Ethan's story about owls

  The Great Owls of Imagination

plaster casting and mask creation

Last week, with the support of Robin Adair and Carol Wylie from the Mendel Art Gallery, the students created masks from plaster casting. The process was a lot of fun and the students are excited about their creations. Most of the students in my class made animal masks to be used in the play as spirit animals from the Boreal Forest. One student made his mask to look like David Suzuki, who has a cameo appearance in our play. The grade eight students created caricatures to be used in a song they are performing about consumerism.
Before Robin and Carol arrived, I had my students print a picture of the animal mask they wanted to created. They simply Googled animal masks and were able to view many different styles. When Robin arrived, he had a giant tote with everything we needed to start the creation. He gave students each a plastic garbage bag to wear so that their clothing was protected. Students chose a partner to work with, were given some plaster bandaging and a container of water, and instructed to slather Vaseline on their faces. I brought hair ties and elastic headbands to help the kids keep their hair out of their masks.
Robin was fantastic, and his instructions were clear and easy to follow. The students were excited, and therefore a bit noisier than usual. Robin told the students to cast their partner's face, removed the cast, and then repeated the process again with the other partner being cast. Once the process got underway, the students quieted down and became absorbed in their task.
After they pulled the casts off of their faces, they began the work of building animal faces right onto the plaster casts. We did this to save time instead of building a mask off of the cast that would eventually be removed.
Robin helped students figure out how to create antlers, a proboscis, ears, and a beak. This part of the process took us an entire afternoon. I'm sure we could have kept creating, but before we knew it, it was the end of the day.

The next morning, while we still had all the mess out, we decided to continue working with the plaster casting to finish up our masks. Later in the afternoon, we got out acrylic pain and began painting the masks. We still have detail work that we need to finish, but we are close to being done this portion of the project.
The support and help from the Mendel Art Gallery was invaluable. When running an ArtsSmarts grant there is always so much to to do and coordinate, and without this support, I'm not sure what we would have done for masks - perhaps paper plates with eye holes cut out? They had access to the supplies necessary and the expertise to help us learn this process. As a teacher, I try to soak up these learning moments as much as possible. This is something that I think I could now do on my own, if I could find, and afford, the materials.
As for student learning, I saw lots of it. Students were problem solving in real time. They had to figure out how to create their own animal by learning a technique. They had questions like, "How to I build a muzzle?" and then they had to solve that problem on their own. Sometimes we think of a project like this as frivolous and fun, but in thinking that way, we fail to give credit to the real learning that is taking place. Our children need to have opportunities to have problems to solve on their own. They need to be able to try something, have it fail, and attempt to do things in a different way. The arts are a great place to allow for this learning to take place.
In working with a partner, students had to communicate their ideas, put faith in their partner, and work hard to help their partner to create a strong sturdy mask that could support additional features. As well, because their were only 4 adults in the room, students had to teach each other. Several students created a wolf mask, but I only had to help the first student with the creation of their muzzle. After that, they were the "expert" and could teach another student.
I'm not sure what the education program at the new Remai Arts Center will be, but I have certainly enjoyed working with the staff at The Mendel. I hope that the programing for schools is still accessible in the way that it has been through the Mendel. On behalf of St. Anne School, thank you to Laura Kinzel and the Mendel Art Gallery staff for you support, assistance, and partnership over the past three years. Thank you for your hard work with our students while you supported our ArtsSmarts projects. We have been so fortunate.
For anyone reading this blog, please check out our mural at the Mendel Art Gallery in the auditorium. It will be there until April 19th.
Thank you to our sponsors!

music is an art that comes from the heart

It turns out that writing a song is actually pretty difficult. I have never written a song before, but I imagined that it would be similar to writing poetry. Before we embarked on our ArtsSmarts project, I thought that our students would enjoy "playing" and "experimenting" with song. I imagined that as a class, and in small groups that we could use Garage Band on the iPads and "play" our way towards writing a song. Maybe I was right, but it started to feel like we could spend all the time in the world playing and never get a song written.

