be an exit question like what kind of food you like that most people don’t? Or who is your superhero power? Or have the students brainstorm a list of them and you pick one for each class ending.

COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS

• Service learning projects bring students together with the opportunity for them to focus on their strengths.
• Solving a community problem – perhaps collecting food to donate to the local food bank. They still exist and food is needed more than ever.
• Creating art together by each contributing a photograph or a line of a song. These can be publish in a Google Slide format as a book or digital notebook. Each can contribute to a script and then perform it collaboratively online.

FORGING INDIVIDUAL CONNECTIONS 

• This is probably the most difficult component of online learning – how to get to know your students individually. Individual conferences on zoom or by google meet.
• Emailing each one or sending individual videos for them to respond to.
• Good old fashion phone calls make the connection unique.
• Responding to their work individually in Google classroom can mean the world to them.

We know that the disconnect existed before with so many people communicating online and not face to face. The pandemic has exaggerated that. Continue trying ideas in a variety of formats for learner. You can make a difference!

Transmission Times

Arts Special for the Transmission Times

Since mid-March Katie Semro has been making the podcast Transmission Times using audio diaries from people around the world about life during the pandemic. She’s planning a special episode with the voices of Performing Artists & Artists, and asking artists of all kinds to do one recording answering 4 questions. It’s a fairly easy process and wonderful feeling to participate! Are you interested in answering the questions?

All you need to do is record your answers to the questions below on a smartphone and email them to Katie at ksemro@gmail.com, or call 847-354-4163 and leave your answers as a voicemail.

• What impact has this pandemic had on your life?
• What role is your art playing for you during this time?
• What influence is the pandemic having on your art?
• What are you missing the most?

Please send your recordings in by September 15th. Thank you!

Details

When you record please include the date, where you live, and what kind of artist you are, including your name is optional. The stories will be anonymous on the podcast. 

 

If you are using a smart phone Apps like Voice Memos for iPhone and ARS for android work well. Then email the recording to Katie at ksemro@gmail.com — this can usually be done right from the app. 

Typically people record for 3 – 6 minutes, but the recordings can be as long or short as you want. Don’t worry about mistakes Katie will edit these out, just speak from the heart. 

Katie hopes to collect a lot of responses and will fit as many as she can into the podcast, and the podcast episode may be broadcast on the radio. All of the replies will be saved in the Transmission Times Archive to document this time for future generations. 

Katie is an Independent Audio Producer and appreciates your help with this project! If you have any questions, technical or otherwise, please contact Katie at ksemro@gmail.com.

So Long Sir Ken

The world loses an incredible voice for creativity and the Arts

In 2006 the first six TED Talks (Technology, Entertainment, Design) were published online. One of them called Do School’s Kill Creativity was presented by author and educator Sir Kenneth Robinson. During that talk and ever since Sir Ken’s life has taken on twists and turns, and his voice and message have been cherished around the world. In fact his TED Talk has been seen more than 65 million times, more than any other.  He has inspired educators and worked with governments, corporations, and cultural organizations helping them unlock their creativity. He has influenced classrooms, schools, districts and country’s.

He encouraged all who listen to change the way we do business while criticizing the educational system which he believed was about teaching students to “become good workers, rather than creative thinkers.” For over 20 years Robinson’s message was clear: “A top-down focus on math, reading and testing, at the expense of the arts and creative pursuits, stifled their (children’s) abilities.”

In an 2018 interview with the head TED Chris Anderson Robinson said: “The best evidence of human creativity is our trajectory through life. We create our own lives. And these powers of creativity, manifested in all the ways in which human beings operate, are at the very heart of what it is to be a human being.”

“We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”

Sir Ken authored and co-authored several books including The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, (New York Times bestseller, translated into 23 languages), Creative Schools, Out of our Minds, and You,Your Child and School. Sir Ken was born in Liverpool and led the British government’s 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, which looked into the significance of creativity in education and the economy. For his achievements he was knighted in 2003.

Sadly Sir Ken Robinson died at the age 70 on Friday, August 21, 2020, after an extraordinary life as one of the world’s leading thinkers on creativity and innovation. He influenced my thinking and was an inspiration to the work I’ve done as an arts educator in my classroom and beyond. I’ve watched (and shared) his TED Talk over and over – delivered with humor, grace and filled with wonderful stories. My favorite is the one about Twyla Tharp. I’m so grateful for his offerings and the messages that will live on into the future. I bow down to you kind sir – Rest in Peace Ken Robinson!

“The best evidence of human creativity is our trajectory through life. We create our own lives. And these powers of creativity, manifested in all the ways in which human beings operate, are at the very heart of what it is to be a human being.”

Blogging Again!

Last week in August!

Here we are at the last full week of August and the end to a summer vacation like no other. The Maine Arts Education blog returns today and will continue to provide resources, information, stories from teachers and learners, opportunities and so much more! I know many of you are planning for another odd school year. Schedules will vary from class to class, school to school and district to district with a mixture of half classes, two days a week, hybrid model, remote learning, on a cart, face to face and on and on. I’m certain whatever comes your way that your resilience will serve you well and that you’ll reach out to colleagues to support you along the way. I am continually amazed at the great ideas that arts educators have and on top of that their willingness to share!

Please know that I am happy to support your work in any way that I can. I invite you to share your ideas in video clips or short paragraphs that can be posted here on the Maine Arts Education blog. Please don’t hesitate to contact me at meartsed@gmail.com.

My summer has been filled with reading, exploring teaching ideas, attending zoom meetings to learn how educators are navigating this challenging time, making art, time on the water, visiting with friends and family from a distance, gardening, and canning and freezing food. Many of you are familiar with the work I’ve been part of in Malawi with the Go! Malawi program. Several volunteers sewed 300 dresses and pants for the children, and 300 masks for members of the community. They were shipped on July 29th along with integrated arts education lesson plans. Even though we couldn’t travel to Malawi in June to take everything and to provide workshops we were thrilled we found a way to ship everything. Our friends in Malawi are grateful for the gifts and to everyone who helped!