Delta
ARTFUL TEACHING FLOWING into BROADER WATERWAYS
The participants of Artful Teaching have reflected upon the journey with gratitude, carrying forward new mindsets, creative abilities and tools to activate new pathways to meet our community goals.
“I’m really grateful. I’m really grateful for Artful Teaching and I feel like I’ve had so much help. I’ve been guided into these new places that I never foresaw. So I just feel really grateful for it every day.”
“We all need that to grow and change and to make sure that we don’t repeat mistakes, and I think that you can do it through the arts in a way that’s not traumatizing. You can do it in a way that creates real empathy and learning without it opening scars; sometimes I think it can heal the ones that are already there. But people have to be brave enough to walk into it. And I think that’s part of what the next steps are for this district after Artful Teaching. I think we’re very fortunate to have so many teachers who went through Artful Teaching for years and years and in varying degrees, use it in their classrooms. We’re in a much better place in a lot of ways than we were when I started 20 years ago. And I think that’s great.”
A Vibrant Learning Landscape
We believe the energy and efforts of these teachers, along with the many administrators, scholars, teaching artists and elders that contributed to this project, will enrich, and mold and shape the learning landscape has resulted in a healthier and more vibrant learning landscape in Juneau.
As Shawna said, effective teaching and creative learning had been happening in Dzantik’i Heeni (Juneau) for tens of thousands of years; only since its recent colonization has education failed to ensure that all children, like the land itself, would flourish and thrive. Juneau is now home to a diverse population of students that isn’t reflected in its teaching staff, and this contributes to the inequitable outcomes of our educational efforts.
As a group of mostly white teachers, we found ourselves asking:
-
How do we shift what learning looks like to be responsive to all of our students?
-
How can we honor and sustain the learning traditions of this place?
-
In what ways will the learning landscape be enriched through the continuing work and inspiration of these individuals to seek to integrate arts and culture, through the habits developed in students to think and listen and create, and by the lessons learned about place and indigenous ways of learning?
Guided by Indigenous Wisdom
The answers to these questions could only come from our indigenous elders, scholars and community organizations. We were fortunate to follow their lead in providing opportunities to consider deeply what decolonizing classrooms might look like, and with their generous guidance began to connect arts integration to culturally responsive pedagogy.
By rooting into the land and centering the culture it created, new energy and deeper understanding flowed into our learning spaces.
Looking Ahead: New Headwaters
The opportunities to challenge longstanding and ineffective or biased classroom practices will continue to present themselves. Children will always need classrooms in which they can flourish, and the land will still be here offering sustenance and direction. The arts, will always hold out a way to learn and connect and express.
We hope that as Artful Teaching has gathered the perspectives of many, throughout this decade, to transform our understanding of teaching in and through the arts and culture, these powerful currents will continue to enrich and shape our learning communities into the future. May this work become new headwaters!
REFLECTION EDDIES
How do these River Journeys connect to your own experiences as an educator and/or your efforts to support educators on their own journeys?
How do they extend your understanding of ways to support teachers?
What actions might you take based on these understandings?