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You
are here: Confessions of a Professional Volunteer
As I prepare to leave the Laurelhurst Elementary School after eight years of being a professional volunteer, I find myself reflecting on all the transformation which has taken place in the hearts and minds of the children, parents and teachers and the actual building itself since I arrived in 1994. Through a systematic reintegration of the Arts and creative partnership with the surrounding community, the school once again breathes with a vitality of sound, color and inspiration. It was not always this way. Not by a long shot.
It all started the day I arrived with my first child for kindergarten in 1994. I was informed that this 70 year old school whose halls had seen not only Governor and US Senator Daniel Evans, Superior Court Judge Jerome M. Johnson and Bill Gates III, but also Barbee Crutcher, Nancy Skinner, and Libby Gates Armintrout, three of the foremost female visionaries and leaders in the Seattle Community. I was also informed that there was no longer any art, drama, or vocal music programs. I learned that there was an instrumental music program given through the District, but it was not long before I also learned that many of the fourth and fifth grade children were begging to be let out of music. Why?
Rather than dive in all at once with the full force of my righteous indignation, I simply stepped back and began to observe. I began to walk around the building. The walls were a brownish purple color and after careful inquiry I was informed that the Seattle School District combined all the leftover paint from various government projects around Washington State and this was the resulting color. This free paint was what was used to paint the public schools all over the District.
Next I explored the transitional area between the building and the gymnasium. This area was called the indoor play court and while it was technically indoors because it had a roof, it was as cold as the outside. It was painted a deep, dark, forbidding blue. The ceiling was leaking in several places, forming large puddles under the basketball hoops from which torn nets swayed listlessly in the cold breeze wafting through the large area. When I asked about the leaky play court roof, I was told, "We are on "The List" for repair." When I asked when that repair might take place, Debbie the secretary sighed, shrugged her shoulders, and said, "We have no idea. Could be months. Could be years. I personally have been here several years now and it has been that way since I have been here. Wait till it really starts raining. The halls and classrooms have puddles too."
At this point I needed some air. I walked around the outside of the building and noticed that the brick was rather attractive but that the building otherwise had cracked and peeling paint. The asphalt and surrounding perimeter walls were gray and lifeless. There was no sign anywhere that this was a thriving elementary school. The portables were another nondescript brownish bluish purple. I suspected that this brownish bluish purple color was a relative of the indoor paint. Upon investigation, I found out that I was right.
I wandered into the teachers lounge; uncomfortable chairs, scratched and wobbly tables, torn curtains. More of that revolting paint. At that point I had to sit down. I took a very long and deep breath and I began to wonder if the problem here wasn't much bigger than just a lack of art on the walls and music in the halls. There was a palpable and pervasive despair here. What could I do?
First, I began to enlist the help of the parents in the school community. We rolled up our sleeves and got busy together. We asked for permission from the District to repaint the building inside and out. Just getting permission from the district to paint the building a different color took a surprisingly long time. While we were waiting for a response from the Powers That Be in the District, we asked the Laurelhurst PTA for money to buy new paint and when that money wasn't enough, we dug deep into our own pockets.
One of our parents, Kevin Shearer, heard about a city volunteer project called Seattle Works Day and that if we applied we could get over a hundred volunteers for the day starting at 8:00am All we had to do was tell the truth about our circumstances and we were accepted as one of the projects. We were thrilled. After we were approved for new paint, I informed the brand new Superintendent General John Stanford, about what we were doing and the extraordinary photo opportunity that was going to happen this coming Saturday. He agreed to show up and observe this wonderful citywide partnership with the public schools.
The Saturday of Seattle Works Day, we were ready with paintbrushes, paint, coffee, donuts and water for all. There was much celebration as a beautiful evergreen color began to be visible everywhere you looked. By one o'clock, a lovely deep maroon red was distributed for the trim around the windows and doors. About two in the afternoon the Superintendent John Stanford emerged from his long black car. After his picture for the Seattle PI with all of us holding paintbrushes together, he was about to get back into his car and drive away. I insisted that before he left, he take a tour of the inside of the building.
As we were walking through the halls, I casually mentioned the leaky roof and asked if he knew where this beautiful indoor paint color came from. He didn't. I told him. His eyes narrowed and he slowed his pace. "Are you serious? The dumping ground for everyone else's paint? For our children? No. I did not know that." At that point, John Stanford stopped. He looked around again, this time really taking in what he was seeing around him. Then he said with a resolve that I am quite sure had helped him to become the four star general that he was: "We have to fix that." I looked him straight in the eye, smiled and said, "We certainly do. And I have loads of other ideas." Superintendent John Stanford stayed another hour. We emerged from the building arm in arm, new best friends. I had an ally and Laurelhurst Elementary was finally on somebody's radar screen.
After Superintendent General Stanford left, we all continued our work. There was a lot of discussion between the parents of the school and the outside volunteers about what was working and not working in the Elementary school system in particular, and the Seattle School District in general. It was a feast of shared ideas, expertise and inspiration. Some of these people even volunteered to come back and help Laurelhurst Elementary School again at a later time. Homemakers. Tutors. Carpenters. Scientists. Lawyers. Bankers. Software engineers. I got a sign up sheet started!
At five PM, it was time for these wonderful volunteers to leave. We thanked them profusely and there were tears of gratitude on both sides. They left. We had saved the doors to the school and portables for last as a reward. Out came the cans of bright yellow, red and blue. As darkness approached, we finally had to hang up our brushes. We all walked around the entire building one last time. There was a profound silence and smiles all around. It had been a very productive day.
Next we began to attack the inside halls and lunchroom. In another long weekend of rallying parental support, the walls inside became restful beige. This was a perfect backdrop for the future art projects I could see in my minds eye. We used the leftover yellow paint from the doors to paint the tether ball polls outside on the playground. Then thanks to the ever inspired leadership of Jean and Kevin Shearer, baseball, kick ball, four square, and pickle ball court lines were painted in on the asphalt all around the school.
For the teachers lounge I sewed curtains and made bright, multi- colored tablecloths. I painted mugs for each teacher, tutor and administrator with their name on them and then hung them on the wall. Kevin arrived with twenty brand new comfortable chairs for the teachers and then hauled the old ones away. Then he and I painted the walls of the teachers lounge a soothing yellow. After that, I painted colorful designs on the entry door to the teachers lounge. It was starting to look like a cheery school everywhere you looked.
The play court was next. I really needed help there because the more I looked at it, the more depressed I felt. If I were a child, I certainly wouldn't want to play there. And it was so cold and dark; if I were a teacher I wouldn't even want to go in there. I sought and obtained a Washington State Arts Grant to bring local artist Kim Newall into the building to transform that play court space with Art. But first, you guessed it, the walls had to be painted. By now I had completely taken over many of my new friends precious weekends. I didn't want them to start running the other direction whenever they saw me coming. So, I painted it all by myself over the course of a week. This gave me time to think and envision what was truly necessary and possible for that very large space.
