finally, a new post about education

I underestimated how different it would be to come back this week to the same group of kids. The past two Mondays, charged with the excitement of getting to know a new group of young people and a new teaching artist, have felt less like Mondays and more like beginnings, if that makes any sense at all. Although there's no doubt that this week will be a long one, I'm excited about the possibilities of one more week to develop relationships with some really incredible kids (and, unfortunately, some really difficult ones).

That brings me to a new conclusion I've come to about the necessity for one-on-one interaction with kids in a classroom. I've always been lucky enough to attend schools with small class sizes, where I was able to really get to know my teachers, but I'm well aware that unfortunately, this isn't the case for most young people. Though my experience working on Junie B. Jones has had its ups and downs, the other two interns and I have found ourselves taking on advocate roles for the kids while the director or musical director are working, which has been such a gift. When they get in trouble for being disruptive, we know that they're really just stuck in an imaginary box and are doing anything they can to get out of it, or they're hosting their own radio show, or something else equally imaginative and wonderful. It would be so easy for that imagination to go overlooked in a class of 24 without eyes and ears all over the room to really take in the kids' behavior. It kills me to think that just because someone doesn't force him or herself into the spotlight, their creative energy could be silenced, rather than saved for a more appropriate time, in the interest of productivity and a teacher's sanity. Between us three interns and the two teaching artists, we have a really incredible student to teacher ratio, but it's so easy to see what the room could turn into without that.

Speaking of creative energy, one of our boys made an awesome drawing of the three Junie B. interns yesterday. It's always really fun to think about how the kids see us, and I thought I'd share. I'm the one  in the middle who vaguely resembles Justin Bieber.

slightly less education and a lot more food

Blogging this week has been hard, since the teaching artist for this camp is far less collaborative than my teaching artist last week, so I find myself doing significantly less in the room with the kids and significantly more intern-y things, like sharpening pencils and making copies. He has a very specific vision that has created a very intense room, but the camp is audition based, so I think (well, I hope) that it's what the kids wanted. They are all doing a fantastic job, despite their often unfocused energy and some casting-related disappointments, but as far as I'm concerned, all that is to be expected with pre-teens in a relatively competitive, intense environment. Our bullying problem seems to have stopped, though, or at least calmed down to the point where no one has run out of the room crying since our last incident. 

I explored Dinkytown (take a second to laugh at that name before continuing) on Friday after CTC and it turns out it fits the description of the classic college town to a tee: tons of fast food restaurants, sandwich shops, and bars crammed into a four block radius. There was only one coffee shop that I found, where I sat for a couple hours to finish The Dud Avocado (read it if you have a chance - it really doesn't disappoint). I then moved on to the Book House, a stunning, independently owned, two-story used bookstore with floor to ceiling shelves of thousands of really quality used books. As far as I'm concerned, it was hands down the best thing Dinkytown had to offer. I bought another book to keep myself occupied, and headed back over the bridge to Seward just as the sun was setting. 

The view from the bridge at sunset Friday night

This weekend has been a great food weekend for me, hence the title of this post. Saturday started out with another trip to the charmingly grungy, collectively owned Seward Cafe for coffee and some delicious blackberry buckwheat pancakes. I then made my way over to the Mill City Farmers Market and bought myself some really beautiful, fresh produce. I found some incredible organic arugula, my favorite summertime green, and a huge bunch of organic kale. I also picked up some snow peas, strawberries, and blue cheese (made from sheep!). I biked home and immediately made myself this summery salad, which was exactly what I needed after those heavy pancakes.

Arugula, strawberries, almonds, and blue (sheep) cheese

I then biked the thirty minutes to Uptown, an area of Minneapolis that everyone I meet seems to love (though I have to say I don't really get it). This is the second time I've made my way over there, and the biggest draw for me is still Tao Natural Foods (I obviously stopped to get some juice - this time it was a Lean Mean Green Machine: cucumber, kale, celery, and parsley). The rest of Uptown is very shopping heavy, but is mostly stores like Urban Outfitters or American Apparel, which, though I love both dearly, are nothing all that exciting, and certainly not worth the thirty minute bike ride. It was still nice to get out of the apartment, and I'm glad I gave Uptown another chance, even though it once again failed to live up to the hype. 

