Each day we had been documenting our reflections on pre-cut, hole-punched pages that we designed and decorated, and now we gathered together those pages into beautiful little artists’ journals. As our time together was drawing to a close for the dynamic learning community we had formed together, we took time to reflect on what we had learned about the seen and unseen in ourselves, in others, and in our students. We used this final day to meditate on the many new ideas and questions we had opened up for ourselves, looked back on how the institute had been designed to scaffold our collective growth, and completed the Performance Cycle’s final step of Performing Text by presenting aspects of our work together to friends, family, and colleagues.
For more information on the Performance Cycle, developed at the ArtsLit Project, see: http://www.artslit.org/handbook.php
Part of the Habla Teacher Institute reflection process is to “pull back the curtain” on how the institute is organized by presenting images that had been photographed in the course of the week, showing the participants as they enacted exercises and learning activities that embody each of Habla’s essential values and institute core elements.
Educators may want to consider how their students might document the essential elements of their own classroom processes, encouraging the students we serve to become metacognitive about their own learning. The following are guidelines of items we used to plan and document the 11th Annual Habla Institute:
The documentation team used the Habla Merida 2018 Teacher Institute documentation website to demonstrate the depth of representation that goes into capturing each institute’s processes and resources. Habla teacher institutes are intended to be transformative, immersive experiences, and are designed so participants do not have to worry about taking copious notes while they are in the middle of being experiential learners. This walk-through of the 2018 teacher institute website served as a preview for how this 2019 institute’s web documentation would include session plans, slides shows, images of the steps and stages in the learning exercises presented, thinking protocols, inquiry questions, catalyzing texts and images, photographs of work in progress and of the institute in action, participant reflections and presentations, and theoretical framing constructs.
Habla weaves mini-performances and artworks developed in the course of exploring a text into a celebratory culminating performance of understanding for an audience. Rather than labor over time intensive rehearsals to present a fussed-over show, the institute instead shares the artistic products that have already been created by the participants during the week. This year’s performance of understanding included haunting soundscapes, enactments of selections from the many different SEEN/UNSEEN texts we explored, readings in English and in Spanish, and testimonies about when the world opens up and makes space for us to be seen and unseen, to be heard and to be silent, to be active and to be still, to be present and to absent, to be closed and to be open, to be held and to be let go as free choices for our own growth and for the growth of our students and our communities.
The participants and presenters at Habla’s 2019 Teacher Institute in Merida created a dynamic learning community which emerged from their radical creativity and openness to sharing and listening. The workshops and community-building exercises brought inspiration and a renewed passion for empowering their students, their community members, and themselves. For the emotional and touching final sharing, we each concentrated our spoken reflections down to the time it takes to exhale a single deep breath.