“This is the day you begin to find the places inside your laughter and your lunches, your books, your travel and your stories.” ― Jacqueline Woodson, The Day You Begin
After a warm welcome by Kurt and Marimar, Patricia launched our 11th (!) annual Habla Teacher Institute with a series of community building exercises, including the sharing of the history of our names. We moved from simple, playful interactions to complex (but still playful) interactions, loosening up our voices and our bodies. Through-out this multimodal process, we constantly rotated between individual, paired and group challenges, between spoken word and abstract sound, between initiating and responding. In doing so, we quickly generated a collective energy that built a sense of community emerging from the participants, rather than from a predetermined idea of community dictated to us. Everybody followed. Everybody led.
All of our stories are more than what others imagine when they first see us, if they see us at all. We proceeded to “baptize” ourselves with a new name or an invisible piece of our identity, which we represented through our voices and our bodies, making individual choices about what we chose (or did not choose) to reveal.
Next, we read aloud to each other at our tables the story “The Day You Begin” by Jacqueline Woodson, each sentence read by a different reader. Once read, we individually identified the one sentence or phrase that spoke to each of us most powerfully, and read these lines aloud, table by table, as mini-performances, making visceral connections together between the text and our separate lives.
After that rich reading, we wrote, using the following prompt, and we read our writing aloud to the group:
“The world opens itself a little wider and makes space for me when I can listen and be listened to.” – Brad
“The world opens itself a little wider and makes space for me when I experience the unexpected.” – Lisa
“The world opens itself a little wider and makes space for me when I meet someone who turns my assumptions into dust.” – Ian
“El mundo se abre un poco más y me hace espacio cuando decido salir a la calle y luchar por mi derecho de ser yo tal como soy.” – Alejo
Having established the pattern of moving back and forth between reading, writing, and performing, we each read aloud the poem For the Taxicabs that pass me on Harvard Square by Clint Smith, and then counted off to form new groups to create choral readings for each taxi in the poem.
And we concluded the morning by creating another piece of writing, using the following poetic structure created by the poet Kenneth Koch:
“I used to be shadow and now I am light.” – Lee
“I used to be afraid of loneliness and now I embrace it.” – Priscilla
“I used to be a student and now I am a teacher. I used to think they were different and now I know they are the same.” – Melanie
The Institute had only begun, and we were already deeply within the realm of the seen and unseen.
“To really see, you need to allow yourself to be seen.” ― Lida Winfield
“The more languages you speak the deeper you can engage any text. I was lucky enough to have grown up in Mexico and to always have had two spoken languages to draw upon. But I have also always known all the various art forms as their own languages, illuminating meaning in dialogue with all the others.” – Cynthia Weiss
In true Habla tradition, this visual arts workshop was a border-crossing experience, including movement and sound as an essential element of the dance between text and image.
For the Taxicabs that pass me on Harvard Square
Stanza 1 is read, and the reader comments on its perceived meaning.
Stanza 2 is read by another reader, and then comments, building on the previous interpretation.
Stanza 3 is read by another reader, and then builds on the previous interpretations.
Stanza 4…..
Each reader gets a full minute. If a reader finishes early, the other two read silently until the full minute has elapsed. The focus here is on listening, not on dialogue. By revisiting the same text in more than one way, the poem reveals itself in a series of unfoldings, acknowledging the interpersonal social aspect of meaning making.
“The first time I read the manuscript, I was sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee after dropping my son off at school. When reading, I instantly saw pictures. We all want to fit in and find our place. There was an authenticity to her words that stuck in my throat. It was all there — the self-doubt, struggle, tenderness, and triumph of personal discovery.” — Rafael López, illustrator, Maybe Something Beautiful
Maybe Something Beautiful read in English and Spanish by Habla teachers Lee Ceh and Nany Guerrerx.
Each reader gets a full minute. If a reader finishes early, the other two read silently until the full minute has elapsed. The focus here is on listening, not on dialogue. By revisiting the same text in more than one way, the poem reveals itself in a series of unfoldings, acknowledging the interpersonal social aspect of meaning making.
Participants created black and grey shapes out of construction paper, making a collective stockpile of shapes at each table. Then teams of two alternated selecting shapes from the stockpile in 10 steps, responding to each other’s choices before making their next selection.
“Working as a team and going off of each other allowed us to let go and create outside of the structure and within the artistic space.” – Alejo
“Every step was taking a new direction in artistic improvisation. We couldn’t take away pieces, but we could add new ones.” – Darío
“The process was playful and fun. I learned something about my partner: that she breaks rules.” – Nick
One minute to appreciate what we did – what do you notice when you see the works all together
“Harmony”
“Diversidad”
“Ritmo”
“Abstract”
Titles of different pieces:
Habla seeks to support both collaborative discourse and individual agency. Reflection at Habla occurs as a rhythm between individual and collective thought and expression. Each day, participants write individual reflections that become resources for collective discussion. A variety of structures for sharing and listening are engaged in throughout the institute – including moments of silence, times for speaking without immediate responses, times for listening without speaking, times to reflect on others’ reflections, times for sharing in pairs, and times for sharing within and to small and large groups.
You can see all the Thinking Routines used in this institute in the Resources section of this documentation website.
Puzzle “I hope I can keep an open mind in this process because when I learn new teaching techniques, I know it won’t work in [my school district].” – Lindsay
Wow “Simplicidad. Menos es más. Cuando las instrucciones son claras y sencillas, se abre la puerta a respuestas grandes y complejas.” – Nany
Questions “I’m curious about how us learners will uncover the unseen.” – Lisa
And each morning we posted a new seating guide to invite participants to sit with and learn from new colleagues.