Colorado Arts Education Association Presentation

Here is some photo documentation of a piece I performed for the Advocacy luncheon at the Colorado Arts Education Association two weeks ago. The conversation at the luncheon involved a presentation of the new Colorado State Standards for art by the creators of the standards. Interestingly enough, the authors of the new standards contacted Lois and asked if they could write Studio Thinking into their standards and, of course, Lois said yes. We'll see how ST will be used across the state in the next few years.

Art teachers seemed to feel disheartened by some of the new teacher assessment protocols being rolled out across the state. Our audience embraced our cantastoria (story song recitation) performance which questions the nature of teacher performance based assessments. For this performance we created 7 hand-stenciled panels and attached them to wooden poles. We sing the panels, telling the story of teachers, principals, students, parents and the Obama administration's response to the "Race to the Top" competition.

At the conference, Olivia Gude came up with a new phrase for reflection: "attentive reflectiveness." We really like that description for the process of looking at our students' work and our own teaching practice.

Kate