All community projects change  along the way. If community project outcomes were exactly the same as planned I would be wondering if community had a voice at all; and the project SPEAK OUT was no different.  

As a brief reminder, SPEAK OUT is a community arts based project that uses a series of digital photo workshops to teach upper elementary and middle school kids about photography as an art form and tool for expression. As a result of this project students created photos of themselves to express their personal values. 

The biggest change of SPEAK OUT is what the final photos are advocating for. I had planned for students to 'speak out' about issues within their school, what they both valued and needed for a productive learning environment. Instead, photographs became about the values of each student. 
This change came naturally and it is what the students were most interested in sharing about. 

After thinking about this change I realized that students were in fact speaking out about their schools. When Rayne wrote "Smart" on the chalkboard for her photo she was sharing something that made her significant as an individual. But Rayne also represents many Barclay School students, who did not necessarily participate in the photo workshops.  'Schools should reflect the quality of our students'. In this way, this project came full circle to exhibit the glowing values of Barclay students and, simultaneously advocate for a glowing school to match. 

Student artworks will be on exhibit at the 8th Annual Wide Angle Youth Media Festival at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore from May 15th- May 24th, 2013. 

Connecting LEARNING with LIFE.

I think that it is our responsibility as teachers to enable our students to connect their learning inside the classroom to life beyond. This is one major reason why I am interested in the intersection of community art and art education.  Making this connection or 'jump' is challenging considering the very limited amount of time I have with my students and the confinements of the classroom space. But without connecting learning to life, learning isn't really learning at all, it's disconnected information that students have no real interest in engaging with. As a new teacher I am of course still practicing this and trying to find new ways to make experiences within art relevant to my students. I have found that storytelling can be and effective  tool for tapping  into the emotional intelligence of youth and can create memorable and applicable learning. 

I began an ocean habitat mural with my students K-1st grade students. We read Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carle and talked about the varying shapes that made up each fish that Mr. Seahorse met throughout his day in the ocean. We cut our own shapes and noticed how multiple simple shapes can be combined to create large complex shapes...in this  case becoming, fish. Students started their fish, but I noticed soon that students were becoming dis-engaged, and not using their best efforts. With this in mind, I included a context for the mural, a story that students to be a part of. 

During our next class time together I shared a story. First I gave each student a paper-cut pair of goggles I had pre made. This enabled students to automatically become a part of the narrative. I informed students that we were all going to take a dive into the ocean. Showing students a sequence of printed images as visual aids, I continued narrating our adventure and periodically asking questions. We passed coral reefs and an underwater hotel.  We met many fish and had to escape from a sea monster, and we finally found an old tattered treasure chest. Students were encourage to hypothesize about how we might escape the sea monster, and what treasures may be in the treasure chest. This approach to the lesson allowed student to take on an active role in the story and imagine their own adventure. 

Using the story as a platform for the lesson, students proceeded to make a drawing of themselves as a diver and a drawing of what they might encounter on their underwater adventure.  We organized our divers and objects in our collaborative mural. We discovered that all of our scuba divers became part of one big underwater adventure. It was very 'Ms. Frizzle and the Magic School Bus'. 

This storytelling approach is and integral component to my teaching philosophy, and helps to relate learning to real life scenarios.