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TICklers Today's Tickler... Class! Class! Shut up! Perhaps the fictitious Sister Mary Elephant (Cheech and Chong) had more energy from her students than she could control. However, a lot of times it is hard to get a discussion going. In this tickler section we will share a practical process that has worked for others. If you have a favorite technique, please visit our "Contact Us" page, and email your tickler, with your name and locale, and we will share it here. Tickler #7 May 8, 2000 "I had to tell you. I took one of the ideas from your website. However, I changed it." Of course you did! Every creative teacher draws upon many sources of stimulation. However, the real magic of the learning process is that you as the teacher has his/her finger on the pulse of the students, the social environment, and the emerging moment of possibility. We encourage you to massage the resources we create to fit into your context. There are no new ideas. The process of creativity is that of transforming diverse fragments of inspiration into new meaningful and authentic totalities. We see the schools testing the prototype small group curriculum (TIC) discovering wonderful new possibilities that are created by the groups themselves. Our team sees itself as backup for you teachers who are the real heroes (and heroines) of education. As we move into the next phase of materials, we look forward to a partnership. Feel free to connect with us. We are serious about this quest to empower young people to make healthy decisions. Together we have a chance to make a difference. Tickler #6 April 7, 2000 "Woad - A workshop on radio as storytelling..." The organizers of a national communications conference were clear. They wanted a workshop on Radio. The theme was storytelling. It seemed to me that storytelling is the center point of human history. It all goes back to the cave. My ancestral cave goes back to those Celts who roamed England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.
The opening for the workshop had to help the participants feel the roots of our stories. I created a dance in three movements that would draw upon my Celtic roots. I recorded a narration over three pieces of music. I was able to find a primitive wig, a plastic human skull, and some burlap. I decided to demonstrate that interviewing, gathering our people's stories, was based on being fully before another person.
I fashioned a primitive Celtic costume from burlap by creating a skirt. I left my body from waist up bare. My colleagues John Silbert and Elaine Wehr painted my body and face with blue paint. This picked up on Woad, the plant from which the Celts derived the blue dye.
We created a center piece rock. We also hung blue spot lights. The dance unfolded in three movements - grief, revenge/war, and search for meaning. I offered three loud sounds to accompany the movements with the skull (grief), huge club (war), and sticks (spiritual searching).
We next moved into the history of storytelling and the role of modern media in communicating stories. Having interviewed over 40,000 people for radio and television, I wanted them to experience the act of capturing another person's story. Recording stories means the interviewer has to become comfortable using a microphone.
I decided to make dummy mikes out of driftwood. I lightly sanded the pieces of wood, inserted a wire in one end, and engraved them. The participants formed dyads and took turns interviewing each other. The room filled with moving stories. I gave them a chance to move through different levels of interviewing, and then everyone shared their feelings on the process.
They then heard an example of an interview piece unedited, then edited, then mixed as a final show on the syndicated network. We closed as a circle. I went to each person and placed in his or her hand a small piece of blue glass. This was a reminder of the ancient campfire that still blazes as we live the history of today.
The experience of this workshop reaffirmed for me the importance of risking in teaching and also the necessity of having a team support you. We owe our students the best, the most creative, the most risky in our teaching approaches.
Tickler #5 January 19, 2000 "Marilyn Manson" Edith wanted to permit her social studies class to deal with the violence in schools. One student, who was an alternative music fan, brought a copy of Rolling Stone Magazine. It featured a reply by rock star, Marilyn Manson, to the wide spread criticism to the role of music in creating violence.
She recognized immediately that the piece was a serious response to popular criticism. She read the piece to the class. Then she asked the students to write a few thoughts on how a critical adult might react to the star's professed conviction that violence actually stems from adult culture and religion.
She read the piece again. The students then shared their thoughts about the article. They were able to explore all sides of pop culture's role in values because they had looked at the issue through the eyes of critics. The interesting thing she discovered was that the students were quite even-handed and easily conceded the bad influences and the good influences.
