Top Ten Nature and Design of Compelling Experience

10.  Things aren’t always what they seem. Just because something looks simple does not necessarily make it so.  Usually things that are the most seamless have had the most planning and effort attached to it.  The same is true in education, the lessons we teach need attention to detail and forethought in order for it to run smoothly.  If things go well it looks effortless. 

9. With even just a little creativity something mundane can become something more.  From space to decorations, learning a little, using a little creativity can go a long way

8. Sometimes the absence of sound is as important and the presence of sound.  Sometimes it is not what is being said or even how, it is what isn't.  This is not limited to sound.  It is also the use of empty space, or what is left off a fashion deign.  The non-use of something is important and should be deliberate.

7. Get their attention.  In many cases, especially this fast-paced, instant gratification world we live in, you won’t get people to even pay attention unless you grab their attention.  We teach this in many aspects of the classroom, as well as attempt to use it to teach, but in any endeavor where others are expected to pay attention…make a splash to get it!

6. Keep your goal in mind.  Whatever one is working on it is important to know what one are trying to do.  Is there a feeling you want to accomplish?  Is there an experience you want to portray?  Sometime we get so sidetracked we loose the point in the mess around the point…so keep asking yourself, what is the goal?

5. Keep your audience in mind.  One of the keys to making any experience compelling as you design it keep who your audience is at the forefront of your mind.  If your audience is preschoolers your vocabulary and designs are going to be much different from those that are geared toward a senior in high school.

4. Reflect, redo. In many artistic ventures reflecting and redoing are viable and necessary to the creative process.  This is true in education, if something doesn’t go well, figure out what needs to change and fix it.  Interestingly, this is one part of the academic world as a student that doesn’t usually apply.

3. Keep an open mind. I am definitely one of the people who would have scoffed at fashion as compelling.  Not only did I learn in that module that it is and it is about so much more than clothes, it reminded me of a lesson that life has continually been teaching me: the importance of an open mind.

2. Challenge yourself. One of the most important things I can do as a teacher, artist (and I use that term lightly) and a person is to challenge myself.  The rewards are threefold.  One, I become better at what I am doing.  Two, the people who are the recipients have a better product.  Three, the expectations then are raised and hopefully others challenge themselves as well.  The goal of any art is to inspire, and the better I get, hopefully, the more inspired the people who come in contact with it are.

1. Look for the extraordinary in the ordinary. Over and over the theme that kept coming to mind was: pay attention, there is something wonderful if you stop and see it.  From photography to fashion to music there are great treasures hiding in places you may never expect.  The old crossing the street adage still applies: Stop.  Look.  Listen.

Fashion

This week as we were reading and looking at fashion, I was drawn to think about school uniforms.  Personally, I think they are a fabulous idea, and this weeks' research continued to solidify that thought for me.  I feel like fashion has more power than we give credit for, or want to believe in.  Schools' primary job is to educate in core subjects.  Now, don't get me wrong, I know that there is other education that happens in schools that isn't academic, but with all the distractions and competition for attention that already exist in schools, this could one that is relatively easily removed.  Because fashion can have such a powerful effect, it is one less thing a child needs to worry about.


The other thing this week led me to think about was how as a teacher my goal is to get the kids to feel like they are dressed in whatever is appropriate for the context which they find themselves in.  My job is to give them the tools to act in a way that is appropriate for the situation.  I am a fashion designer of the mind.  When the stars of What Not To Wear are helping to teach the people what is appropriate attire for different situations (i.e. work, casual, out etc) I am teaching students how to learn what to do in situations they find themselves in (math for money or building, science and research for discovery, and then reading is the "little black dress" of the education world; versatile and necessary for lots of situations).   My goal is the same as fashion designers that the people I work with feel confident, happy and successful, the tools I am equipping them with are slightly different, but again the goal is the same. 

The final way I was thinking about fashion in schools was as a teacher.  It made me wonder about the way I dress and how I am perceived by my students.  It also made me think about how I come across if I am feeling different ways about myself based on how I am dressed.  I have heard many people refer to a entire "genre" of clothes that are "teacher clothes."  Would it be a different profession if we dressed differently, or do we dress the way we do because kids respond to it better?  I wonder about holiday wear, in that when "professionals" wear it they are told they are not fashion-savvy, but do teachers get a pass because we are trying to show holiday spirit to kids, who get reindeer on a sweater, but may not feel as holiday about a sparkly broach?  I have to say, when I put on my spiderweb shirt at Halloween I feel like I am showing the kids I care about something they care about which is important, I am not thinking about how I would look walking down Rodeo Drive. 

Pen Pal video

Here is a video I put together for my classes pen pals in England.

