Friday, 7pm This weekend, my son and his friends, all age fourteen, are participating in the Providence 48-hour film project. The challenge: make a complete 5 to 7-minute film in just 48 hours. They've done this before, through school, with a group of young, cool teachers writing the script. This time the kids are on their own. They've named their film company Release the Kraken.
8 pm Two members of the team return with the parameters they picked up from the project organizers in Providence. (These two had told everyone pickup would be at 8, so they've been brainstorming by themselves for 45 minutes. Everyone else is indignant that they didn't call at once when they knew the parameters. ) The team's assigned genre, romance, is perfect for a group of almost ninth graders. Their assigned character is Albert or Alice the advice columnist. Required prop: a car part. The required line: "We need to get going."
10:40 pm Pie break. Six kids (five boys, one girl) have been brainstorming plot lines for almost three hours.
Plot suggestions have included:
- a romance between two spark plugs;
- a guy writing for romantic advice because he's in love with his car;
- a guy impersonating a female advice columnist (and a lot of guys who write for advice fall in love with "her")
- etcetera.
They've settled on a dweeby guy named Ogden taking bad (tongue-in-cheek) romantic advice and having it all turn out well in the end anyway. Scenes involve anaphylaxis and an interrupted robbery. The car part is a tire swing.
At this point they've planned the sequence of scenes. Owen sits at the keyboard with headphones on composing the score. The others are splitting into teams to work on the script of individual scenes.
11:30 pm Four of the kids are typing on their laptops on a shared google doc. Damian is now composing while Owen bounces around. Much concern: is the script too short? Too cheesy? Their current plan is to finish the script and go to sleep by 2 am.
Saturday
12:30 am They have finished a first draft, and now they're mostly arguing. Owen took over Damian's song and "fixed" it. They've done the casting, including for friends who will arrive in the morning, and Cally is drafting a costume list. I drive the director, Ryan, home to sleep in his own bed. Everybody else plans to camp out at our house. As I go to bed, a now-calmer group sits around refining the script.
5:30 am Strangely, the kids have waked up to go for a "nature walk." They went to bed at 3:30.
8:00 am The director arrives. Damian makes pancakes for his friends. Then, as Albert the Tongue-in-Cheek Romantic Advice columnist, he types on an actual typewriter a parent brought over for a prop.
Noon Two are here working on music. The others are out scouting locations: playground and restaurant. They've already filmed and uploaded most of the scenes they could do at home.
3 pm Back out with picnic gear to film the restaurant scene at outdoor tables of a small, currently closed, restaurant. When the hero falls down in (simulated) anaphylaxis, the kids' cries of "Call 911!" attract attention.
5 pm The kids decide the tire swing in the park was not the right kind. They rig a tire swinging from a chain in the back yard, but the light is wrong for filming. Filming ends for the day. Editing and composing continue.
6 pm The leading lady, Cally, sprains her ankle jumping on the trampoline. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.
7 pm Our older kids, their significant others, and a guest also come for dinner. Leo cooks a 4-course Asian meal for 19. The male lead, Andrew, who is allergic to nuts, points out a nut in a dish I assured him was safe. I give him Benadryl. Life does not imitate art. No anaphylaxis ensues.
8:30 pm I clean up after dinner for 19.
9:30 pm to midnight Some people go home for the night or go upstairs to sleep for a few hours. Three kids compete to write the final song the leading man sings to his love, while the director tells them there won't be room for a final song.
Sunday
7:00 am
The four boys working at the computer now averaged 5 hours of sleep, much better than Friday night. Status update: two scenes need to be re-shot. No decision has been made about music for the final scene and credits. Otherwise, editing is coming along well.
7:30 am Decision: the movie will be called OGDEN after the main character.
8 am Cally is on crutches. There will be no re-make of the tire swing scene.
8:50 am Endless re-takes of a 15-second scene. Can Tynan stop mumbling?
11 am Will the final scene be a song or Ogden reading a poem with a musical background? Much discussion. The girls work on the love poem; the boys work on the song.
12:40 pm Decision: The final poem has become a heartfelt speech with music in the background.
Much of the last hour has been spent perfecting a scream.
2 pm Mostly editing now. Title and credits are ready. Some of the actors have headed for home. I'm recruiting others to be in a small movie demonstrating activities for my novel THE ICE CASTLE.