As I was pondering, I painted the walls as high as my ladder from home would reach. Then I enlisted the help of a father in the school, a contractor, and with his equipment I was able to paint higher. Another father was walking by one day and noticed what I was doing. He asked if he could help. "New basketball nets would be nice." I replied with a smile. We hung the new nets the next day. I painted the floor of the play court a bright green and added more four square court lines as well as basketball keys. As I painted I hoped that one-day, the play court would match the excitement of the outer playground. The outdoor play spaces all around the school were now teaming with different games every day before school, at recess and after school thanks to the lines we had already painted. By the end of that week, I was finished with the walls and the floor and the Laurelhurst play court was finally ready for Kim's arrival.
My first discussion with Kim the day she arrived was a real turning point for me. Here was an artist I could relate to. I told her to think and dream as big as she could for the space. What could we do that would make children want to come in here and play? We discussed many possibilities and finally settled on an idea: sixteen, four by six foot murals with drawings in every color of the rainbow, drawn and painted by the children themselves. And to top it off, we would surround each mural panel with a fun, bright, whimsical border. Hooray! Our grant project was decided. Now we just had to teach the children to draw.
Since we had only two weeks paid for by the grant budget, Kim proposed creating sketchbooks for each child in grades 1,2 4 and 5 as well as the class of Severe Behavior Disorder children. We agreed that I would put the 350 books of blank paper together as well as line up parent support and she would teach the children the basics of figure drawing. When word of the new art project grant got out, initially there were both grumbling and excitement among the parents and teachers. The comments ranged from "You can't teach the basics of figure drawing to children that young! How dare you! That will take away and squash all their imagination!" to "This is a waste of money and time!" to "What a great idea! I never thought of that. How can I help?" I figured well, at least they were talking about art.
I got the sketchbooks done in a day with generous help from the staff of Kinkos. I bought the twenty-five colors of paint Kim told me to get at Roddett Paint Supply. I lined up parents in shifts all day from Monday to Friday of the following week. And Kim began her work with the children. She had one week to teach them the basics of figure drawing. Our shared belief was that if the children did not have the tools and were therefore unable to translate the pictures inside of their heads into a recognizable form, they would get discouraged. And they would probably quit drawing all together as many of their parents had done.
Over the course of that first week, Kim gave the kids the tools and images of all kinds poured out of the kids. Many of the kids asked if they could take their sketchbooks home and bring them back to school the next day. In a few days, many of their sketchbooks were full. For those kids, we gave them a second sketchbook.
All of a sudden, mothers I didn't even know were coming up to me on the playground saying, "What has happened to my child? She's now inviting friends over to have sketching parties! They don't even want to watch TV. I have never seen anything like this" and "I have never seen my son so excited about art. It's wonderful. How can I help?" and "I am so happy to see my child so happy. She is getting something I never had. I was always so terrible in art. I can't draw. I wish I could. " To these mothers I simply smiled and said, "I have a wonderful volunteer opportunity for you! Want to come in next week and help paint with the kids?"
Kim's approach to getting the murals up on the wall was both fascinating and ingenious. We had originally chosen eight classrooms of first, second, fourth and fifth graders as well as the mixed age class of the Severe Behavior Disorder children to participate in the grant project. All week we had asked kids to save their milk cartons. By Friday we had washed and dried over 250 milk cartons and filled them each with about a cup of paint. Duplicate containers were made of each color to avoid potential fights among the kids.
The children were continuing to fill their sketchbooks with tremendous energy and enthusiasm. Toward the end of the first week, Kim and I culled through each child's sketchbook. We pulled one resonant image from each child's book. Kim traced these images right out of the children's books and then arranged these images on to transparencies. We measured and outlined sixteen 4' X 6" rectangular panels on to the walls of the play court where we then projected the images from the transparencies. With the projector light still on, the images were traced on to the wall with black markers by the parents.
These parents were beginning to feel like artists too. There was much discussion among them about their mostly miserable experiences with art in the past. They kept shaking their heads in wonder and saying how this art experience was so different and how happy they felt. By the end of the weekend, a wide variety of images were drawn on to the wall panels and we counted over three hundred and fifty images in all. We all cheered. We were now ready to bring in the kids to paint.
Each class was brought in one at a time and there were squeals and gasps of anticipation as they entered. We covered the children with an old shirt, handed them a paint brush and told them to find their image up on the wall. Then we simply said, "What color would you really like to paint that? And remember, it doesn't have to be the color you normally see it." This idea of True Choice gave them pause. They became very still. They looked at their images. They tilted their heads this way and then that way. Smiled. Then turned and ran for the paint.
Over the course of the week, we saw spotted dogs, skaters, psychedelic skate boards, scooters, faces, flowers, hiking boots, basketballs and many other images come to life. Whenever a child got stuck, Kim or I would casually walk over to them, stand with them looking at their image and ask, "If you could do ANYTHING, what color would you paint that?" Or "What color does your image WANT to be?" Usually that child would look around to see if anyone else was listening and then whisper that they were afraid of making a mistake and ruining it. We whispered back that they could always paint over what they did if they decided they didn't like it.
We also encouraged them to just trust themselves and give it a whirl. These children would approach the table of paint tentatively at first. We stayed right by them. If they got stuck again said, "Look at all the paints on the table. Which color calls to you? Pick that color and then choose another color when you feel that you are done with the one you started with. Trust yourself. You really do know what to do."
In the cases where we felt the child was playing it too safe, we had another plan. When my daughter Sarah came in, she began to paint very precisely on an intricate design she had for the stem of her flower. Kim slowly sidled up to her and encouraged her to consider painting the flower part of her image black. I was standing there watching this and truly Sarah looked up at Kim as if she were absolutely insane. "But there aren't any black flowers!" Sarah protested. "Oh yes there are and they are some of the most rare and beautiful of the flowers." I gently encouraged from behind them.
Sarah whirled around to look at me. "Reeealllly?" Sarah asked wide-eyed and then she turned back to look again at her flower up on the wall. Then Kim said: "Oh yes. Want to see what your flower would look like in different shades of black? You can MIX colors you know. Come on over here and I will show you how to do that." "Oh yeah!" Sarah yelled over her shoulder as she overtook Kim sprinting to the paint table.
If there was time after each child finished their individual images, they were given a wider brush and asked to fill in the background of the mural around the images of their classmates. We decided after careful observation of the Severe Behavior Disorder classes and discussion with the special ed teachers, that the behaviorally challenged kids would be better served if we had them paint on separate boards which were portable and could be moved around the room. Incidentally, these six boards eventually became the art in the bus stop at the entrance to Windermere Estates on Sand Point Way.
Every day, after all the children had left the play court, the parents went back over the paintings and outlined each individual image with a narrow black outline. These parents also filled in any of the remaining background areas of the murals left undone by the children. The beautiful, colorful and creative images from all our children began to pop out all over the room. It was thrilling.