Paying Homage

One thing I was drawn to throughout the Copeland pieces was how he talked about artists and composers building on the works of others.  Teachers do that in their art as well.  Harry Wong is famous for it.  The idea is to not “reinvent the wheel.”  We take from what others have done before us, adapt it to our children and reuse it.  Teachers are very good at reusing and recycling.  It is important to look back as we look forward.  Dewey is our Tchaikovsky. 

Another connection I found in the Copeland piece was about musicians being “restricted by birth to a comparatively limited gamut of inherited sound material”   Basically saying that the tools one has to create the art is limited y multiple measures including cultural and societal norms.  This is true in education as well.  I teach in a small, rural, conservative town.  People would not blink an eye if we completed Christmas cards or had a Christmas tree, but if I am apprehensive about what it would be to discuss any non-conservative views.  I have used hunting examples multiple times to help my kids learn.  This would be less effective if I were to teach somewhere more inner-city, or more liberal where parents may even be offended if I used the examples I use to help students relate and try to make the learning authentic. 

I think that is the key to teaching as an art…or really any art.  It needs to be authentic.  It needs to be real, and mean something not only to the creator of the art but to the audience as well.  That is what makes teaching tricky.  You have 30 students all of whom you are trying to get to connect to a huge amount of material in an authentic manner in order to make it meaningful.  It is no small task…that I can assure you.

Music in the classroom

Teachers are in many way composers.  First with the curriculum we try to give it a hook.  We attempt to make it something that the students won't forget easily and attempt to get it "stuck" in their heads.  The other thing we do as teacher is to attempt to appeal to many audiences with the same information.  We try to get kids from all walks of life the same emotion and memory and experience in order to learn.  Another way we are like composers is that we have to use different techniques for different things.  For example sometimes it is more appropriate to use a staccato, fortissimo approach.  Other times it is better suited to be pianissimo.    We crescendo and decrescendo when we feel it is appropriate, and when we need different emphasis.

As teachers we are conductors.  Classroom management, the structure of a lesson and the teaching itself is subject to the interpretation of the teacher and how the "music" is directed to the "musician"
can look very different from conductor to conductor.

I think in other way that music is connected to the classroom, is  that as a teacher there are so many emotions, struggles, triumphs and frustrations that can not be expressed in words.  Unless you have experienced with the passion of a teacher, watching a child "get" something there is no real way to describe it.  Music does that as well.  There are moments in education, good and not as good, that are musical feel.

Retail Space Movie

Click on the link to see the video

Emily Smith's Comparison Video

Creating a classroom for all children

I think the important aspects to take from this week is the idea of different setting for different purposes. There are times when students are going to better suited to work in a collaborative environment, when there needs to be space given and creative examples around them. There are also times when a classroom needs to be more conducive to working as an individual. Then it is important to have segregated spaces. I think it is also important for the space to be reflective of the student’s personalities, interests, abilities and backgrounds. The students need to be able to feel safe and take ownership in the space.

Another bridge is that students as they are learning learn in different ways and think in different ways, from child to child, subject to subject and even from assignment to assignment. There are times when different approaches are called for different purposes, not just in setting, but in delivery, content, intensity and creative ability.

No matter what the assignment or subject the environment of the classroom and the assignment the students need to feel safe, important, and capable and those factors should be the starting point and ending point of everything we do in education.

Designing a classroom

As I was reading and listening to the content this week I was thinking more about my preschool classroom that I had a couple of years ago, than my 4^th grade classroom of today.  It is so important for children who come to preschool to feel welcome and safe.  For many it is their first experience in a school and part of our goal was to make it a positive one.  Many of the concepts that I read about this week were innately incorporated, or maybe not so much innate and trial and error of what the kids like.  For example, the reading corner started out with bookshelf and a couple of chairs.  Over the course of the two years I taught preschool it became a corner first of all with a “lowered ceiling” we eventually put up material to make it more like a tent, after we found the kids were liked it better.  The physical room set up was one key part of our evaluation as a program in the county.  We had to have clearly defined areas using furniture and rugs and anything we could think of to define one area from the next.

            As a 4^th grade teacher I still want to create a safe and inviting area.  If a student is turned off by an area or distracted by it, (sometimes it is the window, like the first snow of the season) it makes for a hard environment to teach in.  The design of the classroom as a space then in very important in the overall environment that is created physically and mentally, which in turn affects learning.