3:40
The kids are in the home stretch, splicing in sound effects. The girls have wandered off. One last, desperate argument: poison or anaphylaxis? The film is currently 6 minutes, 30 seconds long.
3:50 Damian brings in Cally as backup. She convinces the editing team: It's anaphylaxis.
4:30 Really just clean-up details left now -- making sure everybody has signed releases, adding or subtracting a second here or there, and fitting chord progressions to the cuts in the video stream. Damian on the music track says, "I am so close."
5:06 pm All the gathered kids and parents finally get to crowd around and see a run-through of the film. People laughed at the right parts, and the music worked really well. Now there's about half an hour for final tweaks and exporting the entire movie.
5:15 Consternation. Is the time limit7 minutes with credits or without credits? Can they run the credits fast enough to fit within 7 minutes? Quick check of the rules online. Phew. The credits aren't counted toward the 7 minutes.
5:53 Panic. The formatted film is suddenly square and squished instead of being in a 4 to 3 ratio. Quick, make another copy.
6:12 The car has left! 78 minutes to get the film to Providence.
7:18 pm They made it! OGDEN is in.
Showing posts with label arts education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arts education. Show all posts
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Off to Taiwan for the TIBE
The Taiwan International Book Exhibition is the largest book fair in Asia, with 500,000 visitors over the course of five days. Visitors include not just publishers, agents, and booksellers, but also teachers, parents, and kids who wander through the exhibition halls looking for fun and educational products.
Tumblehome Learning plans to operate on two continents from the start, with offices in Taiwan and the US. We're hoping to get a lot of cross-cultural enrichment, learning and sharing practices across both countries. Introducing ourselves at the TIBE is our way of starting that process.
I'll be leaving in the early hours of tomorrow morning for the 29-hour journey to Taipei, for a late Monday night arrival. (Taipei is thirteen hours ahead of Boston.) There I'll meet up with Tumblehome Learning's Taiwan staff, which currently includes our president, Barnas Monteith, and Yu-yi Ling, our Asian business manager.
We'll be there in Booth A907 in Hall 1, showing off the ARCs, Chinese and English, of our first books. We'll also display some engineering books from the Boston Museum of Science along with Lost in Lexicon and a teaser for The Ice Castle, which will be coming out in August.
We'll attend tea parties hosted by countries and publishers, and we'll meet with agents and publishing companies from other Asian countries to see if they have any interest in acquiring our products. We'll also talk to teachers and parents to get feedback on the idea of paired books and science activity kits as well as how the covers look, what font size to use in the final books, and other details.
In the second week I'll give a talk about a child's memories of the early days of Intel to Intel Taiwan employees, and Barnas and I will meet with education officials, science museum officials, printers, and leaders of technology. I'm really hoping to begin to understand the drive for excellence in science and technology that is so important in Taiwan. Maybe there are some things our own country can learn.
I'll post pictures and let you know how it goes!
Friday, December 2, 2011
Raising daVincis with STEAM
We should be integrating the arts more into STEM education--that's the argument explored in an intriguing new article from EdWeek. STEM should become STEAM, because engineering design and invention require some of the same creativity and ability to think outside the box as does artistic exploration.
The article offers some fascinating tidbits and models. For example, there's the tantalizing fact that Nobel scientists are 22 times more likely than other scientists to be involved in the performing arts. There's a description of the biodegradable water bottle that one this year's ArtScience prize. Here's a video from the Wolf Trap Foundation showing how the performing arts can help young children "feel" mathematics in their bodies.
Of course, as Noyce Foundation trustee Alan Friedman points out in the article, there are big differences between art and science as ways of knowing. Think, for example, of how a piece of work in evaluated. In both art and science, boldness of vision and originality may be important. But in the end, a piece of scientific work is evaluated by whether it can be reproduced, whether it proves to be true. Though Keats says, "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty," the two are different.
I tend not to think of myself as artistic, but people remind me writing is an art form. In college I read poetry in the cell biology lab and then went off to my creative writing class to write stories about the adventure of scientific discovery. And to my surprise, Lost in Lexicon's playful approach to mathled to my selection as a featured author at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in April. During my talk I plan to play a Lexicon song titled "Girls Can't Do Math," which comes from the village of Tessellate--more arts integration.
