Before I went, I wrote
a post about my workshop choices for the institute and was feeling quite
hopeful about the potential of the overall experience - I mean, it's Harvard,
right?! In this post I want to outline some of my personal highlights,
but also raise some questions about what it means to teach and learn in the
arts, especially within a professional learning context.
Personal Highlight
My very favorite thing was the Scratch workshop led by Karen Brennan who conceived of and runs the Scratch Ed initiative. Scratch is an online visual (and very creative) programming environment, developed by the brilliant folks in the Lifelong Kindergarten Lab at MIT. We spent the WHOLE time working on our own projects, totally engrossed – Scratch is a miracle. Truly brilliant. I also got a personal tour of the MIT Media Lab from Amos Blanton, who supports the Scratch online community, before the Harvard institute started.
Another fabulous workshop I attended was about ‘powerful partnerships’ led by the program director of KID smART in New Orleans, a really sharp, interesting, organized woman named Elise Galinot Goldman. She gave us a very useful experience with some of the tools they've developed to address the inevitable conflicts/issues that arise when an artist comes into a school to teach in collaboration with classroom teachers. In their model, an artist is placed for a full year of work in a school (amazing!) so the need to build and maintain strong partnerships/collaborations with the school team is paramount. I won't go into detail here, but it was a very interactive and productive few hours of exploring ideas and discussion which I really appreciated.
My very favorite thing was the Scratch workshop led by Karen Brennan who conceived of and runs the Scratch Ed initiative. Scratch is an online visual (and very creative) programming environment, developed by the brilliant folks in the Lifelong Kindergarten Lab at MIT. We spent the WHOLE time working on our own projects, totally engrossed – Scratch is a miracle. Truly brilliant. I also got a personal tour of the MIT Media Lab from Amos Blanton, who supports the Scratch online community, before the Harvard institute started.
Another fabulous workshop I attended was about ‘powerful partnerships’ led by the program director of KID smART in New Orleans, a really sharp, interesting, organized woman named Elise Galinot Goldman. She gave us a very useful experience with some of the tools they've developed to address the inevitable conflicts/issues that arise when an artist comes into a school to teach in collaboration with classroom teachers. In their model, an artist is placed for a full year of work in a school (amazing!) so the need to build and maintain strong partnerships/collaborations with the school team is paramount. I won't go into detail here, but it was a very interactive and productive few hours of exploring ideas and discussion which I really appreciated.
I also loved having a chance to talk with other
artists who teach. Normally, when asked what it is I do, I often have to first
provide an explanation about the teaching artist profession. Not here! Being able to talk to and
hear more about the kind of arts activities/learning people are doing in their
own schools and communities was time well-spent. On the whole, the people
I met and talked to were really interesting, smart, thoughtful educators and/or
artists and I really enjoyed those conversations.
I’m happy to have taken away some wonderful moments
like these, but I do still have some big questions about the institute as a
whole…