One thing I began to observe, though, were the kids and teachers from the other classes who were not able to participate in the mural grant project. They were wandering in through the play court at lunchtime, recess and after school with looks of wonder and envy. As I was casually painting, awaiting the next classes' arrival or cleaning up, I would ask each of these mural gazers what they thought. "I wish I could have done one" they would sigh sadly. Hearing this from one child after another began to tug at my heart.
I was walking home after about the third day of this when I had a sudden inspiration. Why don't we get every child, teacher, administrator and janitor in the school who wasn't allowed to paint an image, to put his or her handprints up on the wall? This would connect each of the mural panels and make everyone feel a part of the project. We made an announcement to this effect the next day and the excitement in the building became palpable.
After all the mural panels were completed on Friday, one by one, the other children and staff came in, had their hands rolled with the paint color of their choice and were asked to put their hand prints up on the wall. This began to form a walking pattern of hands between mural panels all the way around the play court and over the doors. Eventually this walking hand pattern would become the signature symbol of our school.
On an adjoining empty wall, I painted the image of a globe of the world with stars and swirls above it. I asked the teachers, administrators and janitors to put their colorful handprints at the base of the wall so that it looked like their large hands were holding up the world. Some of the teachers had tears in their eyes as they placed their hands up on the wall "This is what you are doing anyway." I said quietly. "And I sure hope you know how grateful we all are for all the wonderful work you do with our children." One teacher said, "It sure doesn't feel that way most days." As another teacher was leaving she said, "Hey, do you think I could move my entire classroom down here? It's so cheerful in here now!"
When the two weeks were finally at an end, Kim and I were standing in the play court alone together admiring all the hard work of so many people. I suddenly turned to her and said, "Kim. I think you are a genius. What do I have to do to get you to come back here? I will lay prostrate in your driveway if I have to." She laughed and then was silent for a moment. Then she said, "You know Mary Anne? I have taught in a ton of schools. Most of them, no matter how wonderful the art project turned out to be in the end, by the time the project was finished I couldn't wait to get out of there. This is the first school I ever wanted to come back to. It has the most amazing parent support in the world" At this, Kim reached over and squeezed my arm.
I literally began jumping up and down in the play court. I exclaimed, "I want you to teach here! Let's start a full out art program here! How much money do you need to make it worth your while? Ball Park." With her jaw dropping slack in wonder, Kim said, "Can I get back to you on that?" "Nope." I replied. "I need a ballpark right now. I am getting on the phone tonight. THINK BIG!" I exclaimed: "Materials. Your time. Travel. The works!" Kim thought for a moment and then said, "Ball park? Expenses for materials, my time AND travel? Nobody has ever asked me that question. What a luxury…I would say, fifteen thousand dollars for twenty five weeks." And in the next breath she said, "I hope that's not too much to ask." "Well, we will never know until we try!" I chirped as I left the building and began skipping home.
On my way up the hill, I kept asking myself, "What if…What if…? What if?" As I was about to enter my front door, I had another brainstorm. In a flash, I had my pitch to the parents: "For the price of one less candy bar a week, you can buy your child art for a year!" I got on the phone that night. After outlining my idea for an art program at the school, I made my pitch and that first year I asked each family for a total of twenty-five dollars per child. Some generous families gave scholarships. It was one phone call at a time and one dollar raised at a time. At the end of ten days, I had single-handedly raised the fifteen thousand dollars we needed to get started. Kim was hired. It was a match made in heaven. Every year, each child in the school from K-5 gets a new sketchbook, pencil and eraser. Over the next seven years, Kim fleshed out every skill, hunch, dream and possibility she could think of.
Over the course of that first year, both Kim and I noticed that the teachers needed some encouragement and inspiration to explore and question some of their own artistic blocks. We gave them art workshops on the side. Parents wanted to learn to draw. We asked the children to teach their parents what they were learning. And sketching parties were appearing all over Seattle. Over the course of the next few years, we integrated art into other areas of the curriculum: math, social studies, and science. Kids no longer just talked about what they were observing or learning. They were asked to draw it.
Another parent, Pam Gray, found a photographer who agreed to photograph the sixteen play court mural panels. We asked two other of our parents, Holly and Brian Jacobson, whose family owned Madison Park Greetings, to print these photos into note cards. Thinking big as usual, I ordered two thousand images of each panel. When I went to go pick them up, I looked at the huge stack with a bit of horror as I realized what I had gotten myself into.
But once again more parents volunteered to help. My friend Cheryl Whitener donated ribbon and colorful threads from her mom's knitting shop. Cheryl and my other dear friend Gretchen Covey and countless combinations of mothers got together with me over coffee and tea at my home to box the cards, a set of sixteen to a box. The finishing touch was to tie them up with the colorful ribbon. While we were working, we told many fun stories and laughed a lot. The idea of the quilting bee had taken on a new dimension.
The Jacobsen family was incredibly generous in the printing of the cards and only charged us for the materials. This turned out to be about one dollar a box. We sold the boxes for ten dollars a piece and made nine dollars a box to put back into our art program. Nearly fifteen hundred boxes of our cards were sold in the first two years. Six years later, people still ask "Are there any more boxes of those wonderful art cards from the play court murals?" The new presidents of the Laurelhurst Elementary School Foundation, Kevin and Jean Shearer, now use the cards to write thank you notes to every person who contributes their time or who makes a donation to the Foundation which to date has raised over $300,000 toward an endowment aimed at two million. The Arts Culture of Laurelhurst School was definitely changing.
Six years later, kids still come back to look at the murals and find their individual images. I hear them sometimes exclaiming to their friend or parents, "Can you believe I did that? Isn't it totally cool?" Others come back to visit their handprints. As they lay their hands over the pink, blue, yellow or green hands on the wall, the most common words you hear over and over are "Wow…Can you believe my hand was ever that small?"
One day, in the second year of the program, I was in the world famous northwest glass artist Dale Chihuly's studio on Lake Union and I happened to casually ask one of the women there "Does Dale ever work with children?" "Oh he LOVES children." She replied "But nobody ever asks." I said quickly, "I'm ASKING!" This began another partnership in the community with another wonderful artist. Dale's staff and I worked together to design a painting day for the school. We needed fiber boards cut to 14" by 16" dimensions. These boards had to be cut and prepped with gesso. There were more Saturday painting days by the wonderful parents of Laurelhurst Elementary. At least this time we got to paint the gesso on the boards together in our colorful new play court!
I got on the phone to other parents in our community and asked for their help in learning how to contact local newspapers and TV stations to get them to cover the event. We had the children of Susan Hutchison, co anchor for KIRO news and Bill Krippaehne the CEO of Fisher Broadcasting and KOMO TV, in our school. Both Bill and Susan were delighted to help.