Teachers of Lost in Lexicon have integrated the arts with the book as well. One teacher asked kids to paint scenes from the book as they read. Dotty Corbiere challenges kids and adults to represent mathematical ideas from the book in Lego sculptures. And I'll take the integration of science and art further in the second Lexicon book, The Ice Castle, an Adventure in Music.
Bringing art into STEM will motivate more kids to give STEM a try. It will help kids think about science and mathematics in new ways. Even if they don't all grow up to be Leonardo da Vinci or even Steve Jobs, that's a good thing.
The article offers some fascinating tidbits and models. For example, there's the tantalizing fact that Nobel scientists are 22 times more likely than other scientists to be involved in the performing arts. There's a description of the biodegradable water bottle that one this year's ArtScience prize. Here's a video from the Wolf Trap Foundation showing how the performing arts can help young children "feel" mathematics in their bodies.
Of course, as Noyce Foundation trustee Alan Friedman points out in the article, there are big differences between art and science as ways of knowing. Think, for example, of how a piece of work in evaluated. In both art and science, boldness of vision and originality may be important. But in the end, a piece of scientific work is evaluated by whether it can be reproduced, whether it proves to be true. Though Keats says, "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty," the two are different.
I tend not to think of myself as artistic, but people remind me writing is an art form. In college I read poetry in the cell biology lab and then went off to my creative writing class to write stories about the adventure of scientific discovery. And to my surprise, Lost in Lexicon's playful approach to mathled to my selection as a featured author at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in April. During my talk I plan to play a Lexicon song titled "Girls Can't Do Math," which comes from the village of Tessellate--more arts integration.
Teachers of Lost in Lexicon have integrated the arts with the book as well. One teacher asked kids to paint scenes from the book as they read. Dotty Corbiere challenges kids and adults to represent mathematical ideas from the book in Lego sculptures. And I'll take the integration of science and art further in the second Lexicon book, The Ice Castle, an Adventure in Music.
Bringing art into STEM will motivate more kids to give STEM a try. It will help kids think about science and mathematics in new ways. Even if they don't all grow up to be Leonardo da Vinci or even Steve Jobs, that's a good thing.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Why Boston schools are improving
Yesterday's post presented evidence that Boston schools have steadily improved over the past ten years. Today I'll talk about six reasons for that steady improvement. These aren't the only reasons, and they may not even be the most important, but based on my own observations, I think these are key factors that could operate in any school system.
1. Stable leadership. Tom Payzant spent ten years as superintendent, and Carol Johnson, who succeeded him in 2007, has just signed onto another four-year contract. Such stability is almost unheard of in urban education, where mutual discontent between school committees and superintendents leads to an average tenure at the top of less than three years. Each time a new leader comes in, there's a period of adjustment. There are personnel changes. New priorities rise to the top. Some programs are dropped or starved of funds while others are launched. Time is lost and progress sputters.
One reason Boston superintendents can stay is that the school committee is appointed by the mayor, not elected. This makes it harder for one disgruntled or ambitious faction to undermine the superintendent's agenda. Some citizens view an appointed school committee as an insult to democracy, but voters have wisely approved it. They elect the mayor, let his choose his team, and hold him accountable for the results.
2. Steady outside pressure. To have an outside partner, sympathetic but demanding, examining your work can be infuriating but helpful. The Boston Plan for Excellence played this role in Boston. Ellen Guiney came to head the plan just as Tom Payzant arrived to lead the school district. They had worked together before, when Payzant was President Clinton's Assistant Secretary of Education and Guiney was Senator Kennedy's top education aide. They shared a dedication to kids and a deep interest in research.
Under Guiney, BPE kept a steady focus on the district's performance. The Plan pushed for changes in teacher hiring and how professional development money was spent. It pressed for closer attention to problems with special education. It advocated for new coaching programs.
Most of all, BPE pushed to increase the pace of reform. Bureaucracies tend to drag their feet, but BPE was a terrier nipping at the school district's heels.
3. Focus on instruction. BPE and the superintendent shared a belief that getting all kids to high levels meant big changes in how teachers taught in the classroom. Together, they carefully introduced new literacy programs, followed by new, more demanding math curriculum. BPE piloted and the district embraced a program of instructional coaching, where skilled coaches worked closely with teams of teachers inside the schools. Professional development became increasingly school-based, team, based, and focused on student work and the content teachers needed to address every day in the classroom.
