PLaiC - Process, Play and Balance

PLaiC is now a new venture for me. It is a Professional Learning Community centered around Arts Integration. What a wonderful example of community. In this case it was a community of teachers getting together to talk freely about their profession and their passion for seeing true arts integration in their teaching.

There were a couple of themes we seemed to keep returning to: Process, Play and Balance.

In PROCESS, we discussed the importance of stressing the process by which we accomplish things and not just the product. I am reminded of how this does not happen in things such as “on-demand” writing like in much high stakes testing. When my students are asked to write a narrative they must do it in a matter of hours independently. There is no inspiration except for a worded prompt, no time to chat about your ideas before planning a story and no time to walk away from your draft before expecting to edit and revise it. What a shame! The writing process is taken out of the equation.

In art, process is important. When I was in grad school we learned to “Trust the Process” as McNiff’s title states. How pertinent it is to work through things, reflect, and revise in order to come out with quality work.

For more, see this collection of articles about “The Process”.

PLAY also came up quite a bit. Unfortunately, it was the lack of play that was mostly discussed. When that time is not there, the places in our brains that thrive on discovery, experimentation and play start to lose their vitality.

I am sad at the fact that as students get older, the less time they have to play. They need it. We need it. We need that time to create new things, work with new materials and discover new ways of doing things.

In terms of BALANCE, we all seemed to agree that we need balance in all things, including curriculum. It’s like the whole language/phonics based language debate – there needs to be balance. So is true in our teaching and integration of the arts. Our students need the basics (the 3 Rs), but they also need the creative. Our job is to teach with that balance, but we need the autonomy in our classrooms to be able to provide that for our students.

For more on balance, see the article “T.R.I.C.ing Kids”

I am so glad that I am now meeting and collaborating with other teachers in my district that share my views on the importance of the arts. There are more out there and it is my hope that this group will grow in the years to come. For now, this community is just what I need to continue my work as a professional.

Community Built Through Music

March is Music in Our Schools month. So let’s focus a couple of blogs on it! It is not an accident that we chose “community” as the focus for this month either, because music is a very powerful community builder!

Years ago, I came across this wonderful quote:

“No art form creates community as quickly as music.” ~Bobbie McFerrin

I whole heartedly agree. I’ve seen it happen so many times with people of all ages. I’ve been part of the community and played a role in helping to lead a community into creation.

A few years ago, I entered into a master’s degree program in Arts and Learning, where the cohort had already completed two courses. So, I was the newbie. Fortunately for me, the cohort’s next class was in music. Regardless, I was nervous about walking into a situation where others were already acquainted with one another. BUT then we were given instruments and asked to introduce ourselves to one another by playing in turn around the circle. I sang out through my drum and when I was done, all those once strange faces looked back at me with wide grins and an air of acceptance.

A little later we were all invited to play as a drum/percussion circle and after the ostinato began we all joined in: playing to the rhythm, finding our instrument’s place in the piece, getting our groove on and playing as one. And then the most magical thing happened. After quite some time, we all just finished – together. I don’t know what it was, or what causes this to happen, but we, as ONE without communicating with anything else but our instruments and expressions, knew the piece was over and finished it off. It had been our first time working and playing as a group; our first shared experience. From that moment on, I knew I was part of one amazing community – built through music!

Another example of this is from my very recent past – this past Saturday when I was conducting a workshop entitled “Building Creativity, Character and Community Through Music.” We discussed various ways to do this including listening. I took these ladies through the process of having an Active Listening experience using Chopin’s Prelude in A Major, Opus 28 No.7. That 48 seconds of beauty so inspired this group of teachers! They came up with the most wonderful images, stories and poems that they shared. It was in this sharing that we built an immediate community. As we listened, we shared a common experience, and as we shared our interpretations and the poetry inspired by the piece, we built bonds that would otherwise not be explored in a short 3 hour education workshop. (Check out their wonderful poetry here!)