Susan was very generous with her time teaching me how to write an effective press release. Next she taught me the step-by-step process of how to gain access to the media. She explained how radio and television media messages were different and how to tailor my approach specific to the medium I wanted to target. This was a real education for me in many respects. By demystifying the process of gaining access to the media, I was far less intimidated by it. I began to have more courage in my approach to the specific people in the media community whom I needed to contact.
I got the people I wanted to the event and as a result "World famous glass artist Dale Chihuly paints with local elementary school children" became prime time news. It was also front-page news of the Seattle Times Newspaper. I was surprised to learn from Susan that any person in the US has access to this same information which she had given me: "All they have to do is simply call their own local TV Station anywhere in the US and ask for help with gaining access to the local media for their event."
At Bill's suggestion, I had lunch with his news director at KOMO, Joe Barnes, to learn how to view The Chihuly Painting Day through the lens of a camera. I had been on the other side of the lens myself as a performer, but never as a Director of Photography. Joe and I talked at some length about how the camera "Sees" events. He explained how radically different what is understood by an audience depending on how the cameraperson frames the event with the lens of their camera. I began to have a new respect for the power of a camera and the skill of media professionals.
Next, I verbally walked Joe through the sequence of the day's events as I had planned them in my head. So many people from the media had already responded to my press releases saying they would be delighted to be there; I wanted to be really prepared. He taught me how to guide the media on a sequential journey through the painting event as I saw it for maximum visual and communication impact. I went home and mapped out our conversation about the media on paper. I wrote out the entire day's news coverage from start to finish, complete with camera angles and still photos. Then I mapped out the order of the live interviews and still photos with Chihuly, kids and parents. After all this preparation, we were ready for the media.
I asked the former alumni of Laurelhurst Elementary, Governor Dan Evans to come to the event. At that time, Dan was the co-chair of the newly formed Friends of Laurelhurst Elementary School Foundation. The Laurelhurst Elementary School Foundation had been imagined, created and then developed by Robert Schenkkan and I to take the financial pressure off the exhausted parent volunteers of the school. Dan was delighted to lend a hand.
I invited Joel Groen to join us. He was the head of the newly formed Alliance for Education, a nonprofit group of the sixty top CEO's in the community who were banding their forces together in an effort to reinvigorate the Seattle Public School System. Even Ann Hauberg, Dale Chihuly's original patron and founder of the now famous Pilchuck Glass School, agreed to stop by and celebrate with us. And of course I called my new very best friend, the Superintendent General John Stanford. Everyone accepted my invitation with tremendous enthusiasm. It was becoming a media event!
I told Dale Chihuly about all this. He was both grateful and very excited. He generously offered to create personally signed paintings for all the groups and people involved: the Children of Laurelhurst Elementary, The Alliance for Education, Governor Dan and Nancy B. Evans and Superintendent John Stanford. After the event, I personally framed these beautiful paintings and had the pleasure and privilege of delivering them. They still hang in the halls, homes and offices of these places and people today with the exception of dear John Stanford who died two years ago after a valiant fight with Leukemia. His Chihuly painting used to be in his office. Now it hangs in the home of his generous, dynamic and very socially active family, which includes his lovely widow, Pat.
The alliance with Dale Chihuly gave birth to another art concept and curriculum into the Laurelhurst Elementary School building. Before Chihuly arrived for our big painting day, Kim educated the kids in the unique art of northwest glass making. She brought in books and slides with pictures of glasswork. She also showed the kids the prototypes drawn by the glass artists themselves before they became blown into glass.
At my request, Dale Chihuly sent our school videotapes showing the process of glass blowing and his paintings. He also sent us a video of the step-by-step creation of the huge installations of his thousand pound glass chandeliers over Venice and his huge ice sculptures in Tacoma. These videos illustrated extremely well how someone's vision becomes a reality. It also portrayed the step-by-step process required to put the foundations under those visions. We were all inspired as we watched the tapes of Chihuly's visions becoming reality before our eyes. These videos also made it possible for our kids to experience Dale Chihuly as a very real human being as well as an artist before he ever entered the door to Laurelhurst Elementary.
As I gathered parents together to help run the painting day itself, Kim worked with the kids in the school creating their own oil pastel drawings in the style of Chihuly. The fifth graders voted and decided they wanted to do pen and ink portraits of Chihuly to put up on the wall before he came. Out of their request, Kim taught them, and later the entire school, the basics of portraiture and political cartooning. The big day arrived and it was a smashing success.
One of my favorite moments of the day was when Dale was walking around the play court and gym, admiring all the kids drawings, paintings and portraits each reflecting him and his art style. He was clearly awestruck. He asked if he could have EVERY piece of art on the wall. One of our wonderful teachers, Susan Butler, overheard Dale's request, walked right up to him and asked, "Well, what are you going to offer in exchange, artist to artist?" Dale thought for a moment and then replied, "Good question. I will think about that." Without missing a beat, Susan replied, "Well, yes you think about that. And you will get THEIR art when they get something in return from YOU." Dale Chihuly's eyes widened, then he smiled and exclaimed, "Well All Right!"
The day after the event, I was called and told that 440 boxes of cards from the "Chihuly Over Venice" installation in Italy would be available for me to pick up at his studio on Lake Union. When I distributed the boxes of cards at the school later that afternoon, I heard many of the kids exclaim, "Mr. Chihuly thinks I am an artist? Cool!"
I asked Dale Chihuly if he would consider doing what he had done for us at Laurelhurst Elementary for another school in South Central Seattle. I had recently met the hard working visionary team of professionals from Concord Elementary at one of the training days for the Galef Program. The Galef program was one of John Stanford's visions for integrating and weaving the arts into the more traditional curriculum of the public schools. After the Galef training, I went to Concord school on behalf of Laurelhurst Elementary School to see and learn from them about their innovative arts units in broadcast news and other media arts. I was so inspired by what they were doing and accomplishing that I wanted to offer them gift of art in exchange for all they had shared with me. Dale very graciously agreed to offer them the same painting experience that he had done for our school.
Since Concord's budget was tight, mothers and fathers from Laurelhurst agreed to donate boards and then prepare them with gesso for the children of the Concord School. Then I took these prepared boards along with the tarps we had used to cover the Laurelhurst gym floor for our painting day, down to Concord in the back of my car. Chilhuly's staff and I taped down the many tarps together, and then set out all the boards and paint for the kids. In advance of Dale's arrival, I lent them all the tapes of Dales art installations around the world and the wonderful Concord Arts Team took the Dale Chihuly Educational Unit from there. There were no film crews this time. Dale arrived and another inspiring painting day was on its way. I stood on the sidelines watching with deep joy all these wonderful, happy kids playing, laughing and painting with Dale Chihuly. There was so much joy in the room I almost cried.
Back at Laurelhurst, we continued to develop curriculum based on other famous northwest artists work such as Jacob Lawrence. Kim continued to share her incredible, inspirational artistic gifts with us. We brought in local Northwest Native American storytellers to tell stories about the unique legends of our area. Kim and the children designed traditional Native American Totem Pole murals, which tied into the stories. Kids wrote their own stories based on legends and then designed and created remarkable plaster masks of one of the characters from their own stories.