I came home for an adventure with kale chips which proved to be incredibly successful. I mostly followed this simple recipe, but added a little lemon garlic powder. I've been munching on them all day today, and they make a fantastic, flaky, guilt-free snack. 

I started my morning out today with a yoga class. I intended on going to one of the advanced classes, but accidentally set my mat down in the beginner class' studio, and didn't realize until it was too late to switch. Though it certainly wasn't as demanding as an advanced class, the gentler flow was a really nice way to start out my day. I'm still having a lot of trouble with my balance, which I'm attributing to my sore thighs from all this biking. The balances will come, though, and I'm working on not getting as frustrated when they don't. 

I came home and tried out Happy Herbivore's quick black bean burger recipe, which was indeed quick and easy, and really pretty good. And yes, Mom, you should give this one a try - as long as you're careful when flipping them over, they won't fall apart. I topped mine with some of my farmers market arugula and some ketchup and it made a lovely lunch. 

It's back to the Junie B. Jones grind tomorrow. I'll try to be better about blogging this week. 

a little bullying and a whole lot of wisdom

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. The past couple of days have been packed (which is partly why I needed a day off from reflection) and I'm quickly learning that skipping a day of blogging results in obscenely long posts.

Because it makes sense chronologically, I'll start with The Amen Corner. I have recently discovered that when a piece of theatre really affects me, I feel no emotions whatsoever during the piece, and then they all come out during curtain call, when I become an uncontrollable, blubbering mess. That's what this show did to me. The show featured an entirely black cast (with the exception of one white extra with no lines) but managed to not be a play about race. That in itself would be enough to make the play groundbreaking, but grace with which it handled the complex issues of gender, religion, and their roles in society was jaw-dropping. I wish I could wrap my head around this play more than I've been able to; I want to borrow the script from the library and really dig into it to help me process. Honestly, I was too distracted by the acting (the best I've seen in a really long time) to really figure out what this play was saying to me. 

And now onto Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business. The past two days of this camp have been a total roller coaster. Although everyone in the camp auditioned to be there, Monday was mostly focused on learning materials so they could audition for specific parts. Needless to say, the tension between the pre-teen girls (and a few of the boys, though they were much more relaxed about it) auditioning for three lead parts was palpable all day. We cast at least three people in each part, so as to avoid any bad feelings, but still, the characteristic pre-teen nasal singing and jazz hands were out in full, cutthroat force yesterday. I don't mean to imply that these kids are nasty at heart - they're actually a really fantastic group of people - but the circumstances on Monday were definitely tense enough to induce some tears.

As our teaching artist, Ed, wisely pointed out, once one kid opens the "crying door" and establishes that ethos in the room, emotions continue to run high, even later in the week. We saw that today, when not one but two boys ran out of the room crying while we staged one of the dance numbers. It turns out our rehearsal room has a bit of a bullying problem, which absolutely breaks my heart. Days like today make me worry that I'm a little too sensitive to teach kids, or at least ones this young. Ed insists on not calling attention to the bullied kids by babying them, which makes a lot of sense, but goes against all of my sympathetic instincts to stop everything and have a long talk about feelings. It's hard to play down a sobbing child, but doing so kept the group on task and allowed us to finish everything we wanted to accomplish today. We had a great talk with the group at the end of the day that will hopefully end our bullying woes, but I guess we'll see.

I'm fascinated by this group of kids, whose energy is endless but never really focused in the direction we'd like it to be. One boy in particular decided that he was trapped in a cardboard box halfway through our music rehearsal, and developed a really brilliant pantomime act of dragging himself and the box around the room and attempting to break out with a laser, a box cutter, and even at one point a grenade (nothing worked - this was one strong cardboard box). I didn't want to discourage him, since it was truly one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time, and I admired his creativity, so I tried to keep him on task by asking him if there was hole in the box so we could still hear him sing during our music rehearsal. There was. I'm so impressed by his and the rest of the group's creativity in and out of rehearsal, and am surprised to find how much I like working with this age group, despite the seemingly endless difficulties that they present.