Changing what and how teachers teach is slow, demanding work, but the Boston Public Schools now have some of the most coherent curriculum and most effective teachers in the state--teachers who can reach not only the eager, high-achieving kids but also the reluctant and confused.
Next time I'll talk about three more key factors behind Boston's steady improvement.
1. Stable leadership. Tom Payzant spent ten years as superintendent, and Carol Johnson, who succeeded him in 2007, has just signed onto another four-year contract. Such stability is almost unheard of in urban education, where mutual discontent between school committees and superintendents leads to an average tenure at the top of less than three years. Each time a new leader comes in, there's a period of adjustment. There are personnel changes. New priorities rise to the top. Some programs are dropped or starved of funds while others are launched. Time is lost and progress sputters.
One reason Boston superintendents can stay is that the school committee is appointed by the mayor, not elected. This makes it harder for one disgruntled or ambitious faction to undermine the superintendent's agenda. Some citizens view an appointed school committee as an insult to democracy, but voters have wisely approved it. They elect the mayor, let his choose his team, and hold him accountable for the results.
2. Steady outside pressure. To have an outside partner, sympathetic but demanding, examining your work can be infuriating but helpful. The Boston Plan for Excellence played this role in Boston. Ellen Guiney came to head the plan just as Tom Payzant arrived to lead the school district. They had worked together before, when Payzant was President Clinton's Assistant Secretary of Education and Guiney was Senator Kennedy's top education aide. They shared a dedication to kids and a deep interest in research.
Under Guiney, BPE kept a steady focus on the district's performance. The Plan pushed for changes in teacher hiring and how professional development money was spent. It pressed for closer attention to problems with special education. It advocated for new coaching programs.
Most of all, BPE pushed to increase the pace of reform. Bureaucracies tend to drag their feet, but BPE was a terrier nipping at the school district's heels.
3. Focus on instruction. BPE and the superintendent shared a belief that getting all kids to high levels meant big changes in how teachers taught in the classroom. Together, they carefully introduced new literacy programs, followed by new, more demanding math curriculum. BPE piloted and the district embraced a program of instructional coaching, where skilled coaches worked closely with teams of teachers inside the schools. Professional development became increasingly school-based, team, based, and focused on student work and the content teachers needed to address every day in the classroom.
Changing what and how teachers teach is slow, demanding work, but the Boston Public Schools now have some of the most coherent curriculum and most effective teachers in the state--teachers who can reach not only the eager, high-achieving kids but also the reluctant and confused.
Next time I'll talk about three more key factors behind Boston's steady improvement.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
How the Arts Enrich Education
The arts help kids succeed in reading in math and inspire them to stay in school: that's the claim of a new report, "Reinvesting in Arts Education," appearing this month from the President's Commission on the Arts and the Humanities. In support of this argument, which is not new, the report collects a broader than usual range of evidence from a diverse collection of studies.
Most of the studies are correlational: that is, they show that students who are involved in the arts do better in a multitude of outcomes than students who are not involved. Correlation, of course, is not causation. Students may become involved in the arts because they already feel connected to school, or because they live in wealthier neighborhoods or have parents at home that can drive them to lessons, etc. Still, most of the reports try to correct for these confounding factors. For example, an anthropological study in a low income neighborhood found that students who spent 9 hours or more per week on the arts were four times as likely to have high achievement and three times as likely to have high attendance as their peers with less arts exposure.
Another study approach is longitudinal. Catterall et. al. found using national longitudinal data that by their twenties, students heavily involved in the arts in high school were more likely to have finished college, to have good jobs, to volunteer in the community, and to vote.
Then there are the case studies. The CAGE school in Chicago and the A + schools in North Carolina have seen significant gains in student achievement since introducing integrated arts education. A study of three arts integration schools and three control schools in Maryland showed that arts integration was associated with a substantial decrease in the achievement gap between poor minority students and other students in the schools.
So it goes - study after study suggests that arts education increases self-esteem, math scores, attendance, reading scores, and persistence, while decreasing drug use, delinquency, boredom, and discouragement. Is it plausible that arts education could have all these benefits? Neurological studies suggest that early study of music can increase phonological awareness, which is key to early reading. Similarly, working to develop skill in a particular area of the arts helps devotees develop focus and attention. Study of music increases students' ability to manipulate working and long term memory. All of these are foundational skills that study of the arts can strengthen.
