Art is Literacy for Everyone

Watching my drama students rehearse an original adaptation of Peter Pan with special needs students always fills me with feelings of pride, happiness, and inspiration. They learn so much from each other as acting encourages risks and challenges many of these kids in ways they would never experience elsewhere. Most high school students wouldn’t dare perform on a stage before an audience. They wouldn’t have the courage to allow their imagination to experiment with all of the physical, vocal, and emotional possibilities. They wouldn’t pay careful attention to subtext that provokes action, reaction, and interaction. They wouldn’t appreciate the discipline necessary to successfully understand and use all of the elements involved in the art of acting. These kids do, and they never fail to move those who watch a rehearsal.

Drama students write, direct, design, construct, and act in a partnership with students who have a variety of handicaps and together they explore the intricacies of literacy that is written, read, and spoken. They create set pieces, props, and costumes, always aware of possible limitations, but never obstructed by them. Every student involved with this project, now in its 6^th year, experiences the magic of theater in all of its glory. For some, this is their first such production. For others, it is their third or fourth. At first, the newcomers are timid, but by the end of the first week, all look forward to the rehearsals.

The drama class is a diversified group in and of itself. There are the gifted, learning disabled, gay, lesbian, bisexual, Mormon, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, emotionally disturbed, cheerleader, band member,  science nerd, artist, chess club member, gamer, athlete, FFA/4H  participant, and many other represented diversities. Everyone works together for the same end. When these students work with the autistic, intellectually impaired, Downs Syndrome, emotionally and socially impaired, special needs students, learning occurs at so many amazing levels. The meaningful connections to learning at a number of levels of inquiry, innovation, creativity, and critical thought could not happen over and over again without the universal literacy of art.

Making snow for the 2010 production of "A Christmas Carol"

Creating the snow making device for the same production

The Price of Education?

Today the Walton Foundation (Wal-Mart) announced plans to donate $25.5 million more dollars to the KIPP Charter Network of schools, and tomorrow the Dallas-area Uplift Education is expected to announce its plans for expansion. (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2011/11/kipp_charter_network_receives.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2).

In her blog with Deborah Meier “Bridging Differences” (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/) Diane Ravitch posted today that “never before were there so many people, with such vast resources, intent on dismantling public education. What does this mean for the future of public education? What does it mean for our democracy?

Are the foundations of economic power the future educational accountability bodies defining pedagogy, philosophy, and ideology? I have to question, then, the future definitions of student and teacher as curricula fall victim to the “bastions of unaccountable power” (Ravitch, 2010, p. 201). What becomes of teacher and student accountability when the very definition is based on a  price tag of success?

When students become commodities and teachers become producers of economic success, then that which defines pedagogy is driven by predetermined objectives. Democracy is no longer a possibility as learning becomes a product of capitalistic values. Teaching is no longer an art and students no longer experience possibilities built on imagination, creativity, and inquiry. Education will become a business, nothing more and nothing less.

Dear Art: The essence of all stories, please come back because,

You are, “the extension of the power of rites and ceremonies to unite men, through a shared celebration, to all incidents and scenes of life” (Dewey, 1958, p. 271). It is through you that narratives unfold as symbolic voice, unmasking the truths of existence. Why then does education deny you as a part of the learning process? For, you give the voice of the teacher the means to share experiences with precision, articulation and imagination (Greene, 2001, p. 25). You empower as connections are made that ignite inquiry.

“Democracy is a story, or a set of stories, we tell ourselves. Stories of democracy have moral, aesthetic, and psychological as well as political resolution” (Beyer & Pagano, 1998, p. 391). A democratic classroom is one in which all voices are heard, stories are shared and an individual’s experience is expanded. Diversity is realized through the diverse community interaction of the educational environment. “Democratic stories require a new vocabulary that provides us with metaphors for our self-creation. And self-creation is not just moral and psychological; it is political, and it is an aesthetic act” (Beyer & Pagano, 1998, p. 393).

Art, you are oblivious to race, gender, wealth, social status, learning ability and handicap. You do not victimize students through a blame-the-family, stock story, mentality. Your defining power is stronger than the statistical standard of accountability that manifests as a number without human value, without a soul. You give the stories of students’ respected significance, empowering inquiry and insight that become Eisner’s “cognitive event” (Eisner, 2002).

All students must be given the ability to learn through experiencing a variety of ways to both think and express thoughts. Through you, students become problem solvers as they are given a heightened cognitive awareness that is expressed in “flights of the imagination” (Eisner, 2002, p. 9). Because of you, students unite in interpretive expression, instead of becoming victims of penciled-in bubbles. Differences identify the unique, not the adequate. For, who has the right to place judgment on either?

Teachers should not be afraid to take risks, explore, and discover the unknown. You provide a way to expand consciousness through new perceptions, reaching realities that are different and present discomfort rather than the safety and convenience of NCLB’s standards and benchmarks. To ignore your significance is to limit possibilities by both student and teacher.

