Reflecting back...

It's the end of June, and all that we have left to do is clean up and go home. Our ArtsSmarts project is now a memory. Its legacy will live on in our graffiti mural and in the ways that students treat one another and feel about themselves. I realized on the weekend that I never blogged about our final evening, or our work with the Mendel, and I never said thank you. I want to take a moment to reflect on the project and to thank everyone that was invovled.

We did our final performance at St. Joesph's High school. It was the coolest school performance that I've ever been a part of. I was super impressed with the students: their creativity and their strong message. We also had the best lighting, and sound, put on by the high school drama club. I was a night that I'm sure the students will never forget.

Many parents and guests at our even voiced their love for the performances. It was amazing to hear so many positive comments. One parent expressed to me that she was so happy that her son, who favors athletics over the arts, was having this kind of positive exposure to the arts. The students were glowing. Their confidence and pride was evident. Numerous guests thanked us for the message - one of cultural acceptance and harmony. The last song that the students danced to was called Unity, and the chorus says, "peace, love, unity, and having fun" which was exactly what we were all experiencing.


After the production, we had arranged to work with the Mendel Art Gallery on cultural art and harness the positive energy of the students from the final evening. This worked amazingly well. We were able to visit the Mendel to view a lot of great art, and to work on expressing our creativity through different mediums.

We had students do research on a culture of their choice. They were to write a report on the culture of a region, as well as investigate the arts and food and how culture can be expressed through those areas. Students also had to find an artist from that culture that they would research and then recreate a piece of that art. Once the research was nearing completion, we worked with the Mendel to recreate a piece of art. Students had such a wide variety of art mediums and techniques chosen, that it was difficult to imagine success. The Mendel helped us gather the supplies and materials to work on the recreations, and then Wendy and Kelly came to the school to help students with their projects. We had students painting with acrylics, water colors, pencil crayons, marker, printmaking, sculpting and building. We decided it was best to break the students into two groups and have two adults with each group. The students had to work largely on their own. We attempted to work with each student to get them on the write track, and to assist when they had problems. This worked well, and many students made great progress.

During the month of May our graffiti mural and our artwork was on display in the auditorium of the Mendel. It was a very cool honor. At the end of May we walked with students to view our art and the Student Art which was also on display. I know that students felt a real sense of pride when we entered the auditorium. They were also blown away by the quality of the student artwork on display in the gallery. Many students are quite excited about the opportunity to take high school art classes.

This was a very fun, interesting, challenging, and rewarding project to be a part of. It is so wonderful to be able b ring inquiry based learning and the arts together. Inquiry allows us to explore deep ideas and the Arts help us to be able to experience creativity, collaboration, and to experience learning in a fun and creative way. It was a wonderful experience, and the students learn in a much deeper and more authentic way. I believe this is a project that changed all of us for the better.

I want to thank the artists that were involved: Jordan Shultz, Mike Mirlin, and Pavlo Isac. I also want to thank the Mendel Art Gallery for allowing us to have our work on display for an entire month, and for supporting our work in the classroom. Thank you to PAVED Arts for creating a montoge video of our final performance. Thank you to Dianne Goulet for trusting me and doing another grant with me. Finally, thank you to the Saskatchewan Arts Board for your support in the form of an ArtsSmarts grant. This grant allows us to do work with kids that we could not do without significant financial support.

collaboratively creating dance

Are there dance moves that look any cooler than hip hop? I don't think so. I was introduced to rap several years ago by a grade five student in my classroom. She invited me to come to a performance and I was blown away. The way that hip hop dancers isolate their muscles and pop and move like robots, well it's something that I just can't do.

A few years later I found myself teaching at Georges Vanier Fine Arts School. There I had the good fortune to work with professional artist, and dance instructor Mike Mirlin. At the time I had a classroom full of cool jocks. The kind of kids that you could easily assume would be afraid to dance in front of their peers and their refusal to participate would make it difficult for others to feel secure enough to try. Well that was not the case. It was Mike's first year at Vanier and after showing the kids a few cool hip hop moves, the kids were enthralled.

During my time at Vanier, I underestimated the value or the importance of dance. I failed to properly recognize what it was doing for our students. I didn't see it until I moved to St. Anne School. When it comes to performing: dancing, acting, giving a book talk, or describing what you've learned, the Vanier kids just had so much more natural confidence. They were used to performing. Every time that you get up to present something to a group - it is a performance and a huge personal risk. Kids know this.

