Teaching Artist Union Sunday Meeting Summary

17 January 2010, notes by Angelina

Attendees: Angelina, Lisa, Alison, Alice, Abigail, James, Dan, Chris, Huong, Jeremiah, Janette, Cory, Jennifer, Rachel

2pm Guest Poet, Dan Godston, from Chicago read from “Diving into The Letters in Poems: Creating Poetry Banners,” an editorial project of the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College, Chicago
-Dan uses the nuts and bolts of how to make a poetry banner with a class to discuss his philoshophy of teaching and idea synthesis within an informative article that at moments breaks down into poetry. Great example of a curriculum as an art piece.

Jennifer Sullivan reads Natalie Goldberg excerpt from Writing Down the Bones
importance of place, beauty in the mundane, an artists life as inherently lonely, solitude and recognizing the inner electricity. Artists as minority of majority in Brooklyn?

Interdisciplinary challenges- opening the artist within teachers, others who don’t identify as an artists. Teaching as inherently creative. Inspiring other teachers to think beyond The Tests.

3pm
School of the Future presented by Cassie and Chris

Bullet points of school:
-Joining Teaching artists, and artists with a lesson to teach to fill this lack of creative energy in schools and learning. To take the learning outside of the confines of a classroom and into the brownfields of Bushwick.
-To create a place where teaching artists can belong
-to teach information and life skills through the process of making
-solving problems that we are faced with in a particularly problematic place
-Creating curricula as an art piece: A call for contributions in response to the place and its issues.
-the ecology of the area, use of waste, creating an open + life promoting environment
-anti-insular, involve community representatives, invite organizations to get involved
-using the architecture as a staple symbol for deconstructing the education system, as well as its location sandwiched between the BQE and Staples

How to make a class around an art project- Avant garde teaching!
CURRICULUM IDEAS ENCOURAGED NOW UNTIL MAY-ish

There will be assistance on the website about how to write a lesson plan,
begin to pool resources

Need: Fundraising, neighborhood outreach, curriculum, design contest with Columbia U
www.schoolofthefuture.org

4pm
Skillshare by Huong: Patternmaking and Lifeskills
Huong lead us to make “The Ideal Uniform”, deconstructing pre-existing clothing items that we would want to potentially wear every day, make variations on, and experiment with
We learned how to look at clothing as a pattern for the construction of a new version of the same piece
Challenge of working Life lessons into life skills: Making patterns and body image,
Discussion Points:
-How can we focus on Consumption- production cycle, life cycles of things, proposing the question of how things are made (where does milk come from) and opening the conversation for critical thinking?
-What are ways of visualizing the unseen aspects of everyday things?
-How do we use art and group projects as a comfortable environment for introducing push button topics, creating dialogue between students and teacher?
-How to open up ideas of body image, sexuality, etc within the process of collaging, mentoring, storytelling, asking about a students work, and sometimes ignoring the issue to allow an opening for questions?

Some names dropped (Resources): Chris Carlson’s Nowtopia, Bruce Mao, Cradle to Cradle, Bristol Project, Richard Hopkins- Tradition Towns, Green Museum, Reggio Emilia Italian teaching approach