Celebratory Symposium
On May 1, 2021, the three strands of the institute (sound, translanguaging, visual arts) met within and across strands to not only reflect on our outside/inside experiences of this institute, but also to share across strands.
Our warmup drew on the concept of what Cynthia Weiss calls “parallel processes” in which we experimented with how the opposite qualities of:
Loud / Soft
Fast / Slow
High / Low
Long / Short
Outside/Inside
can all be explored both through our bodies but also through our voices.
Visual Thinking Strategies Redux
We then looked again at the New Yorker magazine image we had examined in February at the beginning of the institute (an image that had perfectly captured the dichotomous lives we had all lived through in 2020). Next, we applied the same Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) we had used to analyze that magazine cover to explore an image from our text that suggests a hopeful opening up of closed spaces, mirroring our own experience of recent access to vaccines (click on the images to see them in full size).
What is happening in this picture?
What do you see that makes you say that?
What more can we say?
After we had warmed up together, we met in our breakout teams to look back on our work in our strands, and to create new pieces for sharing across strands that distilled the take-aways from our various in-depth strand-specific explorations.
One of the strengths of the Habla approach is that all material created by participants is developed in meaningful layers through translation across languages, translation across media, and generation within a caring community. All creative prompts are inspired by responses to rich texts, are open ended, and are grounded in attention to sensory detail, a sense of place, and to building compelling relationships. This allows profound work to emerge quickly, with the focus remaining on meaning and connection rather than on “performing” for others - on revealing and sharing rather than on rehearsing and presenting. This can result in truly meaningful, truly inclusive performances that can be created quickly, and that also become occasions for reflection upon and internalization of new capacities and options.
The Sound Lab | Final Symposium
The Reverberating Echoes of the Sound Strand Breakout
The Sound Lab strand breakout team members screened for each other the multimedia “audio books” that they had created in the course of the institute:
We then reviewed topics we had covered in the Sound Lab strand throughout the institute:
Ensemble
warm-ups
warm-ups
Sound Cards
Foley Sound Lab
Soundtrap
Found Objects
In Action
Dario then showed some video footage of sound based teaching and learning strategies in action in an actual classroom:
Dario and Kurt also shared with us a wide range of resources for using sound based strategies in the classroom:
We concluded our Sound Lab strand breakout work together by preparing for a live soundscape presentation we would share with our colleagues from the other strands.
Crossing Borders | Final Symposium
The Translanguaging Messages of the Crossing Borders Strand
The Crossing Borders strand breakout team reviewed the wide range of frameworks they had explored during the institute to investigate the urgent need for narrative plentitude in our teaching and learning:
Poema a dos voces
Bilingual Blues - Gustavo Pérez Firmat
Soy un ajiaco de contradicciones.
I have mixed feelings about everything.
Name your tema, I'll hedge;
name your cerca, I'll straddle it
like a cubano.
I have mixed feelings about everything.
Soy un ajiaco de contradicciones.
Vexed, hexed, complexed,
hyphenated, oxygenated, illegally alienated,
psycho soy, cantando voy:
You say tomato,
I say tu madre;
You say potato,
I say Pototo.
I have mixed feelings about everything.
Name your tema, I'll hedge;
name your cerca, I'll straddle it
like a cubano.
I have mixed feelings about everything.
Soy un ajiaco de contradicciones.
Vexed, hexed, complexed,
hyphenated, oxygenated, illegally alienated,
psycho soy, cantando voy:
You say tomato,
I say tu madre;
You say potato,
I say Pototo.
Let's call the hole
un hueco, the thing
a cosa, and if the cosa goes into the hueco,
consider yourself en casa,
consider yourself part of the family.
Soy un ajiaco de contradicciones,
un puré de impurezas:
a little square from Rubik's Cuba
que nadie nunca acoplará.
(Cha-cha-chá.)
un hueco, the thing
a cosa, and if the cosa goes into the hueco,
consider yourself en casa,
consider yourself part of the family.
Soy un ajiaco de contradicciones,
un puré de impurezas:
a little square from Rubik's Cuba
que nadie nunca acoplará.
(Cha-cha-chá.)
Inspired by the translanguaging of Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s poem Bilingual Blues, the team broke into pairs to write their own translanguaging poems for two voices.
Together our pairs wrote the starting line of our poems with the phrase:
Soy/Somos un ______________ de __________
Each of our pair members contributed 3 lines to make a 7 line poem together, and then figured out how we would share our 7 line poem out loud to our peers, using such formal elements as repetition, remixing, and choral readings.
Together our pairs wrote the starting line of our poems with the phrase:
Soy/Somos un ______________ de __________
Each of our pair members contributed 3 lines to make a 7 line poem together, and then figured out how we would share our 7 line poem out loud to our peers, using such formal elements as repetition, remixing, and choral readings.
Yesenia and Marimar modeled the process by performing their POEMA A DOS VOCES that they had written together:
Soy un mole de contradicciones
Soy un mole de contradicciones
Una corunda de complexities
I love my kids, y quiero a mi madre
I love my son y quiero mucho a mi papá
Hence, I say vengan acá
Y ellos responden, wait a minute, ma
Le pregunto, what was your favorite thing about today?