After camp today we had an "artist hour" with CTC's education director. I have never been more excited about the field of arts education than I was today, listening to Debra talk. She told us a little about her background and how she turned CTC's programming around three years ago when she started here. We then bombarded her with questions, and a few of the pearls of wisdom she gave us are paraphrased below:

• If you're going to be an administrator in an education department without also being an educator, you will mess it up. You can't handle problems based on policy alone; you have to be with the person who's presenting you with the problem and work with them to solve it. It's important to imagine yourself as the teaching artist in the room and solve problems as you'd want them solved in that setting.
• Learning about theatre is learning about theatre. You don't need to tie your education programming to the mainstage season; in fact, it's really not necessary. The decision a family makes to go see a show is a very different decision from the one to send their child to a workshop or a camp - sending your kid to a workshop is often much more based on word of mouth from trusted sources, because it's a far greater monetary and time commitment than seeing a show is. An education department's primary goal can't be to get audiences for the mainstage season.
• As a director in an educational setting, your resume can't depend on the show's success. It's not your show, it's a collaborative effort. On some level, process and product are not separate entities, and they should inform one another.
• The benefit of theatre training doesn't come from training kids to be actors, it comes from training kids to think like actors. Whether they choose theatre as a career or not, teaching people to think like actors teaches them to think creatively and consider many points of view.
• If you're interested in education, your training matters far less than your experience. You can know as much as possible about teaching techniques, but if you've never stepped into a classroom before, you'll freeze up the second things stop going as planned. (This reminded me of a piece of advice Betsy Quinn gave me this spring: "teach the kids, not the lesson plan.")

The hour was so packed with information that I'm positive I've missed a number of things Debra shared with us, and if I remember them, I'll make sure to share. Her talk was the perfect way to end a pretty stressful day, and got me excited to go back and tackle this bullying issue.

another busy weekend

Despite my exhaustion post-sharing on Friday, I resolved not to let this weekend be a lazy one. I started Saturday off with a trip to Mapps Coffee & Tea, a favorite of the few U of M students I've met since coming here. I have to say, I wasn't all that impressed. The coffee was definitely good, but the atmosphere tried a little too hard for my taste: I mean really, the walls were covered in framed maps (get it?!). It didn't help that the place was nearly empty the entire time I was there, though it did allow for some lovely quiet time to sip my latte and read a few chapters of Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado. I've been dying to read it since a friend recommended it quite highly this spring, and so far   Sally Jay Gorce's adventures in Paris have been the perfect companion to my slightly less glamorous adventures in Minneapolis. 

Once I tired of Mapps (it didn't take too long), I made my way back to my apartment for a quick tofu scramble and then set out again for the Stone Arch Festival, a local art and music festival along the bank of the Mississippi. While I was there, I was lucky enough to catch Squares, a self-proclaimed "Minneapolis gypsy-psych-folk band." I'd say that's pretty accurate; they reminded me of the best possible mix of Beirut, Gogol Bordello, and the Decemberists. The crowd was pretty mellow, but I'm looking forward to seeing them play again on the 28th (I happened to catch the guitarist after their set and he told me about their next gig) with what I'm hoping will be a more exciting audience. The rest of the music I caught while I was still at the festival wasn't anything special, but was fun accompaniment to my wandering around various artists' tents and snacking on samples of locally made sauces and jams. 

The Stone Arch Bridge (the festival's namesake) and the Mississippi River

On my way to my yoga studio, I made a quick stop at Open Book, Minneapolis' center for "book arts." I didn't spend enough time to really figure out what the place was all about, but of course I bought a cup of coffee before yoga and walked around the display cases filled with beautifully hand-bound books and briefly browsed the poetry section. It's a place that definitely warrants more exploration, so you'll be hearing more about it soon enough.

Yoga yesterday was a challenge. All the walking around the Stone Arch Festival had me pretty exhausted, so I spent a lot of class falling out of my balances. My frustration didn't help me focus, and the hour in the studio turned into a vicious cycle of falling out of balances because I was so unfocused, and becoming more and more frustrated every time I stumbled, just adding to my lack of focus. I was glad I tried, though, and it was good to be reminded that staying centered takes effort and won't happen just because I show up to class. 