At St. Anne School, our kids are routinely asked to demonstrate their learning for others. Over the course of a year, I can see that the kids get more comfortable with speaking in front of others. Seriously though, there is nothing that creates more confidence in yourself than successfully performing a dance, a play, or a song in front of others.

Think back to your most confident fantasy as a middle years student. What was it? You were a rock star singing on stage for your school. That imaginary performance let your peers see just how cool you really were, right? Well, maybe it was just me.

Last year we had Amanda Murray come and instruct our students for one day during our TreatySmarts project. She was so cool that even my "coolest" or most frightened student was trying to follow her lead. It was not really what I expected. I wished that we had had more money and time to have her work more with our kids.

For our ArtsSmarts grant project this year, we are working with Mike Mirlin. I wanted Mike to work with us because I knew he was a strong instructor and that it would be good for our students to see that dancing is not just for girls, but for strong confident men as well.

Mike started to teach the students a small robotic dance number on the very first day. We crammed all 32 kids into the band room, which was not nearly enough space, and he showed them what they would work on. I can't adequately explain how cool this dance was, but Mike looked like a machine. His body had stopping points, like it had hinges. If you don't think that's difficult, stop reading, run to a  mirror and try it. It's hard.Without exception, every kid wanted to learn how to move like that. By the end of the hour, the dance was learned and I got to watch as 33 people moved like robots to the music. It gave me shivers. I was thrilled for my students.

In the next few sessions, Mike instructed all students. It was apparent to anyone working with us, that the kids were pumped. We heard from several students that they were practising at home or getting together to practice with each other. For those of you who work with kids, it's a pretty good sign that they interested in a subject when they go home and do the work on their own. For me this was like a hole in one!

After a few weeks, we had to ask students to choose which discipline they wanted to work in: dance or music/spoken word/rap. Many students were conflicted. They wanted to do both, which was something that I didn't really expect.

I have to diverge here and say that our original plan was to have kids choose one form of art: graffiti art, dance, or music/spoken work /rap. A wrench was thrown into our plan when Pavlo received his residency rotation schedule and we realized that all of the work he was going to do with our students had to be completed after school and in the evening. To adapt to his schedule, we only gave the students two choices: dance or music/spoken word/rap. This was a relief to many students who wanted to be involved with the mural and do one of the other genres.

When you plan an activity of this nature, you always expect that someone will shy away from all aspects of art. I had a few kids in mind that I thought we might be able to have work as light and sound technicians and behind-the-scenes people. When choices were all made, there was no one left over who hadn't decided what they wanted to do. Having to find behind-the-scenes jobs for students became a moot point. Between our two classrooms, we have 57 kids working on this project, and 45 students chose to work with Mike on dance.

Mike had the students divide themselves into groups. Before he did this he spoke to the kids about how to chose your group. We were worried, as teachers always are, that someone might get left out and that's a blow to the ego that we don't want anyone to feel. The groups formed and we had three girl crews and 3three boy crews. They crews then had to give their group a name, and decide on a culture they wanted to try to represent through hip hop.

I realize that asking kids to represent culture through art is a daunting task. To help them with this, Mike showed us a YouTube video that we could use as a starting place:
Quick Crew - China Concept

We watched many videos with students during our time with them, when the artists weren't at school. The students chose a culture that they wanted to learn about, did research, and wrote a report. We watched several videos where artists spoke out for change, and we learned about the globalization of culture. We also had to determine "What is culture?" I will write more about our part in the process in another blog post, but for this post, I just want to be clear that as teachers we supported the learning around culture and didn't just throw that at students without giving them the knowledge and front-end loading.

I'm not sure how students determined what culture they are representing. Watching their performances, it is clear that some groups demonstrate their learning in a much more concrete way than others. One of our groups has performed their dance around their learning from last year's TreatySmarts project. They have named themselves Empire and their dance demonstrates how Britain ruled over First Nation peoples. They wanted to be historically accurate, so they do have a choreographed battle scene. Another group is demonstrating Canadian hockey culture. Strangely, they do not have a fight scene in their dance. :)

The process of choreographing their dance happened over several weeks. We had students in every nook and cranny of our school working out their dance together. Mike went from group to group guiding and giving suggestions. His rule for them was simple: "You don't shut down someone else's idea."

