Final Project Teacher/Artist Statement

The most challenging thing, and also the thing which stimulated the most creativity about this project was the amount of freedom we had. While there were parameters as to the different “tracks” we had to include, the rest was up to us to figure out. Our biggest struggle in putting this project together was simply figuring out what we wanted to include in our performance. We had a subject early on, but it took us a long time to put the project together as a whole. It was a great exercise in group collaboration. To start out we had to figure out something that we all felt passionate about. We talked about things we all had in common. The commonality that resonated with us most was our current role as pre-service teachers. We decided to explore our hopes and fears, as well as how the outside view of teachers measures up with our personal experiences. From there we moved step by step forward until we had something usable. Developing this project around this topic really ended up helping me figure out my own insecurities about teaching, and increased my confidence in myself as a future teacher. It was interesting to create something like this out of nothing and have it turn out to be something that was impactful for me. The technical aspects of this project were definitely a challenge for us. Even though we had had some training with sound mixing and things in this class, we were still very much tech newbies in our group. The technical elements of this took a really long time for us to put together. So much so that we got pretty frustrated with the whole thing. It turned out pretty smooth in the end, which was nice, but the process was a struggle. But really this was the best was the best way for my group and I to learn a lot of the tech skills we needed. Figuring it out on our own helped us to be a lot more confident in how to problem solve in the programs. I now feel that I could do a similar project in the future without quite as much of a struggle.

I think that it could be very beneficial to do something like this in a high school classroom. It is a great combination of teaching creativity, performance, writing, and tech skills all in one project. It also gives the students a great amount of ownership. However, I do think that it would be good to provide more structure in the assignment. It needs to be connected to something in the class with a purpose behind it. For example, you could have a theatre class do something like this when devising a piece as a class. You could have an English class do this when they are writing poetry. Have the students write their own poems, and perform them while also incorporating media tracks. I think that if you expect your students to be able to do this kind of project that they will definitely need some tech training before doing it. There would need to be scaffolding within this class before giving this much of tech heavy assignment. I guess my reservation in doing this kind of assignment would be whether there is enough time in a theatre class to teach media skills as well. There are a lot of media skills that students are already really good at just by living in this day and age. But there are also things that are harder to do that take more time such as video and sound editing. So while I love the idea of doing a project like this, I think that you would need to be thoughtful with how it is incorporated in the classroom, and what the payoff will be in the class. 

Activity Ideas: Speak

1. Create a soundscape:

• In groups have students identify a specific place from the novel which they think is important. (I.E The forest, the janitor’s closet, the art room, etc.)
• Have them make a list of all of the sounds which they might hear in this place.
• In groups have the students create a recorded sound scape of this place by using their mouths, bodies, or their surroundings to create the noises on their list.
• Have each group share their sound recording.

    2.  The “Mr. Freeman” activity

• Like Mr. Freeman talks about in Speak, in order to make art, you need to put an emotion into it.
• Analyze passages from Speak and talk about what emotion the passage portrays.
• Have each student choose an emotion they would like us to focus on.
• Have them choose a name of an object out of a hat that they will be assigned to portray.
• Students will have to create a visual artistic portrayal of the the object they chose, somehow portraying the emotion which they selected.
• Students can use whatever medium they would like to use, as long as it is visual.

     3. Writing Vs. Speaking:

• In Speak, Melinda explores what it means to express yourself verbally versus in writing. She is not really able to express herself very well through her voice, but she is able to write just fine. This activity helps students identify their own strengths and weaknesses in communication.
• Give the students a simple prompt to talk to a partner about.
• Give them another simple prompt to write about.
• Discuss- which prompt did you feel let you express yourself better?

  4.  Skype Guest Speaker

• Arrange for a Skype Guest Speaker from a women’s crisis center to talk to your class.
• Have students prepare questions they would like answered from the guest speaker.
• Take notes and ask the speaker questions while they present.
• Write a class thank you note to the speaker.

DJ Battle

For the most part I enjoyed the DJ battle, but it wasn't quite organized enough to make it a great experience as an audience member. We were told the event would start at 6:00 pm, but the first "battle" didn't even perform until 7:15 pm. But that's all I will say about that situation. 

It was fun to see all of the students dressed up and excited to perform. It was very obvious that an ability to perform and really get into character was vital in this project. The more performative the approach the students took to the assignment, the more entertaining and easy to follow their "battles" were. Some students just stood there and played their music right after each other without moving, while others really got into it. One of my favorite performances that I saw was the Hannah Montana Vs. Miley Cyrus pair. It really felt like they were using the music and sound clips to fight for them. 