This morning a friend and I checked out what we thought would be a meditation class at the Minnesota Zen Center, near the beautiful Lake Calhoun. It turned out to be more of a religious event than either of us had planned on, but was certainly educational. This morning's "Dharma Talk" was about love, interdependence, and mutuality. Though I didn't know enough about Buddhism to understand everything in the talk, the gist was that love (not attachment) is what keeps us alive. The talk ended with a bit of guided meditation, and we scooted out pretty quickly after it was over. It wasn't a meditation class, but it was definitely an adventure, and I got to walk along Lake Calhoun for awhile, which was the perfect way to spend such a beautiful morning.

The rest of today consisted of a really great talk with one of my fellow interns at the Seward Cafe, an old hippie coffee shop not too far from my apartment. Their coffee is incredible and so is their all-vegetarian all-day breakfast menu. So far, it ranks first in my favorite places for coffee around Minneapolis. We started outside in their beautiful, funky courtyard, but moved inside when the accursed rain started up again. I hung out until the rain let up enough for me to bike home, and then comforted myself by trying Happy Herbivore's Aztec corn salad recipe: it's so easy and so delicious, and means a few days of easy lunch next week.

I'm off now to meet up with a friend at the Stone Arch Festival (I can't get enough of it!) and then student rush Amen Corner at the Guthrie. I've heard great things, so it should be a great way to end a fantastic weekend.

the end of the beginning

Sharing day. A week ago I had no idea what this day would look like, and already the first one of the summer is over. Picture endless crowds of families with cameras waiting in the not-wide-enough TAT hallway waiting to see their children perform. Keeping track of kids on bathroom breaks today was a headache, but the payoff was completely worth it. Before parents came in the afternoon, we were lucky enough to be able to share The Lottery with the middle school camp, and they shared their Steven Schwartz revue, From Working to Wicked, with us. I'm not ashamed to admit that I teared up a little watching thirty something middle schoolers step-touching while singing "Day by Day" and "Defying Gravity." And though I'm mildly concerned that The Lottery may have induced nightmares in some of our middle school audience members, most of them seemed to really like the play, and I'm all about using theatre to challenge young people. 

I was so proud of the high schoolers today - their performances, both for the middle schoolers and for their families, were so strong. Even more than that, though, I was proud of their post-show conversation with their families. It's easy to forget during a rehearsal process with thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds that there's more going on than frequently misplaced energy and a whole lot of hormones, but these kids are really smart. Their responses to questions about the dark content of the play and how they see it as a reflection on our society were on par with comments I've heard in classes at Northwestern. It's been a long week with them, but I'm going to miss this group.

I misread the yoga schedule today and showed up for an 8:00 class that didn't exist, but I let myself be satisfied that the ten miles I biked today to and from work and running errands was enough to warrant a lazy evening catching up on TV shows.

On Monday I start a two week audition-based musical theatre camp with kids grades 4-6. We'll be putting up a production of Junie B. Jones. It's a huge shift in focus, content-wise and age-wise, so it should be interesting. Hopefully after this weekend I'll be prepared to take on the next two weeks: I'm planning lots of cooking and baking after the farmer's market tomorrow to have plenty of leftovers for lunchtimes. 

a couple of rainy days

Although I managed to make it to and from CTC by bike on Tuesday, it's been rainy in Minneapolis the past couple of days, so I've been spending a lot of time on the bus. On my way back from work on Tuesday, though, I discovered the Midtown Greenway, what can only be described as a bike highway through the city. It's an old railroad corridor that was transformed into a bike and walking path entirely removed from busy roads (with the exception of an incredible bike bridge that goes over the highway) and complete with a bike center and coffee shops offering 10% off with a helmet! Since I'm still not quite used to biking in traffic, it was a welcome discovery, and I plan on riding at least one way every day on the Greenway - that is if it ever stops raining.

The Lottery is in incredible shape. We've spent the past couple of days staging it and doing lots of character work with the kids. Nancy, the teaching artist, continues to be both incredibly efficient and collaborative, and she's given me and the rest of our team - another intern and a teaching assistant - a great deal of leeway in working with the actors. Because this group is (usually) so mature and excited about being there, being in the room with them feels less like teaching and more like assistant directing for a really short rehearsal process. 