To me, this is where the real learning happened. The kids had to learn to work together listening to someone's suggestion and figuring out how to work it into their piece. They also had to learn to give and take feedback from each other. This process didn't always go smoothly. I overheard Mike say to groups, "Well, then, you get 8 beats to decide what the group is doing; everyone gets 8 beats." I also heard him with one group of girls saying that since they were always shutting down each others' ideas and not listening to each other that each person would decide what to do in 8 beats. In those 8 beats they would entertain suggestions, and then be the final decision maker. As the choreographer of 8 beats you could say no to everyone, but no one could say no to you. Through these challenges, and through working through them, Mike gave the students tools to deal with conflict. He gave them the skills they needed to work together.

We often think of working together as something kids need to figure out when working in groups in Social or Science. We often overlook the power of the Arts. Here, students are learning to dance, and, on the surface, it may seem superficial or frivolous. We don't realize that there is way more going on in the process. Kids are learning to work together, to co-create, and to be creative. Seriously, there are some higher level thought processes going on when students are working in the Arts.

Another benefit of a project like this is that all kids have a voice. All kids are actively helping to create this performance. In other subjects, group work unfolds as the "leaders" being the boss, the kids who care about marks take on more work, and those kids who like to coast through things often get to coast. I really don't think that happened within these dance groups. If it did, it certainly wasn't as obvious.

To support this work, Dianne and I gave the groups time to perform nearly every day. When the dancers were dancing, the poets were writing or performing for each other. This work could not be done well without giving students time to work in their crews daily.

Once all of the group choreography was completed, Mike started a dance number with all students. This will be the final dance performance. I think that most of the poets were happy to get to be part of the final dance. They have witnessed what their peers were doing and even though their raps and poems are cool and were fun to work on, they still wanted to dance.

I would work with Mike again. I think the students at Vanier are fortunate to get to work with Mike and have a weekly dance class all year long. As educators, we need to understand the benefit for students and advocate for the Arts. The push for us to teach the core subjects of math, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies by governments and the Ministry means that sometimes we forget that the Arts are a core subject. They have their place in our students' lives. It's up to us as educators to help governments realize their importance. We also need to help build the Arts into our schools and classrooms.

Thank you to the Saskatchewan Arts Board for their financial support through an ArtsSmarts grant. The value of this project for our students is immeasurable.

Creating a rap

Over the past month and a half, my class has had the privilege of working with spoken word/rap artist, Jordan Schultz. I met Jordan last year over a lunch hour of spoken word poetry. Members of the group Write Out Loud came every Thursday to work with students on spoken word. "Work" is probably not a great description of what the students and artists did - really "play" would be a better word. They played with language and rhythm, and it was fun.
Jordan came with a bread bowl, the kind that your grandma lets dough rise in, and he made music. It was amazing, simple, and inspiring. I could see that he had the kids eating out of the palm of his hand. From that day on, I knew that I wanted to have Jordan come back to work with my students on an ArtsSmarts grant project.
Fast forward 8 months, and we are closing in on the end of our project. It has gone by in the blink of an eye. What Jordan has been working on is amazing and beautiful, and I want everyone to be able to hear what he has created with my students.
To describe the process, I probably need to go back to the beginning. In January, Jordan and two other artists came and worked with our students. Mike Mirlin taught the students a hip-hop dance piece, and Pavlo Isak taught the kids how to make graffiti style letters to create a "tag" name for themselves. Jordan worked on rhythm and percussion. Once he had the entire class making music, he performed several of his poems for us.
Our goal was simple - expose all students to all three forms of art, and eventually have them chose the form in which they wanted to become an "expert." All of our students had the opportunity to create and perform spoken word poems last year during our TreatySmarts grant project, so we knew that we could build on knowledge and skill developed last year.
After a few weeks of working with all artists, students were asked to make a choice that they would commit to for the project. Students were genuinely torn, and they didn't want to have to choose. They wanted to do it all. For many, it came down to this thinking: I did spoken word last year, but I didn't get to do hip-hop. I guess I'll try something new and do hip/hop.
Jordan ended up with a crew of 12 students that he worked with twice a week for entire afternoons. During sessions, he had the students play drama games to warm up and get comfortable. He had them create music through re-purposing junk, and he had them work on lyrics to a song. He discussed themes for the poems with students to help gel the group and their message.
Jordan created a hook and chorus with the students that flows in between student poems and binds the performance together.
He started with a rhythm on his kahoon and the line: We are all one rotating around the same sun. He called/sang this out to students and had them create a response that would work for students to call back to him. This process required students to put pencil to paper and count out beats as they came up with lines to call back. These lines also had to contain a simple message of acceptance and unity and ending racism. I tried to help by writing lyrics on the white board. When a student offered a lyric, we added it to the board, and tried it out. Jordan would drum and call out his line, or "hook" as he calls it, and students would call back their lyrics. After several afternoons, they had a beautiful and powerful message that sounded amazing.