I’d like to think I create these types of opportunities for my students in my classroom too. We listen to music, create music and play music together! Yes, I get them to make some noise and I even get a couple of odd glances from time to time. But I am fortunate to work in a place where community building and arts integration is smiled upon more often than not. This is such an important part of our students’ education, and I wouldn’t dream of leaving it out of my teaching.

Next blog – Ways to integrate music community building in your teaching. Due out Thursday, 3/11.

New Website Almost Ready

I am so excited about the new website I am building through WordPress. YAY! It's almost ready to launch and the only thing that will hold it back a few days/weeks will be connecting it to our actual domain name of www.theinspiredclassroom.com. If you want a sneaky peak, here is where the new website is right now:
http://d1112149.dotsterhost.com
I would love to hear what you think so far and if you have any suggestions for improvements.
After the initial getting used to WP, I have been enjoying, nay, becoming addicted to adding plugins and widgets to improve on the user-friendly-ness of the site.

Some great new features:

• The BEST part is that it's all on one site: information and resources as well as the blog/magazine and ability to create community.
• Anyone can comment on posts without having to sign in. I hope this will encourage people to write a comment and/or add to a discussion without feeling like they have to think of and use a new username/password.
• You can click on a TAG to gain access to a topic of interest.
• You can search the whole site by entering a key word or phrase.
• I can set up users and authors to add content to the site. SO - if you are interested in becoming a guest blogger, I can set you up to do that and you can post anything you would like!

I hope this new website is more conducive to your needs and our need to have a PLC online.
Please let me know if we can do anything to help you in the future with the wonderful teaching you do every day!

Elizabeth

TIC - A New Beginning

This may ramble a little - just need to get some thoughts out...

For a leadership class I am currently enrolled in, I am to assess the environment I hope to change. Right now, I am in the middle of doing some reading and developing a survey. This is not easy. I feel like I have one chance to do this initial assessment well. Survey Monkey is the avenue I think I will take in terms of the platform for the assessment. I'm hoping that is the most user friendly for my colleagues. The questions are in arts integration and I plan to survey ALL teachers: classroom, arts, special ed and specialists.

My ultimate goal has been and continues to be focused on the teachers - what they need to develop their craft and feel comfortable in the arts as they teach. The long term goal is to reach out to teachers and to implement some sort of teacher-friendly program/professional development opportunities to do this. Something that is accessible, meaningful and, most importantly practical to the teachers.

I know that so many teachers see the value in arts education and integration, but the pressures being put on us is immense and it is hard to stray away from the basics. However, I believe that there is a way. There are places in our country who have seen such success in arts integration. It is my hope to shed light on this and to help empower teachers who want to integrate TO integrate.

I've been taking small, what I thought were unrelated steps, but the momentum has kicked in in the past few months. With the beginning of The Inspired Classroom's online social network http://the-inspired-classroom.socialgo.com , many teachers have found a place to chat on various arts infused topics in education as well as find a community of like-minded educators.

We also started TEACHER FIELD TRIPS where teacher get together to do various cultural and arts infused activities. (The first one, going dancing, was such FUN!)

I continue to present at conferences and teach workshops in arts and music integration. This is a topic that teachers are into and once they hear the possibilities, they are convinced that there is a place for it in their classrooms!

There are many other possibilities with this too: Professional Learning Communities centered around arts integration, additional publications, community involvement and outreach, the use of artists in residence.

This is truly beginning to take shape and become something more than I anticipated 10 years ago when I started to write down the first sentences of what became my book on my once new computer.

My final note before I finish - "WE" I need a we in this now. I cannot do this alone. I am quickly realizing that the potential to this work is much greater than I am and in order to continue I need the ideas, support and community that other educators and interested persons can bring to the table.

And so, this fall has brought on a new beginning to Yeogirl Press and The Inspired Classroom. It is exciting, stimulating, overwhelming and nerve racking all at once. I guess that's a good sign of what is to come!