Normal school history units on the Pyramids of Egypt became a mural on the bus stop in front of Burger Master on 45th Street. Social studies units on Northwest People and their symbols of the Sun became the bus stop on 45th and Sand Point Way. Ms Reams, another wonderful and inspiring teacher, was doing a science unit on native bugs and wild flowers. She talked to Kim about an idea she had and they designed and created with the children magnificent colorful arches and murals over the doors and walls on the second floor.
Kim taught the kids to cartoon, make comic books and flip books. Other children began to make murals on plywood on such school units as the Wampanoag Indians, Day of the Dead, and the Mexican Muralists of Mexican Modernism such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo who said "I never painted my dreams. I painted my reality." These paintings on plywood were all over the building now filling the halls with the colors of our own children's reality.
Another respected and inspiring teacher, Tom Brown, jokingly said to Kim one day that he wished he had a view from the window of his classroom. He had looked out onto a stark blank wall for several years at that point. Kim took Tom's request to heart and began teaching the principles of landscape design to the children of his class. Then she and Tom set to work with the children of his class on creating a landscape mural of Mount Rainier and native northwest trees. This mural went up on the empty wall and Tom and his students finally had something beautiful to look at as they daydreamed.
Since the entire school was also studying a science unit at that time on northwest insects, birds and flowers, Kim worked with all the children of the school to paint tiles featuring, you guessed it, native northwest insects, birds, small animals and flowers. These colorful tiles were then installed all around the outside landscape mural of Mount Rainier making that wall even more colorful.
Tom Brown also had an interest in and curiosity about Native American Northwest totem pole carving. He put the word out to the school community and a family donated a huge cedar log felled by a recent windstorm. Tom thought this log would make a great all school totem pole. It soon became clear that this totem pole idea of Tom's was not only overwhelming in its size and scope, but also too complicated and dangerous to have first graders carving with sharp objects.
Unwilling to accept defeat, Tom cut the huge log himself into three pieces. He cut that log again and again and then made it into a bench for the school. Next, he had the children of his class make more clay tiles of insects, small animals and flowers, which he added to the bench as decoration. This lovely work of art waits outside the kindergarten room as a place for the kids to sit and reflect. It also became a wonderful peaceful place for the mothers, fathers and guardians of Laurelhurst Elementary to take a load off their tired feet before picking up their children at the end of the school day.
Tom and Kim began to create a classroom unit on puppets together. They finally settled on the style of Bunraku puppetry to explore in particular. Kim and Tom brought in an artist from local Thistle Theatre to lecture on this ancient Japanese art of puppetry. Next the kids explored the art of the Bunraku style through the construction and painting of actual Bunraku puppets. The interesting twist to this puppetry unit was that Tom and Kim created Bunraku puppet style puppets that were actually the characters unique to Native American storytelling of our Pacific Northwest area. Then they performed a Native American story using these Bunraku puppets created by the children.
When the Bunraku Puppet performance was over, Kim and Tom installed some of these giant painted plywood figures on the wall for all the school to enjoy. Tom installed the rest of the Bunraku figures on the walls of the newly opened John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence in South Seattle. To close out the unit on puppets, Kim and Tom took the entire class to the Northwest Puppet Theatre to see a touring company of traditional Japanese Style Bunraku Puppeteers for a traditional Japanese story.
My original dream of art all over the walls was taking on a real life of it's own within the building. Art was exploding on the walls and outside the building in every direction. Laurelhurst Art was now not only everywhere in and around our building, but spilling out into other buildings and bus stops around Seattle as well! I turned my attention to other challenges still left undone.
My dear friend Sarah Armstrong decided that she would make a dream of one of our teachers, Aki Kurose, come true. As a teenager, Aki had been placed with her family in a Japanese Internment camp downwind of Hanford Nuclear Power Plant during World War II. She spent most of her adolescence there and her mother always encouraged her not to hate her captors, but rather to have compassion for them. That was Aki's biggest challenge of all her five years of incarceration.
For over fifty years Aki had embodied and taught the message of peace. She believed that people were not intrinsically bad. Rather she believed that people were essentially good and that the problem was really that they rarely, if ever, had an experience of real peace in their lives. Aki believed that it was this simple lack of the experience of peace which not only made war easier to happen but also made war much more acceptable in the world.
It was Aki's dream to create a peace garden where children, who didn't want to deal with the competition and stress of the world, could just go and sit quietly in contemplation or conversation. Aki believed that creating the conditions for peace by giving people an actual experience of it would do far more for the issue of Peace in the world than just talking about it ever would.To begin to design this dream into reality, Sarah wisely enlisted the help and expertise of two of our parents, my dear comrade and extraordinary sculptor Ginny Sherrow and contractor Scott Woodcock. Together with Aki, they all created a design and we all went to work. Ginny was the lead artist and Scott was the lead in structural design and construction. Ginny worked in the classroom discussing peace and explaining to our children how to take a feeling or concept and then translate that into images of art. Then, Ginny gave each child, teacher and parent in the school a walnut size piece of sculpy clay and asked them to sculpt into an image what peace meant to them.
Next Ginny opened the conversation about peace out into the community and asked people to join us in the creation of our peace garden. She opened the doors of the Laurelhurst Community Center one Saturday for several hours. People of all ages and colors came in from all over the Seattle community to fashion more images of peace and to talk together as they worked. Their extraordinary peace images were added to the ones from Laurelhurst Elementary School. Next Ginny created rubber molds to hold these hundreds of images, which she would later cast into bronze.
While Ginny and I were carefully cleaning out the molds in preparation for the bronze casting, Sarah, Scott and other parents were hard at work outside the building. Out on one corner of the playground, they were ripping out the cyclone fence, a huge old dead stump and bent bike racks which had been a real eyesore. Parents such as Mike Carlisle, a stone mason, along with many other parents, applied their expertise to building infrastructure. Under Scott Woodcock's gracious direction, these wonderful parents gave of their time to lay brick, stone, pillars and walls.
The Mason's Union of Seattle heard about our peace project. They happened to be training new stonemasons at the time. The Stone Masons sent these new trainees along with an experienced crew to work with us for two weeks. These masons were all so moved by Aki's message of Peace and what we were doing that they donated all their labor. Other parents such as John Quimby, a wonderful, generous man and contractor by profession, took countless hours off from his own work to help and even often worked with us late into the evening. He was there with any tool any time that we needed one. And sometimes he would bring hot coffee.
Ginny cast all the images into bronze and soon they were ready to be installed. Ginny taught me to lay tile and we worked together late into the night under portable klieg lights to get all the tiles in around the bronze art creations in time for the opening ceremony the next day.