Jordan brought artist Elizabeth Bekolay in to work with students on the musicality of the piece. She also helped finesse the lyrics.

The lyrics go something like this:

We're all one rotating around the same sun.
Teachers live in their students' wise actions.
We're all one rotating around the same sun.
Canada is a cultural nations.
We're all on rotating around the same sun.
Let's all help get rid of segregation.
We're all one rotating around the same sun.
No discrimination it's time to take action.

This piece has become a chorus that all students participate in during the spoken word/rap portion of the show.
This sounds pretty good, right? Well, it gets even better. Jordan and Elizabeth worked on a singing and rhythm component that all students helped create. We have a group of singers who do some "Ooohs," as well as a few sections of percussion. These parts were also created collaboratively with students. Elizabeth asked students to come up with what they thought would be good for background singing and percussion. To help kids to understand what they were being asked to create, both artists demonstrated through songs/raps that they had co-created. Jordan played his kahoon and Elizabeth her guitar. She sang along and he rapped. This process was repeated in my classroom as well as the grade 8 classroom. Students all had voice in how the music would be created, and in the end, Jordan and Elizabeth determined which ideas would be used.
We were fortunate to also have teacher candidate, Michelle Auser support this project. She helped us with the music and percussion while the artists weren't at our school. We were able to video record what had been created with the artists, and she picked up where they left off and helped us to organized the kids into sections that have specific instruments and rhythms.
During the past six weeks, we have given our poets time to write their own poems. Some students have chosen to rap and others prefer a spoken word style. I have been blown away by the creativity and courage of our poets. There have been times where I have questioned if they wrote the work themselves or if it was a song they had heard somewhere. It is so exciting and awesome to have kids tell you excitedly that they wrote the song themselves.
We are 3 days away from our final performance and I think we are all worried about how it will all come together. Our biggest challenge now will be properly using microphones so that the poets can be heard. The technical part of this production is way out of my realm of knowledge. Shaun Bzdel from St. Joseph High School will be helping us on Thursday afternoon and evening. PAVED Arts will also be helping us and so I hope, fingers crossed, that this can all come together on the last day.
It has been an honor to work with Jordan and Elizabeth. What they have accomplished with our students is powerful and beautiful. This is a project that could not be done without the support of the Saskatchewan Arts Board and an ArtSmarts Grant.

Sticks and Stones - The Power of Words

If there was ever a good time for someone to use an inappropriate word, like the n word, I guess it would be when you we're learning how to write and perform spoken word poetry. I don't mean that there is ever an appropriate time to use the n word, but what I do mean is that our words have power, and this can provide us with an opportunity to learn and grow. The more I learn about spoken word, the more I have come to understand that a great piece has the power to transform our perspective, and speak out against social injustice.
The power of our words, social injustice, and service to others can all come together when helping students to create spoken word poems. These are big ideas and take several lessons, even weeks to weave together, which is exactly what we're attempting to do with our ArtsSmarts grant from the Saskatchewan Arts Board. I see myself as the person who will lay the solid foundation of learning for our poet artist, Jordan Schultz.
Several weeks ago it came to my attention that someone in our class used the n word. I investigated and came to the conclusion that some of my students do not understand the power of the word, nor the history behind it. On a superficial level, they understand that the word is a no-no, but they are 11-13 year old children who do not have enough of an understanding of history to comprehend the pain this word inflicts. In fact, they hear it in music all the time, which seems to have created confusion.
The aim of our project is to create accepting and tolerant communities where we all see the value of other cultures, so this is teachable moment #1. I went searching on the internet for lessons on teaching about the power of our words. I came across a great website by the National Aboriginal Health Council. They have posted three lessons on bullying, and I used the last lesson on the power of words. Here is the lesson that I used:

