Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, Mar. 19, 2007

March 19, 2007 at 1:40 pm | In Minutes |

Summary:

Next meeting: Wednesday, March 21st at 1:10 p.m. in the Music Room. During this staff dev. time we will meet with Lisa DiFranza. We will fill Dave N. in on the meeting later, since he will be at Bo’s "nasty textbooks" focus group. Val will attend the AARAT meeting and will meet with Bo later.

Meeting adjourned at 2:15 p.m.

Next Wednesday will be the first student meeting for this project. Lisa D. will be here on Wednesdays, probably 3/28 and 4/4, and then in May on 5/2 and 5/9. Final projects may take more time to complete than just Wednesday time, but we’ll have to see.

We will probably split our classes up into 2 groups. Phil is looking for a place where each group can meet to do group writing. Maybe the 3rd floor hallway?

We should all prepare to commit the day before PATHSFest to setup.

Lisa H. will ask Lisa D. about coming from 10-11 on Wednesdays for extra dev. time. She will also ask Portland Stage about matching funds.

Bo distributed a copy of a chapter from Nel Noddings’s "Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach".

Present:

• Vicky Stubbs
• Tom Lafavore
• Phil Divinsky
• Valerie Green
• Dave Beane
• Lisa Hicks
• Bo Hewey
• Jane Krasnow
• Dave Nichols

Full Notes (paraphrased):

There are 7 Wednesdays left before PATHSFest (including this Wednesday). Yikes! Ideas for increasing our time together:

• Working lunch from 10-11 a.m. on Wednesdays for working in smaller groups, and then meet in a larger group from 1-2 on Wednesdays
• Use 30 minutes of cluster meeting time on Tuesdays

We should have our first student meeting next week. We all need to prep our students so that they know what to expect (or know that we don’t know what to expect!)

Phil got some ballpark class size #s from everyone to see whether there’s a space where we can all fit. We will probably divide the group in half and have Lisa work with each half for 1 hour.

It would be nice to have a model for what we’ll be doing with the kids, but on the other hand, we don’t want too much of a model because we want to leave it open for interpretation. Dave N. is thinking of creating lists to relate "home" to different disciplines. Phil mentioned that we should try to get out of our teaching "comfort zones" a bit, as we are encouraging our students to get out of their comfort zones.

Bo: it’s important to keep writing, because some students will produce on the first day and some won’t, and we need to stress that the writing process is something that you keep practicing.

Dave N: some kids don’t want to share. Vicky mentioned that even if kids are spending the whole time writing "I hate this", sometimes they’ll come up with even a few words that they can share. We need to be prepared for the fact that all kids won’t want to do this, though.

Lisa: we need some kind of "elevator speech" to talk about this project to our kids, something like we’re using writing as a way to get to the creative process.

We’ll be starting this process ourselves on Wednesday, and Jane suggested that we all write between Wednesday and next Monday, to get ourselves going.

Calendar for project: Lisa D. has committed to Wednesdays being "PATHS days". She will be here all day on 4 Wednesdays to work with students and with us during our planning times. Right now we’re thinking that she could be here on March 28th and April 4th, then not be here for several weeks as we develop things, and then come back on May 2nd and May 9th. The scope of each student’s final project may end up requiring more work than just a Wednesday, and we all need to be prepared for this–especially if projects are interdisciplinary, which we hope they will be.

We should all prepare to commit the day before PATHSFest to setup.

Lisa H. will ask Lisa D. about coming from 10-11 on Wednesdays for extra dev. time. She will also ask Portland Stage about matching funds.

Val: Wednesdays will be a marathon with class, working lunch, class, and dev. Phil: we need to make sure not to burn ourselves out.

Bo distributed a copy of a chapter from Nel Noddings’s "Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach". The chapter (Chapter 3) is titled "House and Home" and discusses the importance of teaching/exploring the concept of home in schools.

Jane distributed information on selling things on e-Bay as a non-profit.