As the essence of all stories, you have always provided the path to progressive thought. Through the visual arts, drama, dance, and music, oppressions are communicated as you reveal truths, expose contradictions, and propose transformation (Boal, 1985). The thicknesses of conformity, complexity, compliance and cowardice (West, 2001) are illustrated, symbolized, and characterized. Encounters are provoked and awareness is motivated “not in extrinsic demands, but in human freedom” (Greene, 1995, p. 39).

You are not a privilege, but a benefit that should not be reserved as an elite, educational gift. You are a part of life, an intrinsic part of the human experience that is acknowledged in universal stories. To banish you from the educational community results in learning that is fragmented and incomplete. Dewey (1958) recognized the need for you to be “the incomparable organ of instruction” but also realized that too often “we are repelled by any suggestion of teaching and learning in connection with art” ( p. 347).

My journey has just begun as I uncover the importance of your integration with the established NCLB core curriculum. You are necessary as a part of all education and your beauty in and of itself must have its place. Beyond being an artist, I am an art educator and art integration is my passion as a teacher, curricularist and theorist. Courage will come from the students, teachers, administrators and parents who share in the possibilities of transformative, magical experiences heightened consciousness. The entirety of a culture can connect, understand, and take ownership of a classroom that by its essence is democratic. Cultural stories become transformed as an entire educational community perceives, experiences, and reflects through enlightened inquiry.

Hannah Arendt, as quoted by Greene (2001), perceives education as the point “at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.” (p. 75) Greene (1968) expands this perception when she states that teaching is “where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new” (p. 196).

Art, you cannot be extinguished. Though you have disappeared from education, your absence of power has evidenced itself through that which is imprisoned within the statistical. In May of 2011, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities published the report Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools. In its forward, Arne Duncan posits “experiences in the arts are valuable on their own, but they also enliven learning of other subjects, making them indispensable for a complete education in the 21st Century” ( p. 2). Without you, Art, education cannot be whole. I will work for your return.

With Much Love and Respect,

Jill Lynn Hare Drama teacher, art integrator

A Voice for Everyone

"There are many languages besides those that are written or spoken. By learning a new language, a person acquires a new way of knowing reality and passing that knowledge on to others. Each language is absolutely irreplaceable. All languages complement each other in achieving the widest, most complete knowledge of what is real" (Boal. 1985, p. 121).

Diaries open the inner self to the same inner self. They speak, yet are silent with words only heard by the author. Entries are reflections safe from feedback. Vulnerability only occurs when trespassers violate the privacy and expose without permission. When this happens, it is an abuse, and like a rape the result is shame, fear, guilt and accusation. Diaries are life stories locked and hidden within unshared secrets.

Words that are written to fit an educational objective are locked in a predetermined product that cannot escape an assessment of one. The product is static with an identity shaped by standards of sameness,

Blogs are diaries freed of locks allowing the inner self an escape, still founded in “self-reflection, releasing pent-up feelings, and witnessing personal growth” (S. Stern, 2008, p. 101). Identity is defined by the author and the label ‘adolescence’ “negotiate[s] the boundaries of public and private spheres” (S. Stern. p. 97). Self-expression becomes the backbone of social networking and the possibilities to empower are embedded in personal site symbolism that can become a part of “the public culture” (Stern. p.97).

Are the risks worth the rewards? Are blogs, as Stern suggests, “therapeutic” (p. 102)? A former student of mine has given me permission to use her blog as an example of the powerful, insightful, and symbolic possibilities.

Part Two
noel93.wordpress.com

You now know the story. My current students, many who are Anna's friends, know her story,and can follow her story. They are reading. They are writing. They are discussing, debating, grappling. I have to wonder how powerful this would be if allowed into the curriculum.

“Self-reflection is, perhaps, the most commonly cited reward of maintaining a personal site among youth authors” (S. Stern. P. 102). Stern speaks of a self-induced obligation blog authors have that drives reflective updates, discussion to feedback, and creative additions. The Internet author works with multiple literacies that redefine Aristotle’s peripatetic. She is a storyteller, travelling through cyber-space from computer to computer. Though the creation is for the self, it is meant to be read by a vast audience that further empowers self-expression through the reflection of self. The authors are their own directors as well as their own primary audience (p. 105).

Erving Goffman (1959) saw “all self-presentation as performative” (p. 106). The blog author becomes a performer, controlling how the self is represented and directing how words impress. The author creates a role, performs through writing, and presents a self-directed, personally designed, product (pp. 106-107). The “everyday self,” is revealed as the “authentic self,” and the performer searches for “validation” that “relieves [his] fear about being different or abnormal” (p.108).

The blog becomes transformative, as the author is in control of her identity, no longer dependent on false masks of protection. Online authors reveal a self-perception of truth and identity that can be revised as deemed necessary. Unlike a diary, a blog is alive. Blogs are learning experiences for the author as introspection is genuine, expressed through a “youth cultural production” that reveal perceptions of an authentic self.



A teacher's perception of a student's potential can also transform as a new sophistication of reality embraces words, and literacy becomes owned by the individual, not defined by an institution. Critique, too, is allowed a new found freedom, and can be answered, as desired, by the youth author.

A blog is, a new cultural experience and produces a discourse of literacy that, because it is important to youth, needs to be acknowledged by educators.