Exciting Academy Class Updates!

"You cannot teach humans anything. You can only help them discover it within themselves." --Galileo

Last week, a few of the Trike Team (myself, Virginia & Justin Scheuer & Megan Mayo) attended Walton Arts Center's AWE (Arts With Education) Institute. Sean and Melanie Layne, both national workshop presenters for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Art's Partners in Education tour, taught the week-long training. Walton Arts Center offers AWE each summer for local teachers to learn new ways to incorporate arts into their existing curriculum. As a result of this engaging, kinesthetic, inspiring week of learning, the Trike Team and I have solidified a "Trike Academy" class methodology.

Elizabeth Murfee writes about the benefits of arts integration in Eloquent Evidence: Arts at the Core of Learning. Trike also believes that:

• The arts are serious and rigorous academic subjects. They are an essential aspect of human knowing.
• The arts have far-reaching potential to help students achieve education goals.
• Reading, writing and math skills can be enhanced through the arts.
• Creativity is naturally developed through the arts.
• Student engagement and persistence improve with an arts-based curriculum.
• High-risk students are engaged through the arts.
• Understanding of one's self and others expands with arts education.

Basing our instruction in these beliefs, we have decided that each of the Trike Academy classes will include:

• Portfolio for each student. We want students (and their families) to be members of Trike for a very long time. Portfolios are one way we can "invest" in each student. This folder will hold a copy of student work while they are taking classes at Tricycle Theater for Youth. Portfolios will be made available to students and parents at all times.
• Documentation of process. This will help show the outside community, the students' process during a particular class or project, make the learning process visible for students and create a tangible memory to share with others.
• Reflection. Done at the end of each class, students will take the time to really think and ponder about what they have experienced.
• Integration with other core curriculum. In addition to meeting National Arts Standards, we want to bring in reading and literacy objectives as well. We also thought that it would be fun to create full-on arts-integration curriculum during our week-long summer camps (Science/Drama - Wizards and potions) (History/Drama - "Magic Tree House) (Art/Science/Drama - Still Life paintings) etc.
• Arts Based Classroom Management. At AWE, we learned a technique from Sean Layne that takes the foundational elements of acting such as concentration, cooperation, and collaboration and creates a structured process that will become the basis for establishing a cooperative learning environment. Through this process, we see students establishing a sense of self-control, accountability, and team building in the classroom. This Classroom management style will be used in the Dramatic Play and Conservatory classes.

Registration opens AUGUST 15 and our first class begin SATURDAY, SEPT. 27. Once we begin, I will have images to post and more documentation to share.

Check out our upcoming classes at http://www.triketheater.org/

AND REMEMBER - WE PLAN TO BEGIN PRODUCING A FULL SEASON OF THEATER FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES IN THE FALL 2009.