Under Sarah's direction, numerous other parents such as Christine Garrigan and Bill Nichols were busy planting trees and flowers around these beautiful images of peace. What was once an ugly stump and bike rack area was now a quiet, beautiful, inspiring garden. During this time Aki was waging a brave fight against cancer. Fortunately for us all, Aki lived long enough to see her dream of a peace garden in a public school become a reality. Aki Kurose's inspiring words are preserved in bronze and woven through the peace images from the community: "The peace of the world begins in the hearts of the children. In this garden, the seeds of peace are planted and shared."
The day the garden was publicly dedicated, the photographers and news stations came on their own. Peace Activist and long time friend of Aki's, Floyd Schmoe, gave a rousing and tender speech. I directed a group of fifth graders as a choir singing and signing songs of peace. My friend Superintendent John Stanford also came to give one of the other keynote speeches.
After the ceremony for Aki and the Peace Garden was over, John and I strolled through the Laurelhurst Elementary School building and the colorful play court. I reminded him of his first trip through the halls of Laurelhurst Elementary School three years before. As we were walking arm in arm, I said, "I have a few new ideas I would like to run by you." Suddenly, John laughed out loud and said, "Oh no! We are in trouble now! Here she goes AGAIN! Duck and cover everyone!" We laughed heartily together and I said, "Well, we've certainly come a long way in three years haven't we?" "Yes we have Mary Anne. And we have a long way to go…" And that was the last I ever spoke to Superintendent General John Stanford. A year later he was dead after a brave fight with leukemia.
At General Stanford's funeral, his son expressed succinctly the philosophy that had made all of the transformation at Laurelhurst Elementary School possible: "In honor of my father, John Stanford, I ask you seriously ask yourself one question and one question only. What are YOU going to DO out in the world that is going to make a difference? One thing. That's all. If we all do one simple thing, that truly will make a difference. That one thing you actually do to make the world a better place would be the greatest tribute to my dad that you could ever possibly imagine." He paused for a moment and then said: "Now go out there and DO IT!" With that, he sat down.
If there was even the smallest flicker of waning hope, energy or enthusiasm within me, there was no longer. I didn't waste any time after that. I looked at Laurelhurst Elementary School with fresh eyes, invigorated intent and a renewed heart. I thought to myself, "What had always cheered, inspired and soothed my own soul?" Music. Ah. Another clue.
I remembered that when I had first come to Laurelhurst School, I had noticed it was conspicuously void of music. Four years later, this musical void was still there and this troubled me greatly. Again I began to gather clues. This was when I learned that the fourth and fifth grade children were begging to be let out of the District instrumental music program. Why? Once again I began to quietly observe. None of the children were humming let alone singing around the building. I observed the district instrumental teacher yelling at the kids and then throw a pencil directly at a student in frustration. I began to observe our family at home where we were always singing something or had some sort of music playing on the stereo. What was the difference?
Well, first of all I remembered that I had begun to sing to my children in utero before they were born and we had simply continued singing together from the time they were born, everywhere we went, all day long. I asked a cross section of kids at Laurelhurst Elementary about their experience with music and they replied almost without exception that no one had ever sang to them in their homes or anywhere else. They also said that they didn't sing all that much anyway and what was the point?
I began to notice that my children were also exposed to a wide variety of types of music from around the world on a daily basis. This was, of course, before the invention of the walk man put us all on different tracks. Literally. I spoke with other kids at the school and many of them could not afford or did not own a Walk Man. A few had tape players, but CD's hadn't achieved the familiarity and accessibility they have today. And no one had a CD burner. I did a little more research. At that time almost thirty three percent of these kids at Laurelhurst were on free or reduced lunch programs. If they didn't have enough to eat, how could I expect them to have money or energy for music?
I went back to the school administrators and I asked why there was no vocal music program for our kids. "No money" was the simple answer I was given. "No money" I thought. "Hmmm . . . I was a musician myself and I had taught music beginning when I was still in high school. I knew a lot about different music styles and I knew a bunch of local musicians. Since I had already really blown my volunteer wad on the art program and called in a lot of favors among the school parent community, how could I engage the outer community to help and also do this without a lot of money?" I pondered this idea awhile and began to do more research.
I found out there was a world-renowned graduate vocal music program right in our own backyard at the University of Washington on the hill above us. About this same time, my friend Pam Gray happened to meet one of the current UW Doctoral Vocal Music students on a bus heading up 45th street into the University District. In this chance meeting, Pam and Sue Williamson talked all about the vocal music program at the UW. Pam and I had the seeds of a new idea.
A team of parents from Laurelhurst went to meet with the heads of the doctoral music program, Dr. Patricia Campbell and Steve Demerest. After some discussion, we created a partnership where the UW doctoral students would get a lab with real live children to practice on at Laurelhurst. In exchange, Laurelhurst Elementary would get the cutting edge of vocal music instruction for our kids.
After much discussion, we figured out together exactly what this new and innovative partnership would cost both the UW and Laurelhurst. We agreed to split the cost if we could raise the money. The UW went to their people to request funds. We went to the Laurelhurst PTA and stated our case. The proposed unique and ingenious partnership caught the attention and imagination of our PTA. They voted and they agreed to pitch in the funds to cover our portion of the cost. Since we were starting from scratch, these funds covered not only paying the Doctoral students but also music and instruments. This totaled close to fifteen thousand dollars the first year. Sue Williamson was hired. We had a vocal music program at last!
This was a wonderful example of a community alliance, which served both sides equally well. We have had for the past six years three successive doctoral students in place at our school for two years each at a time. Each of these students doctoral specialties has been very different. Our children have been exposed to many different multicultural styles of music and musical direction.
As a result of our creative partnership with the University of Washington, Sue Williamson was given the freedom to examine and re think the way traditional vocal music was taught. She incorporated her new ideas and experience into what became a thriving and inspiring community of singers. Sue formed a fourth and fifth grade choir and these children began to sing at assemblies, school events and around the city. Kids were now singing songs and rhymes in the halls and as they played games outside on the playground.
We experimented with a hunch I had about integrating music into foreign language instruction. I had read separate articles about the current brain research regarding language and music acquisition and retention by the young brain. I wondered what would happen if we put the two research ideas together. Robert Schenkkan and I had started a program for language instruction a few years earlier when we discovered there was no foreign language taught at the school. I speak fluent Spanish and wanted our children to be exposed to other languages and cultures besides their own. The speed with which Sarah and later Joshua and the other children picked up and understood languages when they had to sing it in addition to speaking it was astounding.
In addition, through the generous help of our PTA, we have been able to purchase many more musical and rhythm instruments as well as sheet music to support the expression of different music from all over the world. This is important to our multicultural school community as we have more than fifteen languages spoken in the building. The different cultures of our school were becoming visible, distinct and celebrated through songs and rhythms from around the world. We were becoming a whole and integrated community in more ways than I could have possibly imagined just four years before.