The Nature of being Compelling

Ok, so with the chance of this negatively affecting my grade, I must confess a bit here.  Being compelling on command is HARD and a bit frusterating.  Although maybe that is the point.  I am struggling to put something together that is compelling, and it is starting to stress me out.  For me being compelling is something that happens through a different process than getting an assignment and attempting to "ace" it, although this two-week I am feeling more like just trying not to fail is the goal. I think part of the goal of this class is to get us thinking differently about assignments as teachers and what it means to be compelling, to shape our definitions of compelling in an attempt to help us understand better of what the goal is for our students, because ultimatley every teacher wants students to leave with a broader understanding and opened mind.  So far as we have been doing readings, and watchings and listenings, my definition is shaping up like this (at this point, but part of being compelling is that the definition is not always stagneant):  To be compelling means to use many senses to experience something in a new or different way from how one might have viewed or experienced something previously.  To enlist a new way of thinking about something based on new experiences.  It is something along those lines anyway.  So here is were I am struggling as a student and as an educator.  It feels like there is a right answer that as students we are supposed to get to, and as an educator, sometiems there are right answers that need to be learned.  2+2=4.  There is a process for learning it but no matter what you use, for the most part it is taught first with concrete objects and then it moves to abstract.  Maybe, though, it is the process that you learn it which is in and of itself compelling.  I don't know.  Perhaps I should have posted this on a discussion board rather than a blog, or maybe I don't really want my questions answered, or my musing looked at as readily so somewhere inside I posted it here because it is slightly "safer."  Or maybe this is all the point getting us outside our comfort zone and trying to push us, or I am missing the point completely and the professor is thinking "how did she make it thought undergrad" (I truely hope that isn't the case, and actually did quite well in my undergrads :) )  Either way, this was a much harder module as a student than photography...although like I tell my students, if it is easy then I am not doing my job because apparently you already know it and I shouldn't be teaching you something you already know.

Director’s Commentary:

             When I first started thinking about all of this I was overwhelmed.  I had no idea where I was going to go, or even what idea to start with.  After reading the assignment over and seeing the where to start ideas, I began thinking about education, because I am passionate about that and unlike my family which I am also passionate about would be less likely to turn my video into an awe video.  I decided to focus my video then around one thing that is frustrating to me as an educator: tracking.

            So, I had an idea, then I just had to come up with what I wanted to do.  I started writing my ideas about tracking or the lack there of in schools and what that means. I do not want to track because I think kids are unable to do things, I think tracking is important because all kids are different and we are disservicing a lot of kids but expecting them to all become one thing.

            I started writing down thoughts I had about this idea, not knowing where I wanted to go with it, or how I wanted to make my statement.  I decided I would make a commentary using words that have to be read.  I wanted to use simple black and white for two reasons.  One it is the medium through which many children learn to read and write.  It is also two concrete opposite “colors”.  I knew I wanted to use a font that was not type writer-ish.  I wanted the “a” and “g” to not look like a typed “a” or “g” but rather how a child might print it. 

            My thoughts all came down to questions, which are in nature compelling.  They are asking the audience to think about why something is the way it is.  This idea of evaluation is one of the higher order thinking skills that we try to teach kids.  This is something that all kids need to be able to do, ask questions.  Evaluating and questioning are things I think all kids need to be taught regardless of their chosen careers.

            I decided too to put children in the beginning telling what they wanted to be when they grow up.  This is something you hear lots of kids talk about.  ( A couple of years ago when I was teaching preschool I had a student tell me he wanted to be a lion when he grew up and I wished I had that on tape to add to this)  I wanted the audience to hear from students that they don’t all want to be the same thing as they get older.  I wanted them to have a connection to the children I was trying to prove don’t all need to grow up to be the same thing. 

            When it came time to put the clips of the kids talking in the video I had tried changing it to black and white.  I decided quickly against it. The color made a difference in the children being real.  In real life kids are colorful.  Plus this was a contrast to the black and white of the words that was going to follow, which was my point. 

            Brevity was more challenging that I had originally anticipated as well.  My original video was 2 min and 30 seconds. I had each word slide play for 7 seconds.  I also had two other kids in the beginning.  I shortened each slide to 4 seconds and cut two kids out of the video.  I also cropped some of the beginnings of the videos of the kids talking out.  This got it down to the required time limit.

            I watched my video without music and it still worked but not as well, so I decided to leave it in even though we were cautioned against it.  I just think that the more senses that are used the more compelling something is.  Silence can sometimes be more compelling, but for this because there was no moving action on the screen, there needed something more.

Video

Honestly, I am struggling with this week's ideas.  The best I've got is that in my classroom I attempt to be a storyteller.  Now naturally and with adults I am an AWFUL story teller.  I can't tell a joke to save my life and I get all confused and uneloquent when I try, but in my classroom I am much better.  I don't know if it is my comfort level in a classroom rather than social situations (I am a very introverted person), but for some reason I do much better with my students. I think some of it is that I am teaching. The basics of the story are concrete, I just have to jazz it up and I have lots of tools to help the process. Technology, literature, and the students themselves all lend help to the story and lesson being taught.

