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All
ArtsLiteracy work is based on the
Performance Cycle, a literacy-through-performance curricular framework.
Literacy
development research and program evaluation
are integral to the ArtsLiteracy Project's work.
Each summer, teachers, artists, and Youth Leaders spend five full days in professional development workshops and guided collaborative planning sessions in preparation for team teaching a four-week literacy-through-performance class based on a challenging text. Experienced mentor teachers observe classes each day and provide guidance for teaching teams composed of a local teacher, a professional artist, and a student Youth Leader. BSHS culminates with a day of original student performances based on the summer's text. When possible, BSHS teaching teams collaborate with national and international teachers, artists, and students. Past collaborators have included nationally renowned teaching artist and author Jan Mandell; artists, teachers, and students from England through Creative Partnerships; Brazilian teacher Daniel Soares; and Kenyan filmmaker Wajuhi Kamara and Indian filmmaker Shonu Chandra through PLAN International. All
BSHS ArtsLit classrooms work with the same challenging text. Past BSHS
texts include: Shaw's St. Joan, Shakespeare's Othello and The
Taming of the Shrew, Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding, Sophocles's Antigone,
Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima.
The ArtsLiteracy Project's LEAP (Literacy Education Arts Partnership) program provides opportunities for Central Falls middle school and high school students and teachers to collaborate with ArtsLit artists and mentors. LEAP in-school residencies consist of 12 artist/teacher-led sessions based on a challenging text chosen from the school curriculm, preceded by extensive planning meetings where the teaching team explores the text and themes of the upcoming unit and plans the unit's curriculum based on the Performance Cycle. Planning, teaching, and reflective debreifing sessions that follow each classroom session are all facilitated by an experienced mentor teacher. Over the course of individual units, students shape their analysis of and responses to the text into performances that are then shared with school and community members. LEAP teachers work with artists in their classrooms after participating in Brown Summer High School or the ArtsLit Summer Workshop Week. ArtsLit's TALL (Transitions through ArtsLiteracy Learning) program, which began in January 2004, provides opportunities for 4th through 6th grade Central Falls teachers and students to collaborate with ArtsLit artists and mentors. Through 10-week residencies and after-school programs, TALL aims to expand opportunities for teachers and students in the Central Falls School District to work with ArtsLit. TALL focuses on helping teachers and students to work together in new ways, both within their schools and among other Central Falls schools, with a special emphasis on students transitioning into middle school. For Central Falls teachers whose in-school partnerships are forthcoming or who have been past ArtsLit participants but are not currently involved in full in-class units, in-school opportunities to work with an artist are available through Spark. Spark is a program designed to invigorate teachers and students through a short series of artist visits. Over the course of two to three classroom visits, an artist engages a teacher's classroom in ArtsLit activities and approaches. These visits give teachers ideas about how to integrate arts-based activities into their curricula in preparation for a full in-class unit After-school
ArtsLit work occurs at Clinical Practice Schools and
individualized after-school programs. Clinical Practice
Schools are offered to
teachers working with ArtsLiteracy artists as an opportunity to build
on in-class work and offered both during the school year and the summer.
Students as well as teachers attend these ten-week Clinical Practice Schools.
Youth Leaders
facilitate the work alongside ArtsLit artists and mentor teachers. ArtsLit
also designs after-school programs according to a school's needs, such
as a current girls-only playwriting program at Blackstone Academy.
Youth Leaders also create original performances based on texts such as Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 and Ovid's Metamorphoses and have performed their work for educators, artists, and students at a conference of the Bread Loaf School of English; at three ArtsLit Weekend Workshops attended by over 60 teachers and artists; and at two sessions of the ArtsLit seminar at Brown University, ED 169: Literacy, Community, and the Arts. In the fall of 2003, two Youth Leaders also contributed to a keynote speech and led workshops at an Arts Education Partnership meeting in New York City. To read this speech, click here. To download or order a hard copy of the Arts Education Partnership report "You Want to Be a Part of Everything: The Arts, Community, and Learning," which features this speech and other information about the ArtsLiteracy Project, click here.
ArtsLiteracy workshops not only provide teachers with opportunities to learn arts-based literacy strategies alongside artists and Youth Leaders, but also address how these strategies can be incorporated meaningfully into daily classroom practice. Artists have the benefit of participating in workshop settings that encourage them to draw on their performance experience while collaborating with teachers, other artists, and youth to develop arts-based literacy curricula. At ArtsLit workshops, Youth Leaders are role models for less-experienced participants as they lead activities, share performances, and actively participate alongside their teachers and professional artists. ArtsLiteracy Project staff also lead workshops at regional and national conferences.
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