   The Power of Words

If you read through the lesson you can see that the aim is to have students become more in tune with how it feels to say mean things as well as good things. As a teacher, it felt strange to have the students look into each others eyes and say, "You're an idiot, and no one likes you." It was also strange to have them write mean sentences on a paper and pass it on. I really had to encourage them to write and pass the paper on because it seemed so unusual to our regular school work. I really like the way these lessons unfold, and I do believe that they get the point across.
I tied this lesson into the story about the 13 year old Saskatchewan girl who wore the hoodie Got Land? Thank an Indian to school. After the news story broke, her Facebook page was flooded with mean and racist comments. After doing these lessons and using this news article as a foundation for our discussion, the students came to understand the power of words. They came to see themselves as having the ability to make a person's day brighter or more tortured. A pleasant side effect of this article was that the students were enraged that this girl was bullied about her hoodie. So now we have many of the ingredients for a great spoken word poem: an understanding of the power or words, a story that has sparked an outrage - a passion to speak out. We have also been learning about descriptive writing and poetry techniques such as alliteration and repetition. Now they just need time to write, and time to hang out with Jordan to work their pieces and find their voices.
As for the n word - we have gone briefly into the history, and after this project I can see that reading a book like Underground to Canada might be the next adventure.
Once again I have to thank The Saskatchewan Arts Board for their funding and support. Without their funding we would not have the help of the artists to tie this learning together into something meaningful and memorable. We are planting seeds that will take root now and influence over a lifetime.

Flashlight readers

When I was a kid I couldn't read. The letters and words were a jumble on the page. I'm sure looking back now that I must have had an undiagnosed learning disability. When I was in grade one, I resisted learning to read and write. I left my homework at school and lied to my parents about having homework. Eventually my teacher contacted my parents and I had mountains of catch up to do. To me, reading was hard and something of no value. I resisted learning because it was so hard and I didn't see any kind of a pay out in it for me.
I remember "reading" my take home reading books to my mom. She had four kids all under the age of five, and I was the oldest. Whenever I had to read to her she was always ironing, folding laundry, or doing something. She would listen and help me if needed. I never read. She might have thought I was reading because I made it sound like I was. I didn't make up stories and breeze through the books - I would have been caught. Instead I read and stumbled along. I pretended to sound out words and I fooled her night after night.
My resistance to reading continued on into grade five. I know it was grade five because I can remember having to do a report on vikings and trying to use an encyclopedia. I pretty much copied that report word for word because I couldn't read well enough to understand what the encyclopedia said. I see the same resistance in my own son, who is seven. He has an amazing memory and would rather memorize every word than read it. This leads to guessing based on the context of the story and the first and second letter of each word. He doesn't want to sound words out because to him that's not reading, and it's not fun.
Eventually I became a prolific reader. The summer before grade six my mom made me a deal. She said she'd pay me a dollar for every book I read. Now a days that would probably be more like ten dollars so it was a sweet deal for me. The first book I read was Ms. P. and Me. It was a thin chapter book with bigger print. I had to tell my mom the story and then she gave me a dollar. It wasn't all that painful because I liked the story and I liked retelling it to someone who seemed interested. The next book I read was Misty. I loved that book because I connected with the main character because she wanted a puppy so bad that she bought one and kept it at a neighbor's house. It was a pretty easy way to earn another dollar. And on it went all summer. I devoured one book after another telling my mother about the stories and earning a dollar a book. After a while I didn't even care about the dollar because I had developed a love for reading.
I eventually read my way to The Outsiders, which led to That Was Then, This is Now, and Tex. I started talking to my friends about books and swapping books with them. I received The Amityville Horror from Angie and would stay up late in the night reading and rereading that book because I loved the feeling of being scared stiff.
Katerine Paterson said,

“It is not enough to simply teach children to read;
we have to give them something worth reading.
Something that will stretch their imaginations-
something that will help them make sense of their own lives
and encourage them to reach out toward people
whose lives are quite different from their own.” 