The other community partnership I explored was with the Seattle Symphony. I read an article in the Seattle PI about a man who worked as the educational director of the symphony. Steve Bayne had what I thought sounded like a compelling and creative vision for youth instrumental education. I got on the phone and called him. I asked, "Can we meet and talk about how our dreams for education and my need for instrumental music in my children's elementary school could mutually inspire each other?" We talked for some time and found some wonderful common ground for creating new possibilities in the realm of instrumental music.
One of the first questions I asked Steve was a very simple one. "What do the soloist's who come to play with the Seattle Symphony do while they are waiting to give a concert?" "Well," he replied, "they get really bored actually." I saw an opening. "Do you think they would be interested in warming up for the evening with the Symphony by coming to our school in the afternoon to perform for and talk with our kids?" "Well, I don't know. I will ask them." And he did. And they came. For free.
We had soloists from all over the world that first year that brought their unique brilliance into the hearts and minds of our children, teachers and parents. Musicians became hero's in the eyes of the children and they all insisted on having their pictures taken together. One day I overheard a boy sigh as he was leaving the lunchroom, "I finally know what I want to do with my life. I am going to play the cello."
Steve and I combined forces to turn traditional instrumental music instruction on its ear. We brought a formally dressed string quartet from the symphony in to demonstrate how people learn to play music together. There was a violin, viola, cellist and bass player. The musicians said, "Go!" and everyone started playing different pieces of music. "Stop!" one of them yelled. "What are we playing here?" An argument began which got louder and louder. "Well I thought we were playing Bach!" "No! I thought we were playing Rachmaninov!" "Well, I thought we were playing Brahms." "Hey, I thought we were playing Stephan Grapelli!" they all screamed at each other until one voice rose above the rest: "What's going on here? Let's all agree on WHAT piece we are playing first and then we will know what we are doing."
Next, they played the agreed upon music selection and the same argument was repeated again as they all began to play at different speeds. The kids thought this was absolutely hilarious. These talented Symphony musicians repeated this scene again and again with other building blocks of music such as time signatures, phrasing and volume. The kids and teachers were in hysterics. Here were these gifted symphony musicians, who many people considered stuffy and inaccessible in their penguin suits, playing around like clowns from The Greatest Show On Earth.
Not only did this approach completely belie many peoples perception of typical symphony musicians, it also enabled the children to really connect and understand music in a way that they had never been able to do before. And in the process, everyone learned what went into harmonizing the many factors that would allow a beautiful piece of music to be heard.
Next I put the word out to parents to offer to train them to go into the classroom and teach music. At my home, Steve and I taught these parents the basics of notation. We all experimented with taking these ideas into the classroom at all grade levels. There we created classroom symphonies using everyday sounds such as crumpling paper, tapping pencils and stomping feet. We tried to use the sound of popping gum, but we soon discovered that the timing of the blowing and popping of gum was consistently far too unreliable in terms of repetition. We sure doing our field research though with all the bubble blowing going on simultaneously in class!
Next, we explained how a composer writes down the notes to represent different instruments and how a musical score was built. Together with the kids, we came up with symbols to represent each of the thirty individual sounds they had already invented. We then decided how long to hold the sounds and in what combinations to overlap them. I noted this all on paper and then each child was given a copy. They simply followed their individual symbol across the paper and we suddenly had "The Class 14 Symphony #1 in Laurelhurst Major!"
This experiment was very successful in explaining to the children how music is written down and then performed over and over again by a group of people in the same order each time. We refined the process with adding rhythm instruments, maracas and slide whistles and then went back into the classroom again and created a new classroom symphony: "The Class 3 Symphony #2 in Laurelhurst Minor."
Next we got all the classroom symphonies together and everyone was amazed at how different and wonderful each symphony sounded. Children began humming and slapping rhythms on their thighs as they walked down the halls. In the lunchroom one day, a child yelled from across the lunchroom, "Hey Mary Anne, I have a new sound for ya!" Every head in the lunchroom turned to hear this new sound. It was the shaking of milk in a milk carton. Kids all around this boy yelled, "All right! We'll have to put that one in Symphony #3!" The kids were beginning to pay attention to the sounds of their world. We were really getting somewhere.
Next, we taught the parents to guide the children in visualizations while listening to music. We told the children we were going to put on some music for them and to just relax, close their eyes and listen. We also asked them to pay attention to any pictures that may or may not appear in their heads as they listened to these various music selections. As each of the various selections of music such as northwest composer, Horowitz's "Mysterious Mountain, Japanese music by Shakuhachi Shamlsanwas and Soundspace 4D were over, the children were asked to open their eyes.
We gave them colored pencils and crayons and then asked them silently to draw what they had seen in their heads while the music was playing. If a child had not seen any internal pictures, we told them to draw something that they loved. Then the children were allowed to volunteer to describe their journeys and pictures out loud to the rest of the class.
What was interesting to observe was that no two children ever had the same internal visual journey while listening to the same piece of music. This experiment also gave the children and us a first hand glimpse into the idea of how we can be listening to what we think we hear as the same thing, but in fact our actual experiences are uniquely our own, generated by our own very personal internal universe.
For Steve and me, our goal of exploring everything we could think of as far outside the normal realm of teaching instrumental music had become a reality. Parents began to see themselves as successful teachers. Teachers began to see music in a whole new dimension. And the kids were laughing and actively engaged with music in a whole new way. The halls literally began to vibrate.
Drama was next. When word got out that I had been a successful Broadway, Television and Voice Over actress, I was approached by Pam Gray, one of the fifth grade parents at that time. She asked me to direct the fifth grade play, which was a long-standing tradition at Laurelhurst. I replied without thinking, "Well I would be happy to help. But only of they write it and produce it themselves. I would be happy to facilitate the writing and direct it but I sure won't cram Johnny Appleseed down their poor little throats."
This began an experiment that continues to this day. That first year, the 70 fifth grade kids and I, in two separate classes, set to work together. I came into each of the classrooms once a week for an hour starting in October. When we were done in May, we had two plays, "The Respect Zone" and "The Wish That Changed The World."
"The Respect Zone" was the story of a child who felt so disrespected in his own home, that he wanted to go live with another family. He learned over the course of his exploration about what respect really was and how to bring it back into his own life, home and community. He did this with a little help from Aretha Franklin and the guys and girls from The Respect Zone. The kids from The Respect Zone came to help him out and walk him through his world so he could begin to see different options available to him that he hadn't been able to see before.
Endangered species was the issue that troubled the hearts of the other class. They created a play entitled "The Wish That Changed The World" This play was about a group of kids studying the endangered species of the world. At first, they were convinced that endangered species was a very clear, black and white issue. These kids discovered that the issue and reality of endangered species was actually much more complicated. These kids decided that they had to do something.
In the play, they were magically transported to the Worldwide Council of Endangered Species, which they as playwrights had invented to make their point. At this Council, the kids observed the representatives from the endangered animals themselves. These animals talked and argued about their frustration with humanity and what should be done. The kids asked the animals of the Council to teach them how to become more effective at helping endangered animals in the world. These kids returned from this Worldwide Council with invigorated resolve and saved a species close to their own home with the insights they had gleaned from engaging in fierce conversation with these animals.