For some background information, I have to tell you that we don't have a music program at our school. We have band for students who are interested, and we have a choir. We are a small school, with a small staff, and we haven't had a music teacher that has taken on choir and music. I tell you this just so that you are aware of where we were starting from. Our students, largely, do not feel like they are musical. The few students who have had music training were in hiding, and it was fairly difficult to get them to take a risk and stand out in front of their peers. This certainly doesn't seem to be the case anymore as we've had a piano in our room for over a month and it now seems like everyone is a composer!

We knew that we wanted to write songs about the environment and consumption. My grade seven class would take on the role of ecologists/tree-huggers in our play, and the grade eights, who were ecology experts last year, would take on the role of developers and consumers. What I had hoped for was that I could front-end load the ecology information as quick as possible so that my students would have the necessary background to be able to write songs pertaining to the environment. Six of my current students were in my 6/7 class last year, and this information was not new to them. I believed that they would be able to lead the way. To say this was a challenge would be an understatement.

Here's the thing, song writing is risky business. You have to be willing to put your ideas out there. That's not easy. I have also come to see that creating comes from your heart, and learning about different ecosystems from a text book and a few videos does not really foster the kind of love for nature that is needed to write a song about it. I could spend the entire blog telling you all about the mistakes I made, but instead, I will briefly touch on my mistakes as I tell you what I would do differently if I were able to go back in time or if I ever take on a project like this again.

1.) Get outside!
I would spend more time outside learning. We took on this project in January, in Saskatchewan, which might not be the best time to be learning about ecosystems. I should have done some outdoor educaiton in the fall. We could have gone to Eagle Creek, and taken nature walks down by the river. We also could have spent time writing poetry in nature. I could have given the students a format to follow and let them go sit under a tree to write a few poems.  The poems could have been sensory in nature, describing the beauty of what they saw, felt, smelt, and heard.

2.) Using photos to create wonder and awe
I should have thought bigger. I should have given the children something to be inspired by: a photo, and small news piece, short videos, things that would have caused awe and wonder. I could have added this little piece to our daily morning Language Arts routine. Our planet is awesome and we should have been celebrating it every day. To be fair, I did show the students many fascinating and interesting articles and videos, but I only started the eco info when we began this project. The kind of deep learning that was required for the song writing needed to be taking place all year long in small doses.

3.)  Build confidence through scaffolding
I could have given the students time to create a small music piece. (Not just once, but several times.) I should have put them in groups of 3-4 students and given them a the task of creating a small song. I could have started really small and built on their growing skills as time progressed. At first the tasks could have been simple, like create a poem about an animal following this three line format.:
 The  (noun),
(where it is)
(verb).
Ex:
The bird,
in the tree
sings!
After the poems were created, their next job would be to make a simple beat to speak the poem to. Students could have been given twenty minutes to create the poem and beat, and then been told they would share their creation. After each performance the creators could bow while the class cheers and claps. This would have been a way to scaffold the process so that by the time we worked with our artists, the students already saw themselves as creators of music. This would have also helped their confidence.

I am an introvert. I was the last kid that would have been creating music or volunteering for an acting or dancing part. In fact, this project would have likely scared the heck out of me. I would have wanted to create the props and background. All along I have been aware that what I'm asking kids to do is take a risk and that for some of them this makes them uncomfortable. I also know that this is where growth comes from: those moments when you take a risk not knowing if you will succeed or fail. If you succeed, the growth is in confidence. If you fail, the growth is in trying again in a different way. While I am telling you the things I would change, I realize that this could be taken as failure. I haven't failed, I have just learned that a different approach may have worked better.

We have talented artists, and thankfully, even though I may have failed to prepare my students adequately, we do have amazing songs and raps. The artists met several times with our students and would start by sharing what they had already created. Often they had already worked out the melody on the piano and the chorus and then asked the students to help them create the verses. This was often done in small groups instead of the whole class. A few of the songs were songs that the artists had already started, but this project gave them the inspiration or push to complete the songs.

