How We Created A Performance Ensemble at Telpo: Student Directed Mini Lessons
I would like to bring forward what guided our instruction this summer for our extension of STORIED-an exploration in writing and performing self and others. Our primary focus was centered around this following question:
How can we give students agency/ authority over their own artistic practices and leaning and how does that develop a unique student voice?
We settled on mini-lesson structures that acted more like sprints than marathons.
It is important to know that we were able to leverage our student’s sense of community and their development as an ensemble from the Fall/ Spring to create a space where our program was partially student-driven. To this end, students were surveyed at the beginning of the class, as to what areas of interest they found most exciting from the in-person classes. For instance, a HOW TO video exercise, was the result of a student doing things on camera during class time and other students questioning as to what she was doing, which resulted in a ‘Tell/show someone how to do something you know how to do.’ Each of these mini-lessons was planned out then, by Dana (teacher), Lucas (ACRE artist) and I (teaching artist).
Of course, not all exercises followed this example, but our goal was to have students engage in the delight of making the arts with some grappling or productive struggle in the creation process and ultimate satisfaction in the end at…a job well done!