Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, Oct. 25, 2006

Summary:

Next meeting: Monday, October 30, at 1:40 p.m. in the Music room. Be thinking about services that we could auction off for fundraising.

Please bring in something that we can raffle off or sell at our table at the CBHS Craft Fair.

We should be sending people more regularly to creativity workshops and the like.

Can we do an academy-wide project around the concept of "home"? What would that look like?

We need to get a list of writing exercises and strategies together to do with our students (maybe some of our classes can do these together).

Before December, we need to get all of our students together to do a structured visioning exercise for what an academy would look like.

Fundraising ideas:

• Raffles at the CBHS Craft Fair
• Auctioning off services
• Participating in the East End Time Bank (barter)

Phil McCormick will be coming to meetings (he is subbing for Dave Beane).

Present:

• Vicky Stubbs
• Phil Divinsky
• Valerie Green
• Dave Nichols
• Jane Krasnow
• Jill Irving
• Lisa Hicks
• Elizabeth Watson
• Phil McCormick

Full Notes (paraphrased):

We had a brief discussion of how to deal with AARAT members who want to participate in another action team. Decision: the AARAT will meet on Mondays and on Wednesdays/Thursdays (Wednesday when able to do so during staff development). Those AARAT members who want to go to another team during the Wednesday/Thursday time may do so and catch up by reading the notes online.

We then continued our curriculum discussion from the last meeting. It’s fine to do school-wide projects such as the kiosks, etc., but we would really like to focus on creating projects with more intention around the creative thought process. That means we need to figure out what we’re trying to capture with a particular project, and means we’ll need to build in more planning time.

Vicky will forward a brochure on creativity workshops that she received. The workshops look very interesting: these stress writing and art, and focus on how teachers can bring creativity into their classes every day? Vicky would love to go, but classes are $750/person for 4 days + lodging in New York City. Lisa has a friend in New York, so can we figure out how to get Vicky there? Val offered to house-sit/stay with Vicky’s kids if that would be helpful.

We discussed how we should, in general, be sending more people to conferences like this (or like Haystack, for example).

Lisa mentioned that Lisa DiFranza has been wanting to do a project on "home" and what it means to students. This sparked a big discussion. What if we could do that as a theme project for the academy? Could we present it at PATHSfest? "Home" is such a "dimension one" concept that students could really get into it. Val: what if you don’t have a home– home and homelessness issues could be part of the project too, and invite a lot of social commentary. How can our students help serve the community by doing projects around a "home" theme? Lots of ways we could interact with the community.

We started talking about tools to engage students, get them writing and expressing themselves, and learning how to use the creative process to navigate in the world. Vicky uses some creativity exercises from "The Artist’s Way" (here are some basics) and Lisa uses writing exercises from "Writing Down the Bones". Jane mentioned a book called "Scribbling" that talks about the importance of doodling.

This prompted a discussion: how do we get students to write? Val: some students have IEPs with accommodations that say I have to give them the option to do all work orally, but I don’t feel that this is preparing them for the real world. How do I ease them into writing? Jill and Gail are going to a workshop on November 3 about IEP accommodations and how they help and hurt students.

Dave says he will sometimes ask students to start up InDesign and copy a paragraph from a book exactly (same font, size, etc.). Students think they’re learning InDesign but they’re also learning writing style, etc. Vicky: this is the same as composers who would teach their students by making them copy scores by hand. Jane: or artists-you always had to learn to paint just like the master before you were allowed to do anything.

Lisa: the other side of writing is not being able to fill out forms–some students can’t fill out the emergency contact information form. She also wants here students to be able to verbalize what they do so that they can talk about it to others. She does some constant writing exercises where students have to keep writing whatever as long as they don’t lift their pens.

Vicky: in the Boston academy, students have to write for 45 minutes every day, in whatever class they’re in. Whether they like it or not, we don’t know, and it’s hard to assess the "success" of it, but they’re getting used to the routine.

Val: part of the value of doing these exercises is just getting used to the routine. Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way author) stresses that doing writing exercises gets you in the habit of writing (or creating any art) event when you don’t feel like doing it, getting used to getting yourself into the creative mindset. We’ve been reading e-mails about "word walls" and literacy strategies–if students are doing a writing exercise and can’t think of anything to write, they could just copy down vocabulary that’s up on the wall.

Jill mentioned an exercise she did in a class where each student picked a poem, and then the poems were cut up into lines, put into a bag, and then drawn out and reassembled into new poems.

We realized that we need a list of all of these great strategies.

Vicky: we need to get all of our students together, maybe in the Faculty Lounge, before December to do a structured visioning exercise. Val suggested giving students lists of curriculum details, so students would know what is covered in each class and can do something like "circle everything that looks interesting" and then see if they can make a theme out of it.

Business items: fundraising: there will be a raffle table for the AARAT at the CBHS Craft Fair. Vicky will see about a bird. Can everyone bring in something to raffle off? Or sell?

On Monday we’ll think about services that we could auction off, either online or at an "auction night". Examples: swing dance lessons, holiday music performance for a Christmas party. We need to get this going soon, before Christmas.

Val suggested having students look into joining the East End Time Bank, to barter projects for local services. It might be a fun way for kids to "pay" for things and also get us more involved in the community. Adams School has participated in the past.