I could see doing some variation of this project in a theatre class while teaching students about character and conflict. I think it would be interesting for students to find music that matches their characters and speaks some of their characters inner feelings. 

Game for Change: Hazelwood School District

https://twinery.org/2/#stories/e8065974-ca0d-f832-3d0d-5c428d2ce4b3/play

This game is based on a completely true story which is unfolding back in my home school district right now. I hope that it causes people to think a little more deeply about our public school system, and how react to problems within it. I liked how the twine game layout made it so that it could be really complicated. The issue doesn't really have a "winning" scenario. So that's fun. I think this assignment could definitely be used to introduce students to being advocates for a cause. Students could go on to explore these issues more deeply in a devised piece.

Here are my references:


http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/hazelwood-schools-cut-music-gym-teachers/article_add3c025-f970-53b7-bb77-1f7b3907d81f.html

http://legacy.ksdk.com/story/news/education/2016/02/12/hazelwood-school-district-clarifies-budget-cuts/80319424/

http://fox2now.com/2016/02/12/hazelwood-school-district-clarifies-plans-to-cut-6-6-million-from-budget/

Round Robin

#1

“Oh my new place? You can’t beat the view! A little lonely though…”

The stars dance in front of the moon and the black sky, connected and distant from the world.

A hard space wind blew and one of the stars was thrown away from the rest to be left all alone.

It was interesting to see how the stories grew evolved as they moved from person to person. What makes this activity interesting is seeing how each person brings their own ideas and twists to the stories. I think that my decision to begin my story with dialogue made it so that the story was fairly ambiguous. It ended up as more of a sad existential poem than a story. But that's OK.

I really enjoy the idea of this assignment, however I think that it is really too complicated to do in this exact manner in a high school classes because you have to rely on everyone else to be on top of things. If I was to do this in a classroom I would definitely do this as an in class activity. Perhaps taking a class period to do this in full. I think that this could be used in a beginning unit on play writing. You could do the stories in more of a play script form, giving the students practice both story writing, and the pattern of writing a play script.

Process Piece: Dishes

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_tINWW5oT3heUhUNkRGVUdqajg/view?usp=sharing

Doing the dishes by hand is a very familiar chore for me. For almost my whole life I have lived in places which did not have working dishwashers. As I child it was my most loathed chore, especially because doing the dishes meant washing stacks and stacks of dishes, silverware, and large pots and pans for nine people who cooked and ate a great deal. Now I have come to terms with this chore as a necessary part of adulthood.

I chose to document the act of washing the dishes in an edited sound recording. I chose this medium because I felt like the task of washing dishes had a lot of interesting sounds which meld together to make a whole. In the finished product the rushing water, the scrubbing, and the clinking of the dishes layer on top of each other, and are hardly individually identifiable. However, as a whole the sound recording documents the very universal task of doing the dishes. The process of creating this piece was much more interesting to me than the product. The sound file that I ended up with is not very interesting. Listening to it I don't think that you would even realize that these noises were carefully selected and edited down from an eight minute recording. But for me each sound I included has a special significance, since liked it enough to keep it in the final edit.

In a class room I think that this would be a great tool for teaching students to get familiar with video or sound editing programs if you were going to expect students to use them to tell other stories in the future. It is also a great introduction to documentary type thinking, if you want your students to start a project where they collect and document the stories of others.

Textual Poaching: Pop Art

I love the work of Roy Lichtenstein, so when approaching this assignment, I decided to revisit some of his work for inspiration. As I was looking over some of his paintings, I noticed a running theme in how he represented women. Most of the women in his paintings are in some kind of state of distress. They are often crying or extremely emotional, usually in reaction to a man. Here are some examples:

I realized while looking at these paintings that while I love Lichtenstein's work, his representation of women doesn't speak to how I feel in my everyday life as a woman, or how I would like to be represented. I think that this kind of representation of women plays on the stereotype of women as very irrational and helpless which has permeated pop culture. 

My remix of this genre shows me in the pop art style as the kind of confident, self assured and happy woman that I would like to seen as. I tried to keep many of the pop art motifs (bold colors, cartoon style ink, speech bubble, etc.) but change the content to reflect my own personal life perspective. "Greet the day" is kind of a catch phrase of mine as well as my life philosophy, showing that I can be confident and happy everyday, regardless of my marital status, or the stresses I am facing in life. 

I think that this would be a great exercise in a theatre classroom when students are dealing with older scripts for plays where the representation is different than it is now for cultures, genders religions, etc. You could have the students create their own "remix" of a scene from a play showing their own personal perspectives on the subjects.