Over the past several weeks we have been practicing and learning the songs. One song called In the Beginning was created by my class from start to finish under the direction of Elizabeth Bekolay. They created the melody on the spirit flutes and worked on spoken word poems to describe different animals of the forest. These lines are often beautifully told from the point of view of the animal they describe. After the song was finished, we asked for volunteers to create dances to go with each animal section of the song. Students were tasked with creating a dance that worked with the melody and beat of the song, but also symbolically represented that animal. The flute players were needed to play the songs for the dancers as the dancers collaborated and created their dances. During these sessions I saw some of the best student collaboration. I watched a student in my class, who often has trouble with collaboration, openly and willingly collaborating. She was open to other suggestions and actively giving positive support as well as sharing her own ideas. I wonder and hope that this positive collaboration will transfer over into other subjects. Collaboration is a learned skill, and I witnessed that learning taking place.

So we have 9 days to go before we perform our play for the entire school and wider community. I would love to say we are all done with the creation, but we are far from it. My class still has two dance pieces to create. We plan to push really hard over the next two days to create and memorize those dances so that when we get back after the spring break we can start running through the play every day. I know that it will come together and be quite amazing, but it's really hard to not be anxious at this late stage in the game.

I will share a few of our songs with you through the links below. We haven't created a recording of the students singing yet, but these are the early versions of the songs sung by our artists, Elizabeth Bekolay and Jordan Schultz. The last few are the flute pieces created by our students with Elizabeth.
Rap Battle
Impact Song
Spirit Flute: Butterfly
Spirit Flute: Owl

Here is the official invite for anyone who is interested in attending. We may open up a second showtime once we have had a chance to get some feedback from parents.

Thank you to The Saskatchewan Arts Board and their fundholders:

Learning science and social studies through art...

When learning about ecology, economics, consumerism, and sustainability, will students have a deeper more enduring understanding if we weave that learning through fine arts? This is one of our inquiry questions for our ArtsSmarts grant project this year. I completely believe that students learn more deeply when we tie their learning into fine arts, but this year we are putting this notion to the test. This is our biggest ArtsSmarts project to date, and it involves numerous artists, experts and agencies. In short, our multidisciplinary project involves creating a musical that is loosely based on the Dr. Seuss book the Lorax. It will feature original songs that are written, composed, and performed by our students in collaboration with the artists. As well, students will work with Artist Mike Merlin to collaboratively choreograph original dances to accompany the songs. We have also undertaken a mural that is currently in progress to be the backdrop and our lasting message.


We started this project in January by front-end loading the curricular outcomes for each grade. The grade seven students in my class, known as "the ecologists," have been learning about ecosystems and sustainability, with a specific focus on the Boreal Forest Biome. For the grade eight students, known as "the developers," this project builds from the Student Action for a Sustainable Future work that we did last year and moves into economics and consumption. Our goal was to try and cover the content quickly, and then tie the learning into art representations, student reflections, and a researched persuasive essay.

In order to move quickly through the content, I relied on the textbook to read through and discuss topics with students. We also followed up a lot of that learning with videos, reflections, and art. To be honest, that approach didn't work well. For some students, taking in vast amounts of information through reading and discussing works well, but for many I found that they just didn't connect well to the information. Was it the style of teaching and learning or the content? I'm not sure, but if I could go back and do the front-end loading again, I would approach it differently. However, the goal of the front-end loading was to give students a solid base to draw from when it came to writing songs and creating the play. I thought that the learning would drive the creations, but now I anticipate that the creation will drive the learning, and I'm excited to see that unfold.

