What Would We Create at the 2015 National PEN Conference 10-11-2015
The Progressive Education Network’s National Conference was held in New York City this past weekend. The theme of the conference was “Access, Equity and Activism: Teaching the Possible”
Todd Rolle, the Movement/Theater Teacher at Central Park East I Elementary School, and I collaborated on an arts-focused workshop that would use the central theme of the conference as a starting place for an arts exploration which could lead to curriculum development.
Before our workshop, there was an opening plenary with a panel of esteemed children’s book authors entitled “Authors as Activists and the Importance of Diverse Books.” As the panelists spoke, I wrote down their words that connected to the three large themes of the conference. The notion of seeing a book as a ‘Mirror’ or/and a ‘Window’ for a child was compelling intellectually, and for an artist these words had strong visual and sculptural aspects. I brought the words to our workshop to bridge their work to ours.
Todd and I first transformed a small conference room in the Brooklyn Marriot into and open space for Movement, and then put the three words, Access, Equity and Activism on three of the walls.
When the participants entered, we invited them to tape the words that I had written down during the plenary on the walls, near one of the big themes. We also asked them to write additional words and tape them up:
I led an circle of introductions, and on the second round each participant said their name and one of the words on the walls, and created a movement that we all mirrored back.
Todd then led a dance warm-up which explained his movement pedagogy while getting our bodies ready to work.
We all took a breath, and I asked the group to make some shapes related to the words with our eyes closed, and then asked people to form groups of three, and then find a way to express without speaking these ideas:
Door
Tunnel
Bridge
Between Two Worlds
We broke the class into two groups, and switched after 20 minutes. Todd worked with his group on getting deeper into the word “Access” through word and movement.
I had made a long banner with the words, Equity-Access-Activism, written across. I invited my group to draw images and use color to express these words. The media provided was marker, colored pencil, and 3 types of cray-pa:
The banner group brought their work into the room, and taped it up under the word, Access. We had a short conversation about the process of the workshop and what participants might bring back to their work with students.
Then we brought the banner to the main room.
And put it up in the lobby.