Compelling Photos

I was having a hard time coming up with an idea for creating a compelling picture of something of meaning for me, especially not using friends or family.  (Although after taking the pictures I am glad I had concrete things to work with and can see how using objects that move would be much more difficult)  My husband is a high school varsity coach and my daughter is on the team as well.  This is their gym.  It is also the gym from the high school where my dad taught so I grew up going to games (including my husbands, although then I didn't know he was going to me my husband) in this gym.  It is also often the center of a very small community.  Game nights bring out most of the town to this place, and this community means a lot to me as well.  We spend a lot of time here and for all the aforementioned reasons this is a very special place to me.   

I couldn't get the second picture to post in the comments, so here is the less compelling picture

Artistically the first picture is more compelling.  First, the focus in the second picture is muddled.  There is no clear place for the eye to go and so it tries to focus all over.  The first picture focuses on the ball and then the flag and baskets and scoreboard are out of focus, creating a background for the ball.  The ball is off center.  My goal was to use the thirds rule.  I think it was relatively successful.   Color is important in the picture as well.  Luckily the school's colors are orange and black which is the same as the ball, so the scheme remains the same throughout the picture.  The framing of the second picture is better as well.  The stripes around the top of the gym walls and the lines on the court create a frame for the ball.  If you look at the same frame in the less compelling photo the eye goes to the middle of the floor, where there is nothing, thus making it a less effective picture.

A River Runs Through It

     Ok, so I can't find exactly what I am looking for, and maybe it is because there is no direct quote, maybe it is the way I have interpreted it from the story.  It has been a few years since I have read it, so it is highly possible that the story is about beauty, and so it is not the direct words that strike me as how beautiful should be defined but rather the way the definition comes together based on the whole novel.  Here though is as close to a summary as I can get...
          "As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty.   Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word 'beautiful'...since it is natural for man to try and attain power without recovering grace...My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe.  To him all good things- trout as well as eternal salvation- come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy." 
     I am spending time discussing this because beauty and art go hand in hand, but adding grace makes the word fuller somehow.  Again, this does not encompass the entire way the word is affected and exemplified throughout the novel, maybe is the point of the novel, but it has stuck with me and there are times in my life when only this definition will do. I think the point of compelling experiences is also to create something beautiful.

Photography as a metaphor

This week as I was teaching there were a couple ways that photography struck me.  The first was when I was happy and feeling successful as a teacher and the second was as I was frustrated and upset.  In both cases though what struck me was that teaching is a hundred moments at a time, and in them regardless of the subject or the emotion that is rendered, there is beauty to be found because it is human.  As we have looked at photography and different compelling pictures, whether they are happy (kissing soldier) or disturbing (war photos) there is something beautiful about them because they tell human stories.  For me even the most beautiful and compelling scenery pictures aren't as compelling or beautiful as the ones that tell human stories.  I suppose that I why I went into teaching, because children are beautiful.  I need to explain how I describe beauty.  In the book A River Runs Through It (NOT the movie although it was touched on in it) Reverend Maclain defines beauty in a non-superficial, and, with the risk of overusing this word, compelling...(I couldn't find the quote online, but will get the book when I get to my parents and post it when I get it)
     The other way I was thinking about photography and the features which make a photo more or less compelling are similar to what makes lessons compelling.  They need to be well framed, focused, elicit emotion and tell a story.

Photography and Design

So this week I was struggling with how to use photography and design in the education field that isn't surface...I am not sure I succeeded.  Here it goes anyway:
Teachers have to be expert graphic designers.  One of the hardest parts of being a teacher is keeping children engaged in a world where they are stimulated by graphics ALL THE TIME...and by people who have a lot more practice and formal training in gaining the children's attention.  From television to video games kids are exposed to thousands of sensory images a day, and teachers are expected to keep and use students attention to teach and guide.  This is done not only in core subjects but more often than not in what I feel is the number one key to education...classroom management- you can not teach if you are constantly keeping kids in line.  Anyway, we try to make everything as appealing as possible visually in an attempt to get the kids attention.  This can be posters we make to PowerPoint's we assemble.  All is in the hope that we can keep their attention and teach them something memorable and compelling giving them a desire to learn.
On a separate, but related idea photography could be used more in my classroom.  One way I was thinking about photography was in the story telling.  There were two facets in which I thought this would be helpful.  First, thanks to digital photography and websites, it would be easy now to help tell your classes story to the world (and more importantly parents) through your website and photos.  Story telling in photos could be used in all sorts of ways in curriculum.  One way would be to practice descriptions. Another way would be write stories based on pictures.  Other ways would be perpective.  There are hundreds of ways to use photography in your classroom.