More than anything else, it's been incredible watching the way Nancy works with the kids. She has a really amazing way of reading the group's energy and countering it: if they're too hyper, she's quiet and focused, but if they need energy, she has no trouble at all modeling it for them. It's hard to put into words how it works, but seeing the room's energy level go from a ten to a four with just a couple minutes of guided imagery or a more focused warm-up is really inspiring. 

Today we had the privilege of seeing some of the younger classes' performances. Walking into the K-3 class to a bunch of children wearing colorful tissue paper hats held together with far too many staples and pieces of Scotch tape got me so excited to start working with the younger kids. Their performance of their made-up myth involved rain children descending from the sky in raindrop elevators and the "Flame Brothers" stealing the sun and breaking it up into four pieces, among other things that I may have missed between the sudden nosebleed and frantic running back and forth of one particularly confused five-year-old. The unrestrained creativity (though you might be more inclined to call it chaos) was jarring coming from a room of self-conscious teenagers, but the high schoolers appreciated it and now I'm dying to work with the little ones. 

The rain kept me from yoga tonight but I tried my best to replicate the advanced class I attended last night on my mat in our basement. Needless to say, it wasn't nearly as successful, but music and a candle made it worthwhile. I still have a lot of strength to build up in my shoulders, but  reverse warrior binds are getting easier and easier, and being able to keep up with the advanced class the other night was a great feeling. 

Here's hoping the weather clears up so I can get back to biking around. If not, I may just have to show up to work a little damp. 

day one

Today was huge. The Lottery kids are fantastic, and so smart. A full day camp with high schoolers is a lot, though, and by the end of the day I was ready to collapse. 

We read through the play, discussed it, auditioned it, and cast it all in our seven-hour day. The teaching artist, Nancy, has a really fascinating way of running a room that's entirely different from what I'm used to. She goofs around with the kids more than any other teacher I've seen, and rarely insists on focus or corrects behavior. Granted, there's not much need for that in a class full of mature high schoolers who all want to be there, but she seems to gain their respect more as a friend than as a teacher. She's very collaborative, so I had a lot of teaching experience today, from leading warm-ups (my friend Jeff Sachs - hi Jeff! - will be pleased to hear that "To Be or Not To Be" was a total success), to helping plan auditions. Much of the lesson planning was done on its feet, with only a loose structure and a set of goals to guide her through the day. 

I'm beginning to realize that I'm horrible at correcting behavior that distracts others from the drama. I always want to let the kids figure it out for themselves, but today, they rarely did, and we wasted some time before one of the other interns stepped in to ask the kids to make choices that furthered the drama and their character's development. It's certainly something to work on, and I've got ten weeks to work on it, so I'm glad I caught it now.

After a day like that, I needed some time outside and a good dinner to perk me up, so I made my first trip to the Seward Co-op. Between that and the farmer's market on Saturday (I didn't blog about it but I'll make it back this week), this vegetarian is thrilled. I'm absolutely in love with Minneapolis' food scene! I wish co-ops like this existed near Evanston, and although our farmer's market is great, this one was so beautiful it had me in tears. 

After dinner, I surprised myself by actually making it to a yoga class tonight, despite my exhaustion. This one was a more advanced class and was heated, so between that and the bike rides there and back, I'm completely wiped out. I liked today's class better than yesterday's, and I can already feel myself getting stronger (I held Crow today for almost twenty seconds!) I think, though, that I may have messed up my shoulder, so tomorrow will likely be this week's day off for recovery. 

Tomorrow's goal is to bike to CTC instead of taking the bus. I think I've figured out my way around well enough to make it, and it's not a hard route to follow. I guess we'll see if I've recovered enough from today to expend the energy tomorrow morning!

an absurdly long post on an absurdly packed weekend

In my first weekend here, I've managed to end up at Tao Natural Foods twice, and here I am again, sipping fresh juice (apple, pear, parsley, and lemon) and scarfing down the most delicious black bean burger I've ever had. The restaurant, though not all that close to my apartment, is absolutely adorable, with beautiful outdoor seating and an unbelievable vegetarian menu. Yesterday, Mama Mahoney and I tried the sweet potato burrito and the chevre quesadilla, both also top notch. The cafe stretches back into a tiny health food store, with an upstairs lined with shelf after shelf of herbs, spices, and loose leaf teas. My inner hippie is in paradise.

