Professional Development: Arts Matter

This week I had the privilege of attending Brock University's Arts Matter Conference. The day was divided into 4 workshops and concluded with a performance, and I thought I would share some of the ideas with you here.

Dance

We began the day by exploring dance in the curriculum. I haven't done a lot of work with dance before so this was completely new to me. We talked about how miming isn't the same as dance and were introduced to Action Pak cards. These cards are a teacher resource designed to level the playing field in the realm of dance and make it accessible to all students - especially those who are uncomfortable because they don't 'know' dance. 

Drama

In drama we explored Story Drama and it was truly powerful. Basically, you read part of a book (we used Henry's Freedom Box) and do activities at each pause to help you understand and connect with the book. We did a couple of Tableaus depicting various scenes and the most powerful activity we did depicted the life of the character. We were in groups and created tableaus of various stages of his life. Then, we would move through the room as the instructor read several lines from the book. It was truly moving and definitely an activity I will try with my students. 

Visual Arts

In our visual arts workshop we worked through two activities. The first was the tree of life in which each participant creates a wood chip piece to add to the tree. You can incorporate whichever element of art you choose to teach and it gives students a sense of ownership and place within the classroom. The second activity involved re-creating one small piece of a larger painting each and then combining them to create a large piece of work as a class. Again, by doing something like this students will feel like they play a critical role in the class. 

Music

The final workshop of the day was music. I've always loved music, and this was no exception. We worked with a simple rhyme and moved from tapping the beat, to tapping the rhythm, to tapping the rests, to splitting and tapping all parts, to creating a composition with the parts, and finally to performing our composition. In addition, we worked with pitched percussion instruments on the pentatonic scale and created beautiful melodies almost immediately. The instructor made an excellent point that we aren't trying to make these technically profound musicians; we're trying to introduce students to a medium they can enjoy and express themselves through. 

Performance

As wonderful as these workshops were, the best part was the performance at the end by Shaun Boothe. He has created several hip hop songs in a series he calls 'The Unauthorized Biographies' series as part of his 'Live. Your. Legacy.' presentation. These hip hop songs depict these inspiring people's lives and how they achieved this greatness. He focuses primarily on how the overcame their struggles and forged their own path in life. If you haven't seen any of his work I highly, highly, highly recommend looking him up. He also introduced us to a Canadian resource called Rhymes to Re-Education which provides resources for incorporating hip hop into the curriculum. 

Overall, I had a wonderful experience at the conference and I look forward to using some of the strategies I learned.