Kennedy Center Teaching Artist: Melanie Layne

On April 14th, twenty students sat in a circle on the floor of their classroom with teaching artist Melanie Layne as she began an in-class demonstration.

“Today we are going to look, think and talk about portraits,” she told the first graders as she created a gesture for each of the needed skills. She laid out dozens of portraits for the students to see. Soon they were engaged with their partner discussing all of the things that they could see in a portrait or a photograph of a person or a group of people. Their task was to talk about what was similar and what was different in the portraits they observed.

What could a first grader notice? You’d be amazed! Melanie wrote down all the things she heard in the sixty seconds allotted for discussion on the smart board. All these things were then discussed as a group, and Melanie taught the students the most important things to always look for in a portrait. Soon they were playing "Pass the Portrait" and quickly pointing out to their partner all the things they noticed. Students soon realized that there were many things they could learn about a person from learning to see the many pieces of information contained in visual art.

The in-class demonstration was part of residency instruction for teachers conducted by the visiting Kennedy Center teaching artist as part of Lafayette School Corporation/ Purdue Convocations’ participation in the Kennedy Center’s Partners in Education program. Over two days Melanie visited four classrooms twice so she could take the students further into the instruction which eventually connects to reading and writing.

Her work also included a three-hour long professional development workshop where teachers learned the theories and practices behind the demonstrated techniques. The method touched upon many parts of learning – visual and oral learning and exploration, attention to detail, interactive participation, and vocabulary to name a few. Teachers were able to see connections to many subject areas such as reading, writing social studies, music, art and biography as well as how this type of learning also naturally lead to assessment of students’ comprehension of the material.

Most participating teachers were from Edgelea Elementary where some curricular integration techniques are being adapted as a common format among their classrooms. The continuity of a common language used by teachers in discussing discipline and teamwork has helped create a larger sense of community within the school. Kennedy Center teaching artists help teachers explore methods of 21st Century learning techniques that lead to meeting multiple objectives in curricular instruction.

Laura Clavio, assistant director of Purdue Conovcations

Kennedy Center Meeting: A Glimpse of the Future

I recently attended the annual meeting of the John F. Kennedy Center’s Partners in Education program. Purdue Convocations and the Lafayette School Corporation (LSC) are partners in this program that pairs arts presenters and school systems to present top quality professional development training to area teachers. This is the fourth year for the local partnership. Cindy Preston, a second grade teacher at Edgelea Elementary attended representing LSC.

The meeting focused on a look into changes in education and how we can meet the challenges of 21st Century learning. Two major challenges to arts education are funding and keeping up with the rapid pace of changing technology.

The keynote speaker, Bill Capodagli, author of The Disney Way and Innovate the Pixar Way, emphasized the importance of leadership and innovation in moving an organization forward. He pointed out how less structured work environments led to more productive and creative employees in several companies who chose to try a new approach to their corporate environment.

Futurist Garry Golden, whose work is to help people learn how to anticipate and lead change, forecast an even greater leap forward in technology in the next ten years. He told the group that we are now entering a learner-oriented era in which learning is not so much institution, or teacher, - driven, but will be more about what we learn from those around us. It will not be so much about what is delivered as it will be about our own self-directed efforts. He predicted that soon almost everyone will have a hand-held electronic device and more and more content will be delivered through these devices. Learning is making the leap from formal to informal. He also predicted the emergence of what is termed, “Third Place”. These are locations that are not home and not work where people gather to interact or gather information, like cafes, malls, parks, etc. This calls for new ways of communicating.

Arts education researcher Eric Booth helped attendees look at the work of author Daniel Pink’s book Drive and how the arts and arts education can help deliver what our culture needs and wants – innovation, creativity, discovery, increased curiosity and engagement, authentic learning, sustainable rigor, and, most specifically, intrinsic-motivation.

Laura Clavio, assistant director of Conovcations

KENNEDY CENTER PARTNERS IN EDUCATION: FOCUS ON EDGELEA ELEMENTARY

Indiana 2007 is the team formed by Lafayette School Corporation and Purdue Convocations to participate in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Partners in Education (KCPIE) program. Now in its fourth year, the team is focusing on the staff of Edgelea Elementary School where teachers are working together to implement arts integration strategies and create common bonds among classrooms.

The Kennedy Center defines arts integration as an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both.

Fifteen members of the Edgelea teaching staff are participating with a teacher-created steering committee to help build an arts integration plan with the goal of increasing student learning and motivation to learn. This begins with finding a common activities that can be used at all grade levels. The teachers found so much value in what they were learning from Kennedy Center workshops that they have volunteered to move forward another step with the program and begin looking at the idea of an all school focus on the arts integration approach to learning.

“The main goal for our staff this year is to get a common language”, says steering committee chair and second grade teacher Cindy Preston. “By doing this we can ensure our students will hear the same language/rules regardless of the teacher or classroom he/she is in. We have posted signs that remind students to make strong choices by controlling their body, voice, mind, imagination and cooperation.”

The school is working with teaching concepts developed by Kennedy Center teaching artist Sean Layne. Layne has more than twenty years experience as a teaching artist and has developed a method of teaching classroom discipline and curriculum for the Kennedy Center that incorporates theatrical techniques. His work focuses on creating a cooperative and supportive classroom atmosphere where group work and team work are essential elements. Students are taught how to make strong behavioral choices and how to make their activities inclusive of every class member. The program develops a strong sense of community first at the classroom level and later within the whole school.

Under the auspices of his company, Focus 5, Inc., Edgelea Elementary has worked with school coach Beth Radford, from Spartansburg, South Carolina, who was a classroom teacher for eight years prior to taking her new post as an arts integration specialist at Pine Creek Elementary. Beth has visited Edgelea three times over the past two years to conduct professional development workshops for teachers and to provide in-class demonstrations and coaching.

The teachers have seen the benefit of creating an atmosphere of uniformity among their classrooms and a common language of expectation that can benefit the school as a whole. From learning the basics of classroom cooperation teachers are now beginning to see demonstrations that show how lessons can be brought to life with an active approach to classroom participation and how students can be engaged in both a core discipline and an arts discipline simultaneously.

Laura Clavio
Assistant Director of Purdue Convocations