And he responds, coming home, mama
Waffles are the queen in the morning,
Pero en la noche el pan dulce reina.
For me, it’s my cafecito in the morning
While tea is had at night
Una corunda de complexities
I love my kids, y quiero a mi madre
I love my son y quiero mucho a mi papá
Hence, I say vengan acá
Y ellos responden, wait a minute, ma
Le pregunto, what was your favorite thing about today?
And he responds, coming home, mama
Waffles are the queen in the morning,
Pero en la noche el pan dulce reina.
For me, it’s my cafecito in the morning
While tea is had at night
El habanero es mi madre,
The chili con queso are my friends
If my dad is the rock that grounds me
My friends are the stars that inspire me
Even if my English es not very good looking,
It gets the colors from my Spanish.
While I’ll always think in English first
Spanish is the language that weaves through it
Canto en español, and I sing in English
My English and Spanish voices sound completely different,
One is more emotional & expressive, while the other is succinct
The chili con queso are my friends
If my dad is the rock that grounds me
My friends are the stars that inspire me
Even if my English es not very good looking,
It gets the colors from my Spanish.
While I’ll always think in English first
Spanish is the language that weaves through it
Canto en español, and I sing in English
My English and Spanish voices sound completely different,
One is more emotional & expressive, while the other is succinct
Final Translanguaging Reflection: Storytelling
How have you benefited from the opening of translanguaging spaces?
¿Cómo te has beneficiado de la apertura de espacios para translenguar?
What negative impact happens when those spaces are closed to us?
¿Qué impacto negativo sucede cuando esos espacios se nos cierran?
How do we open spaces for all our students to be represented?
¿Cómo abrimos espacios para que todos nuestros estudiantes estén representados?
How do we create spaces in classrooms that empower and give voice to all our students?
¿Cómo creamos espacios en las aulas que empoderen y den voz a todos nuestros alumnos?
¿Cómo te has beneficiado de la apertura de espacios para translenguar?
What negative impact happens when those spaces are closed to us?
¿Qué impacto negativo sucede cuando esos espacios se nos cierran?
How do we open spaces for all our students to be represented?
¿Cómo abrimos espacios para que todos nuestros estudiantes estén representados?
How do we create spaces in classrooms that empower and give voice to all our students?
¿Cómo creamos espacios en las aulas que empoderen y den voz a todos nuestros alumnos?
We concluded by generating ways for opening up spaces and for empowering voices for narrative plentitude in our classrooms, and then prepared to join our colleagues from the other strands.
Opening New Windows | Final Symposium
The Visual Arts Gallery Exhibit Breakout Room
The Visual Arts strand members went on a tour together of the collage works that they had created (as beautifully displayed in a virtual gallery prepared by Fannie Medina):
We also watched a video of our sharing of writing we had created in the development of our collages:
We were then asked to draw upon the images in our collages and our writing to think forward to when our inside worlds reopen, and to write about what this will mean to each of us individually. We made selections from this new writing, created a performance order, and got ready to share back with the group.
It may be useful to watch the entire video below to see an example of how quickly a meaningful presentation can be put together without angst when the creators are truly grounded in their own experience of their own learning:
It may be useful to watch the entire video below to see an example of how quickly a meaningful presentation can be put together without angst when the creators are truly grounded in their own experience of their own learning:
Write from your present place:
In this Moment / En este momento, ..I (see, hear, smell , touch, taste).
In moments later today / En esta tarde…
In the month ahead / En el mes que viene: I see myself….I see my family…...
In the year ahead, I see my students... / En el año que viene, veo a mis estudiantes...
I hope… / Espero que…
In this Moment / En este momento, ..I (see, hear, smell , touch, taste).
In moments later today / En esta tarde…
In the month ahead / En el mes que viene: I see myself….I see my family…...
In the year ahead, I see my students... / En el año que viene, veo a mis estudiantes...
I hope… / Espero que…
Coming Back Together
After working in our breakout strands, we all came back together to share work with our peers across strands:
Jigsawing Together "The Book of Brilliant Ideas"
What concrete strategies/activities/ideas do you have from our institute and studio series?
There are times when we learn best by working and sharing with folks that are job-alike to ourselves, and then there are times when we learn best by working and sharing with folks who have teaching skills and functions that are quite different from our own. After we had spent three months in deep dives into one of the three strands of the institute along with colleagues that taught many different ages and types of students, it was a good time to meet with job-alike peers from across the three strands to document the ideas we were most excited about applying in our own classrooms and circumstances. Together, we created our own collective cross-strand digital document The Book of Brilliant Ideas.
Documentation as Inquiry
This documentation website was developed to support participants in both revisiting the work they had already done and in also extending this growth to others. Consider what kind of documentation in your own classroom will support your students in reflecting on and asking questions about their own learning experience. Here is a link to documentation of other Habla Institutes:
Final Reflections
- What, from all of our time together, are you most excited about doing with your students?
- What will you apply right away?
- What inspired you the most?