If this weekend is any indication of what the next ten weeks here will be like, I'm in for an incredible summer. Mama Mahoney and I managed to get tickets to one of the last performances of Pippi Longstocking at CTC. The production value, of course, was incredibly high. The set (or really, all four sets: Villa Villekula, the carnival, the school, and the boat yard) may have been one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen - I stole a photo of Villa Villekula off of CTC's Facebook page, since I would never be able to accurately describe it in words. 

The use of puppetry was also incredible, and if this and last January's production of Babe say anything at all, it's that CTC really gets physical storytelling. But I wonder how challenging Pippi was for its audiences. 

I was also incredibly impressed with the show's program. It featured two full color pages of activities for audience members (I assume they were for the first graders in the audience, but I had fun with them too). I thought for a minute that CTC had combined their program and study guide for the show, but no! There's a more in-depth study guide here available for download. This was just a fun page for kids (and me) to enjoy while sitting in the house during intermission.

After Mama Mahoney and I parted ways, I went with my two roommates to The MOVING COMPANY's production of The War Within/All's Fair. I don't claim to know how to talk about this piece - it was a devised, absurd commentary on political polarization (or at least that's what the program note told me). I do, however, know that I had an incredible ninety minutes trying to figure out what was happening on stage, between unbelievable gay sex jokes and a ten-minute long nonsensical rant atop a Genie. Between this and Pippi, I think I got a pretty good sense of what Minneapolis theatre has to offer.

The night ended with a bike ride around the city between 11 and 2am with one of my roommates and her friends. Last night was the Northern Spark festival, a nighttime art festival all over Minneapolis. Most of the art galleries and museums around town stayed open until 6am, but we stayed outside, where there were hundreds of installation art and performance art projects. I'm not entirely sure what I saw, but there were cardboard trees, Christmas lights, shadow puppets, projections, bike-powered dance parties, and, mostly, thousands of bearded hipsters out with their bikes. 

The only proper way to decompress after a day like that was an hour-long meditation class followed by my first yoga class in two years. It was incredible to be back, and it turns out I didn't lose as much as I thought I would have. I even managed to hold crow for a few seconds, which is something I've never been able to do. My body simultaneously loves and hates me after that class, but I'll be back tomorrow. The goal is at least six days a week, but this week is free, so I think I'll make it seven.

Camps start tomorrow, and a storm is raging outside (there's a hurricane watch not too far from here!). This organic iced latte will get me through planning tomorrow's lunchtime activities, and then I'll crash to hopefully be prepared for day one!

adjusting and orienting

After the seven and a half hour drive from Evanston to Minneapolis and a few days in limbo, I can finally say I'm here (with my bike!) and settled in. 

Friday, after not nearly as many hours of sleep as I'd have liked, the education interns met in the basement of CTC for a day-long orientation. I entered the building using the official summer door code, and walked down a brightly colored staircase into Theatre Arts Training (TAT). The walls in the basement hallway are lined with murals featuring quotes from past workshops - my favorite so far is "good theatre makes your brain explode!" Down the hallway is the massive dance studio where we met and spent two hours getting to know each other and playing drama games with three of this summer's teaching artists. The early childhood teaching artist explained throughout how to modify games for children at different levels of development: three year olds begin with parallel play (playing individually along side one another) and don't yet know how to play with others, so passing an impulse around a circle would be virtually impossible, but five year olds can maybe get a pulse going around in one direction. We then floated around the room as balloons and eventually popped; we were strangers on park benches; we swam through Jell-O and thick, gooey mud; and we sang some songs. 

The rest of the day - talking about logistics and getting the space ready for camps on Monday - doesn't  really warrant any more detail.

I will begin my time as a TAT intern on Monday working with high schoolers in a week-long camp based on the (very dark) one-act The Lottery. I have no idea what to expect. During orientation, we spent a lot of time talking about "sharing days," which occur on the last day of each camp, when parents are invited to see a final performance. I'm beginning to realize that these camps are less about creative drama (which is defined as "an improvisational, non-exhibitional, process-centered form of drama...") and more about theatre training for young people. Although theatre training is less exciting to me than creative drama, I'm excited to see how the two can come together to create a final product that I'm sure will be incredible.