After the first performance of "The Respect Zone", one of the parents from a child in that class came up to me and said, "This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen kids create. But I must confess, "The Respect Zone" play was a little too close to home for me. Was it MY son who came up with the idea to go live in another family by any chance?" When I heard that same question asked by over half the parents of the boys and girls in that class, I knew the kids and I were really on to something.
Now you might wonder how these plays were actually created. I always begin by entering the room with an attitude of Trust. I believe and know from years of experience that somewhere inside of these kids lay the seeds that will become the ideas, words and eventually the full play. I deeply trust the intuition of these children. And eventually the kids begin to trust me to guide their intuition out into the open so that we can create an authentic dialogue among us. The first actual words out of my mouth to these kids are always one simple question: "So. As you look around your world today, what makes you really mad?" And the room begins to buzz all on it's own.
After we generate a long list of their concerns, we vote democratically on each issue. In this process, we systematically eliminate options until we have our top hot issue. If there is a clear even split down the middle on two issues, we discuss how we can combine both issues into a play. Each group dynamic is different and one has to respect the nature of the group.
Next the children discuss and then vote on whether they want to set their play in the past, present, future or some combination of the above. Then we are on to deciding the conflict.
We explore how to tell our story with the basic components of good storytelling: beginning, middle, and end. We combine that with solid reporting skills of who, what, why, where, and when. This is spontaneous combustion at it's very best. I must admit that some days, it is like herding cats. But there is never a dull moment. In the end, these kids bond as they struggle to tell their stories in the most authentic and compelling way they can dream of.
This year of 2002 promises to be no different than any other year. Once again I have found myself knowing, trusting and respecting what will come from these new kids. And, as always I stand before these seventy five kids wondering where our journey will take us together.
So far, one class has chosen to address the gender conflict and how men and women, boys and girls so completely misunderstand each other. We have explored the conscious and unconscious assumptions boys and girls make about each other in the areas of hair, dress, fragrance, makeup, clothes, hats and weight. We have had some very heated discussions about the things boys get to do that girls don't and vice versa. We have had equally fiery discussions about what the girls and boys would really do and say if there weren't any of the intense pressure and misunderstanding generated by the media and video games. Another area we have explored together is the origins of chivalry and the basic components of effective requests, offers and promises.
I must say that these kids, in addition to being full of wonderful ideas, are absolutely unable to sit still for any length of time. They have taken all our discussions and decided to tell their story through the conflict of a dance war between genders. They want to travel through time by decades of dance styles alternating competition between boys and girls. Eventually through a mutual exploration of break dancing in the present, they want to project into the future to the year 2052.
Here they see themselves as middle age people. The satisfying thing they observe is that from their successful break dancing struggle in the nineties, they see men and woman of the future working, playing and dancing with more understanding, respect, good humor and less conflict.
I have no idea whether this story they have in mind right now can be condensed into a thirty-minute play. But, I have already put out the word through the kids that I will pay or give some of their required community service hours to any kid at Eckstein Middle School or Roosevelt High School who can teach us all to break dance.
My son Joshua's fifth grade class is very different. They instinctually split every idea and issue down the middle and have difficulty narrowing ideas down to one. These children have chosen to combine the idea of having control/no control in their world with sibling/family frustration. They have set their play to travel between the present, past and then back to the present. They want to explore the idea of what happens when, as they put it, "You mess with fate" and how "that can mess up the future."
Their conflict so far turns out to be the real life issue in one of the children's lives of a high school friend who committed suicide outside a local high school here in Seattle. When I asked her if she knew why he had killed himself, she had tears in her eyes as she said, "Of course. The other kids were making fun of him all the time." These kids began to explore the idea of what would happen if they were to go back in time, educate the bullying kids of the consequences of their ridicule. Then the bullies as a result, change their behavior and the boy doesn't end up choosing to kill himself.
At this point in the discussion, Joshua said, "Mom I have a serious problem with this idea." "What is it Joshua?" "Well, what if we do go back in time and save this kid and then he turns out in the future to become the next Hitler? And then, he goes on to kill a ton of other people, including possibly some of us, and that in fact, we would have all been better off if we had just let him kill himself when he did back in high school?" " Very good point Joshua. Could it also be equally possible that this kid, if saved, could go on in his life to become a scientist and finds the cure for cancer? Or AIDS?" There was a long silence at this point. "Hmmmmm . . ." was the considered and thoughtful response of the entire room.
I continued, "Both things are equally possible would you agree? One outcome is considered by us to be "good" and one outcome, as offered by Joshua, is considered by us to be "bad." Which one do we choose?
Do we ever really know for sure whether something is "good" or "bad" in our lives? They looked a bit confused and so I rephrased my question. "Do you ever think something your parent says or makes you do seems "bad" at first and then later you discover that in fact, in their seasoned wisdom, the outcome was actually a "good" one for you?" The kids reluctantly started nodding their heads, "Yes…." And then one of them said, "Well, NO actually…"
We all laughed and then I said, "Well, depending on the viewpoint of time and history, this usually determines whether something is actually perceived as "good" or "bad." And having just said that, even sometimes that perception or interpretation will flip again. Some people call that revisionist history. How do we ever know for sure in the present what is going to happen and how it will be interpreted? We just don't know."
Well, this is where we last left off. I have no idea where these two plays will end up. But I do know from experience that in both classes, it will be a worthwhile adventure full of interesting twists and turns. I also know that in the end, these kids will have an investment in and ownership of their play.
I still have kids coming back after eight years and telling me that the creation of their fifth grade play was the thing they remembered most from elementary school. I am firmly convinced that this is because we make an effort to value and honor and truly hear each person's contribution. Through this process, each child rises to the challenge of the unknown. They bring their unique struggles into the classroom where together, out of respectful dialogue, we create a piece of Art.
If the Arts are a reflection of the Soul of a culture, then Laurelhurst Elementary School is now full of it. To be honest, as I prepare to finally leave the building next June, I am feeling a certain degree of relief. Over the last eight years, the staff at Laurelhurst used to joke that since I never left the building, they probably should set up a cot for me to sleep in in the staff room. When my daughter Sarah entered Eckstein Middle School three years ago, she was so sick of seeing me everyday at Laurelhurst that she very politely asked if I would please NOT show my face EVER in her school unless I was coming in to sell popcorn. Joshua will enter Eckstein next fall. Frankly, I look forward to staying home for a change. And by the way, after eight long years of persistent monthly lobbying the District, this summer Laurelhurst Elementary School finally got a new roof.
Mary Anne Dorward is an educator who has taught on all levels, a Broadway and television actress, and mother of two children. She has been involved in volunteer work in social service, the arts, and education. Contact Mary Anne via her website, http://www.myrealvoice.com/index.htm.
Copyright November 24, 2002 Mary Anne Dorward
Posted with permission December 2002 by
New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org