Recent Posts

Archive

Tags

Zooming In & Acts of Kindness

Located on a quiet corner in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, P.S. 84 Jose De Diego School’s facade displayed a handsome mural as befits an educational institution dedicated to the visual arts. A vibrant mosaic shone behind the security desk where I sign in each time I arrive for my classroom experience. I was assigned to a third-grade class with Phillip Berezney and Phyllis Capello as the Teaching Artists. We started off with a Maori chant that also engaged the students’ bodies. My favorite part was the spirit of life and its accompanying gesture of stirring a pot. Then, Phyllis brought out her soprano ukulele, and the class sang a song called “If I Had the Wings of a Dove” for their regu

Lessons in Equitable Pedagogy: The Invitation

On October 28th, the first day of the 2017-18 Teaching Artist Project (TAP) training, the Community-Word Project facilitators asked my cohort of 30+ multi-disciplinary artists: When is the first time you shared your art? What can’t you create without? What do you want your art to do? After posing the aforementioned questions, the facilitators asked us to free write about our artist map. A few individuals shared. We continued on with the day as our facilitators guided us through additional activities and reflective moments. I learned a lot on this first day. My biggest take-away was that this training would teach me, among other things, to connect the artist and educator parts of myself. I wa

TAP and the Classroom Experience

When I first started the Teaching Artist Project training, it was quite the eye-opening experience. Using the arts to teach, and incorporating them into lesson plans, has led me to notice how students learn. They are excited and eager to participate, it brings the spark and ignites their drive to learn. As a result, it leaves them exploring on their own, and - more importantly - learning with each other. The way TAP works is that they train both new and experienced teachers together. We've done group exercises to become familiar with each other and get on the same page as well as share ideas to understand the process of incorporating the arts into the teaching structure. The ideas and concep

Getting to TAP

I’m a performance artist – I turn the irritants of my life into dance/theatre work. You could say I am part oyster and part cat. Oyster because I attempt to make pearls, part cat just because. For me, a large part of the TAP process is learning to turn my work as an artist into lessons. It’s as if I took an idea for a piece and got inside it so as to create a map for the journey, keeping the steps concrete and transparent enough to take the whole class with me. Just like my performance work, I want to create an experience, but more consciously so when I teach. And the value of being inside my process is I can use so many methods/intelligences to make sure every student comes with me. In TAP

212-962-3820 ext. 7

11 Broadway, Suite 508
New York, New York 10004

©2017 BY TEACHING ARTIST PROJECT