During February we connected with the Saskatchewan Environmental Society. They came and presented concepts to the students about waste management, reduction of waste, and recycling old materials into new materials. They helped us to get thinking about a new waste reduction campaign that we will run at our school. Last year, as part of our Student Action for Sustainable Future, my class, who are now in grade eight, focused on waste reduction. We conducted a waste audit and then worked hard to make our current recycling and compost program. This year both grades wanted to do further work with waste reduction and have just started to audit the amount of waste. The grade eights plan to focus on lights and power usage, and the grade sevens want to support that work, but also branch out into paper waste. As the current recyclers, they see a lot of paper waste. I think this is great because it ties nicely into the concept of trees and having healthy forests.

Boreal Forest expert and photographer John Murray spent a half day with each class. His presentation was fascinating and engaging, and the students asked so many great questions and were so captivated. John donated most of his time to us, and we really appreciate that gift. I could write a whole blog post about the things he told us about mushrooms and trees and their symbiotic relationship. Did you know that some mushrooms use their long roots to bring nutrients to a tree so that it can be stronger and healthier? I'm hoping that John attends our show as he has graciously agreed to let us raffle one of his amazing owl photographs.

In February we started to work with Artists Elizabeth Bekolay and Jordan Schultz. If you've ever been out to Beaver Creek you may have met Elizabeth. Currently both Artists work at Brightwater Science and Environmental Centre. Elizabeth and Jordan create music together that they have dubbed gypsy rap. One of their songs plays throughout the ArtsSmarts documentary that was created during our project last year. Over the past five weeks they have met with students in small groups to create the  music for our play. I thought that this part would flow more easily, but song writing is difficult and many of our students are hesitant to share their ideas. After several sessions where we struggled to draw ideas out of the children, it occurred to me that we forgot to play. Last year and the year before we always warmed the students up by playing drama and word games. Kids have to feel safe to take risks and at this age. Sharing your ideas or your opinion is a huge risk: people might laugh at you or think your ideas are dumb. At the start of each session we've created a circle and play silly drama and word games. Once we see that they are forgetting to feel self conscious and are loosening up, we move into song writing mode. The songs are almost complete and next week we will begin the task of learning and memorizing them. What I love about these songs is that they are melodic and mix with rap. The words are carefully chosen and have a profound message. I am pretty excited about the songs. I think the rap battle, which I'm already finding to be an ear worm, is going to be epic.

We've also started our dance work with Artist Mike Merlin. Mike is also a musician so he has been helping Elizabeth and Jordan lay down a beat for specific songs. He has been meeting with groups of students to start creating the numerous dances that we will need to accompany each song. This work has only just begun, but I know with his gifts and talents, Mike will have our students doing amazing work with dance in no time.

Finally, I have to tell you about the mural. It's the work that has progressed the quickest and is the closest to completion. We have worked with several artists to collaboratively create the most amazing student mural I have every seen. Our artists include: Kevin Wesequate, Lesley Kerpan, Alex Semenoff, and Nicole Paul. The artists have brought their own design and style to the mural, and have taught the students so many great painting techniques and skills. I do believe that we have students who would spend the entire day painting on the mural if we let them. The concept for mural itself was inspired by Dr. Seuss, Ted Harrison, and The Beehive Design Collective. Many minds and many hours have gone into discussing what this piece should represent and what it could look like. Briefly, the mural moves from pre-development, into development, and then towards sustainable living. It will be available for public viewing on Monday, March 9th at the Mendel Art Gallery in the auditorium. I plan to write another blog post on the progression of the mural and the work that has gone into it in another blog post on the visual art component of this project. In that post I will discuss the work we did with the Mendel Art Gallery and explain the show that we have put together.

After working with Kevin Wesequate and seeing his latest work, students were inspired to zentangle the trees.

The destruction begins - mining the earth and cutting the trees to make our "thneed" the snark.

One of the students added one of the early versions of a wind turbine.

Smogulous smoke rises out of the numerous buildings

Grade 8 student painting a flower

Alex, Nicole, and Lesley discuss the concept

Student graffiti for the side of a building

This project would not be possible without the funding provided through the ArtsSmarts program funded by:

With additional financial support from Loraas Recycling.

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.