Paterson is a also credited with saying that we need to create flashlight readers instead of stoplight readers.  When I first heard this it made me think of me, as a kid, reading in the middle of the night and hoping that my parents wouldn't catch me.

When I first became a teacher I loved to read childrens books just so that I could use them in the classroom. When creating thematic cross-curricular units, I always wanted a great story to bring it all together. A great book can help you wind curriculum connect together and get kids thinking on so many different levels. It can help open and build great discussion, and it helps us to see different perspectives and different view points. 

I remember one beautiful summer evening when my husband, who is also a teacher, stayed up in the loft of the cabin all night long. I called up and asked what he was doing, and he told me he was reading Loser by Jerry Spinelli. He read it in one sitting. After that kind of marathon reading I HAD to read it too. Another night he read Holes by Louis Sachar in an entire sitting. This made me have to read it as well. We used to spend a lot of time reading kids' books, sharing, discussing, and getting excited to read with our students. That was at least five years ago and I can tell you that we don't read kids books anymore - unless it is to our own children.

Many of you know what has changed. The curriculum now only allows for the reading of one novel study per year. The Ministry and divisions push leveled reading and the testing of reading. Reading has now become all about strategies and grade levels. In my 15 years as a teacher I have watched this shift happen and I find it deeply disturbing. At some point we have forgotten that reading should be enjoyable. We have become a system that is creating stoplight readers who don't ever become flashlight readers. 

As a teacher I feel my autonomy to make decisions based on my own expertise and experiences has been thwarted. I now read in small groups, small little guided reading books, at scheduled times. I spend hours and hours testing kids on their reading. But I don't see kids who love reading. I see kids who see it as a mechanical process - another boring task that has to be stroked off of the daily schedule.

I miss the days of reading great books, of developing a passion for books with kids. I used to catch kids and make them readers. I loved those days. We can have reading strategies out the wazoo, but if kids don't see value to reading, why would they read? I long for the days that the pendulum swings back and we decide that reading great books with kids, and building a love for reading is the "new direction." I hope for the sake of all children that we come around to seeing that we should be creating flashlight readers.

Exploring a foreign world

Hip hop, graffiti, rap; it's the stuff of movies, music videos, and part of a world that seems foreign to many of us. Many people have biases about the culture of graffiti, rap, and to some extent hip hop. They may see it as "thug" activity, and chose to learn little about the history or cultural influence of these genres.
Last year I applied for and received a TreatySmarts grant through the Saskatchewan Arts Board. During our project we touched on graffiti and hip hop as we delved into Spoken Word. I was fascinated with the "free wall" behind White Buffalo Youth Lodge and somewhat surprised that a person could paint so beautifully with a spray can. It tested my biases about the quality of artistic work in the graffiti world.