Moreover, when the arts are integrated into schoolwork, students are likely to repeat and re-emphasize a concept through different modalities, helping them remember it. They are also likely to exercise choice and work to perfect their own individual approaches. Choice and mastery enhance motivation. Moreover, thinking about (for example) how music, drawing, or words can represent the same ideas is a cognitively complex and challenging task. Students involved in such tasks report that they don't get either bored or discouraged.
My seventh-grade son just finished a final project on Macbeth. His teacher asked the students to do two arts-related tasks of their own choosing and to write a paper explaining their choices. Damian chose to illustrate five of Macbeth's scenes in Act V with one photograph and one related drawing each. He also made a two-minute film of the "Out, out, brief candle" speech, with background piano music he composed, played, and computer-distorted to make it more haunting. His paper discussed how even as Macbeth declines into darkness and despair, his last battle with Macduff reclaims some honor and offers hope to Scotland. Damian explained how the symbolism of swords, ghosts, shadows, candles, light and darkness in his film and drawings reflect this theme. Damian pursued this pretty sophisticated project completely independently, and he loved doing it. I'm sure he'll remember the project and feel connected to Shakespeare for a long time.
There's still a lot to learn about the effects of arts education. The President's Commission report is a good place to start. We should also ponder why the arts seem to be so motivating, and how we can weave motivating factors like choice, individual expression, personal goals, and mastery into more of what we ask our children to learn.
Most of the studies are correlational: that is, they show that students who are involved in the arts do better in a multitude of outcomes than students who are not involved. Correlation, of course, is not causation. Students may become involved in the arts because they already feel connected to school, or because they live in wealthier neighborhoods or have parents at home that can drive them to lessons, etc. Still, most of the reports try to correct for these confounding factors. For example, an anthropological study in a low income neighborhood found that students who spent 9 hours or more per week on the arts were four times as likely to have high achievement and three times as likely to have high attendance as their peers with less arts exposure.
Another study approach is longitudinal. Catterall et. al. found using national longitudinal data that by their twenties, students heavily involved in the arts in high school were more likely to have finished college, to have good jobs, to volunteer in the community, and to vote.
Then there are the case studies. The CAGE school in Chicago and the A + schools in North Carolina have seen significant gains in student achievement since introducing integrated arts education. A study of three arts integration schools and three control schools in Maryland showed that arts integration was associated with a substantial decrease in the achievement gap between poor minority students and other students in the schools.
So it goes - study after study suggests that arts education increases self-esteem, math scores, attendance, reading scores, and persistence, while decreasing drug use, delinquency, boredom, and discouragement. Is it plausible that arts education could have all these benefits? Neurological studies suggest that early study of music can increase phonological awareness, which is key to early reading. Similarly, working to develop skill in a particular area of the arts helps devotees develop focus and attention. Study of music increases students' ability to manipulate working and long term memory. All of these are foundational skills that study of the arts can strengthen.
Moreover, when the arts are integrated into schoolwork, students are likely to repeat and re-emphasize a concept through different modalities, helping them remember it. They are also likely to exercise choice and work to perfect their own individual approaches. Choice and mastery enhance motivation. Moreover, thinking about (for example) how music, drawing, or words can represent the same ideas is a cognitively complex and challenging task. Students involved in such tasks report that they don't get either bored or discouraged.
My seventh-grade son just finished a final project on Macbeth. His teacher asked the students to do two arts-related tasks of their own choosing and to write a paper explaining their choices. Damian chose to illustrate five of Macbeth's scenes in Act V with one photograph and one related drawing each. He also made a two-minute film of the "Out, out, brief candle" speech, with background piano music he composed, played, and computer-distorted to make it more haunting. His paper discussed how even as Macbeth declines into darkness and despair, his last battle with Macduff reclaims some honor and offers hope to Scotland. Damian explained how the symbolism of swords, ghosts, shadows, candles, light and darkness in his film and drawings reflect this theme. Damian pursued this pretty sophisticated project completely independently, and he loved doing it. I'm sure he'll remember the project and feel connected to Shakespeare for a long time.
There's still a lot to learn about the effects of arts education. The President's Commission report is a good place to start. We should also ponder why the arts seem to be so motivating, and how we can weave motivating factors like choice, individual expression, personal goals, and mastery into more of what we ask our children to learn.
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