Tickler #4 December 29, 1999 "Shape of Things To Come" Mary had the "detention patrol" for the week. What a bummer. The kids in the study hall were there because they didn't want to be in school. There were only four of them. It looked like a scene out of the film, "The Breakfast Club."
They just sat there. They weren't going to do homework. She opened her purse and noticed a small container of modeling clay from her daughter's toys. She always carried something that her daughter could use as entertainment for when they were out at restaurants.
She wondered if these tough teens could reach back into their childhood. She gathered them around a table. She opened the small can and broke off a piece of clay for each of them. She asked them to close their eyes and feel the clay in their hands. Then she asked them to smell it. A couple teens laughed.
Mary asked them to make a shape - mold it to symbolize how they feel about the reason they are in detention. They looked at each other. There was a minute of utter silence. Mary seriously started to shape her own piece.
One after another they started working their pieces of clay. Finally Mary turned to the student next to her and asked him to show his work and tell them what it suggested. He identified it. "It's a circle with an empty middle."
Each student shared his/her work. The third student said more about how her clay figure reflected her feelings. "It's a flower. Several petals are missing. That's the way I feel about my life. My parents just got divorced. The petals are the kids."
The whole climate of that detention session changed. In fact, Mary was delighted that they stayed for another 30 minutes after the dismissal time.
Tickler #3 December 13, 1999 "And In The End..." It sometimes becomes frustrating to teach in the ever presence of the media environment. The very cultural air that we breath fills the minds of our students and ourselves. It is easy to dismiss or criticize the buzz of CD's, video games, television shows, the web, etc. However, it is more helpful to transform these digital companions into learning moments.
Bill was teaching a social studies unit that touched on violence. He realized that his students were excited about a film out that featured a small teen who was bullied by another more muscular classmate. After being pushed around and humiliated throughout the movie, the smaller kid finally fought back and beat up the bigger boy.
Bill told the class that they had just become the writing team for a major film. He showed a clip (televised movie trailer) from the film. Everyone in the class knew the film. They had cheered when the little kid physically gave back what he had received.
"You are going to work in screen writing teams. I want you to create a different ending for the film. How could it have ended differently?"
After fifteen minutes, the teams reported back - each with completely different ways of resolving the onscreen conflict! These options were just as entertaining, but they offered another way to end bullying...and some tremendous discussion.
Tickler #2 November 25, 1999 "Toons" Harold collects cartoons from magazines and newspapers. He has found that students can creatively relate to these line drawings with conversation balloons or fun cut lines. He cuts out the original comedy dialogue or comment and has the students write their own in response to something that is happening at the school or in the community.
For instance, one day there had been a violent disturbance at a football game. No knives or guns, but fist fights.
He passed out different cartoons to each student and asked them to write a comment stimulated by the recent disturbance and the picture in front of them. There was an uneasy silence for a minute or two. Then the pencils and pens were flying!
He had also transferred the cartoons onto overhead transparencies. He collected them and then projected the cartoons one after another and read the responses the students had created.
Harold was delighted that the student responses were both funny and profound. The students laughed at many of the comments. However, a couple of them nailed the very causes of violence. A lively discussion followed. Tickler #1, November 18, 1999 We had just viewed a recent film about the Holocaust. The high school students were stunned. There was total silence. I had noticed that there were flashes of color in the black and white film. I had selected a red flower before the session. I passed the flower around the circle of students and asked each person to spend a few seconds with it and look at it closely. I passed it around again and asked each person to share what this flower symbolized about what they had just experienced in the film. Of course, it didn't symbolize anything in itself. The fragrance, the color of the pedals, and the thorns permitted them to channel insights. However, each person shared amazing things. The flower enabled them to find a passage for expressing very deep feelings. We stirred or "tickled" their insights. |
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COPYRIGHT © 1999 BY BBC COMMUNICATIONS INC
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