We were able to work with Amanda Murray, hip hop dancer for a brief afternoon. Her robotic moves were so slick and cool that I wished that we could have spent a lot more time learning the art of hip hop.
This year I applied for an Arts Smarts grant, also through the Saskatchewan Arts Board. We were successful in our application and started out the new year working with three artists to explore rap, graffiti, and hip hop. Jordan Shultz is a spoken word artist who works with ordinary household items to create rhythms to go with his pieces. Mike Mirlin is a dance instructor at Georges Vanier School, here in Saskatoon. He will be our hip hop guru. Pavlo Isak is a graffiti mural artist who got his start in grade seven, and just to challenge everyone's assumptions right off the bat, I can tell you that Isak is currently doing his residency at the University Hospital in oncology. That's right, he'll soon be a doctor.
Throughout the project we hope to explore culture, the globalization of culture, how culture is expressed through the arts, and how culture is expressed through the hip hop, graffiti, and rap/spoken word.
Last week was the first week that our students were able to meet the artists and begin work with them. In that short time, we've already explored the music of Stomp, created our own short hip hop dance pieces, and learned a brief history of graffiti.
Dianne Goulet, our grade eight teacher, and I have met numerous times to map out the direction of our project and the various starting points for the three pillars. We decided to start by asking a few essential questions: What is globalization? What is culture and how do I express it? Is graffiti art or vandalism?
We had the students view two videos on globalization. Find the link here and here. Students jotted a few notes during the video and then afterward we mind mapped our knew knowledge. We viewed a powerpoint on graffiti that asked the question is graffiti art or vandalism. Most students decided that it depends on the location, if permission is granted, and on what the subject material is. We had students try to establish a definition of culture and to define their own culture. This was hard for many of the students who were born and raised in Canada - they felt like they had no culture. I suspected this would happen and plan to find ways to get the students to see that they have their own cultural biases and therefore do not realize that their way of life is not the way that all children around the world experience life.
The artists have all been in to work with the kids. Pavlo came in and spoke the the students last week about his start to graffiti and showed them his work. We had a provocative discussion about tagging, aliases, free walls, the underground nature of graffiti, and the reasons why someone tags or graffiti paints. Before his visit, our students participated in the One Word project. We had them come up with one word that described them and explain why that world defined them. At first we thought the world should be a virtue and that creatively spelling it would help to make it more of an interesting alias. This was a difficult task for many kids, I think because many of them have limited vocabularies - they are only 11 to 13 years old. The students then attempted to create a tag from their name. Pavlo instructed them on letter style, proportions, and how to work into 3D. It was a great session. The only down side so far has been that I've had a parent question our judgement in encouraging kids to tag and graffiti. I can see how some might make the assumption that if you learn about something, you are encouraging kids to do it. We are, for the record, not endorsing the tagging of schools, private or public property at all. We are encouraging kids to learn about ideas and issues outside of their own world, to form opinions, develop a moral compass, and to seek to understand before judging. I believe that looking at a bigger picture is where the good learning happens, and it's the exciting part of my job.
Mike came in twice last week and had the kids doing cool robotic moves on the first day, and collaborative pieces on the second day. I walked into the grade 8 session and was blown away by all of the student engagement. I did not see one student hanging back. It was awesome. My class was a bit of another story. I have a few shy kids in my class, as well as a few students who are struggling to get along with each other. My hope would be that I will see the most amount of growth in self esteem and getting along with each other in my room. I had a few kids that just didn't want to participate and in my mind, I debated what to do with them. I think that I will allow them to sit and watch, but from opposite ares of the rooms so that their power is as diffused as possible. Mike will be back today, and I am looking forward to seeing in which direction he will go today.
Jordan has come to work with our students three times now. The first two sessions were mostly about finding beats and drama games to get the kids warmed up and comfortable. In some ways, poetry is where you are the most vulnerable. When you read your poetry to others, the spot light is right on you. It's probably more scary to some than dancing or the graffiti art. I hope that the positive experience that many had with the spoken word project last year helps them to open up and dig in more quickly. I do have to say that creating music with the kids has been fun and rewarding. It wouldn't seem like making a good sound with a plastic jar of dried peas, a pack of markers, and a bottle half full of water would turn out well, but it really did. For the last session, we had kids make poems ahead of time to share and work on with Jordan. They were awful. Almost embarrassing, but it was my fault. I didn't give them enough time and I did no pre-teaching. I did learn that I will have to do some work on poetry writing and descriptive writing before we can dig into the meat of the project. The poetry writing may be one of the harder tasks. I have a large class, and conferencing with each student takes a long time. Somehow Jordan and I will need to break the students into smaller groups so that meeting with them in smaller groups is more manageable.
As I write this blog, I realize just how much we have covered in the last week and a half. There is so much to cover that it seems like we've only scratched the surface.
On Friday, our project team and community supporters will have a planning meeting in the morning, and then all three artists will work with our kids in the afternoon. I think that the kids will be treated to turn tables and rap. There will also be a documentary maker out to document the project for the Arts Board, which is an exciting honor.
So we will continue to explore the foreign world of hip hop, graffiti, and rap. The kids will also be exploring culture and cultural expression in other parts of the world, like the Pacific Rim and Canada. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but it will be good work, and exciting to help develop and watch unfold.
Follow our class on twitter @StAnne6_7Class
 I want to thank the Saskatchewan Arts Board for their support as well as to acknowledge their sponsors:
The Saskatchewan Arts Board is governed by The Arts Board Act, 1997, and funded by the Government of Saskatchewan through the Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport, with additional support from the Saskatchewan Lotteries Trust Fund for Sport, Culture and Recreation as a result of the Arts Board's partnership with SaskCulture Inc.