Why Glee Should Make You Rethink Arts Ed

Unless you’ve been living under a sad, music-less rock, chances are excellent that you’ve heard of Fox’s sitcom Glee, a modern-day musical featuring the (lovable) nerds in a glee club. The show is an escapist’s dream that interrupts the endless buffet of violent mob/gang/police shows, sob dramas, stale comedies and other bleak programming from which viewers must choose. Aside from its departure from the status quo, Glee is living proof that children, tweens, adults and everyone in between are desperate for creativity and joy in their lives. Here are a few lessons that art educators can take from this mega-hit.

Glee shows that the arts are relevant:
For those unfamiliar with the show, each episode features Glee covers of popular show tunes or modern pop hits from artists like Jay-Z, Madonna or Britney Spears. These remakes are imaginative and over the top, and the grouchiest grump can’t help but give in to the optimistic and poppy crooning of the teens. By opening up music, theater, dance and performance, Glee takes a niche activity like glee club and makes it applicable and relevant to a mainstream audience.

Tearing down barriers is critical in developing young minds by finding something which resonates with them. For instance, a New York Times article on the importance of literacy noted that in order for children to improve their reading skills over the summer, any book – including the Hannah Montana books – would work. Glee might be considered the Hannah Montana of the art world, but it accomplishes what many arts educators seek to do: spark an interest in creation and demonstrates how art belongs to us all.

Glee shows that the arts mean more:
Taking part in any creativity doesn’t only open up the creator’s mind, it opens up the creator’s heart. Researcher James Catterall has chronicled how theater, in particular, teaches the art of empathy, of literally taking on another’s identity and struggles, resulting in changed paradigms and perceptions. Glee is a nerd’s show (its followers are aptly named Gleeks) where outsiders are taught strength, insiders are taught compassion and everyone learns what it means to be a better person.

Creating art has never been merely an output of work, but an exchange of dialogue. This is especially important for the dynamic demographics of today’s youth. Our students live in a world that is fraught with fights, war, differing ideologies, cultures, languages and ideas. The arts, all forms of it, neutralize the fear associated with “the other” and turn it into a beautiful exploration. Without creation in our lives, we’re stuck with the same ol’ stereotypes and associations which place young learners in silos.

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Despite the fact that television has begun to rely on gimmicks, sensationalism and semi-voyeuristic trash to lure viewers in, Glee opened the fall season with the strongest showing of viewers on any network. Let’s not forget that above all, creativity drives us in our professional and personal lives and people are hungry for something that connects them to that power. Oh, and it’s super fun, to boot! See below if you want proof. :)

The Power of Reflection

Guest blogger and SLANT 45 Community Heroes Art Exhibition Committee Chair Lisa Glasgow shares her thoughts on the importance of creative reflection.

Reflection is essential to learning. Teachers have understood this for hundreds of years. Parents know this intuitively. Given time and instruction on how to reflect, children are better able to make meaning of their experiences and integrate them into their values in meaningful ways. Yet in the pressed-for-time, test-based world our children are being raised in, too often time for reflection is the very thing missing from their lives.

Recognizing this powerful opportunity, the designers of SLANT 45 built a reflective component into their service learning program, which asks participants to consider the service they have performed – what that work has meant to their community as well as what it has meant them – in a piece of art. In this way we increase the likelihood that the lessons of service will be lifelong. And that is the goal after all: giving children a chance to understand that they can affect the world around them for good.

Now through October 31, 2010, the SLANT 45 team is gathering the reflective art of North Texas children and from it will create three art exhibitions – one at NorthPark Center, DFW International Airport and at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. Each will tell individual stories of children who, through service to their communities, discovered their own capacity for problem solving, giving and grace. Each will be a celebration of the power we all have to make a difference in the world around us.

For more information about how you can participate in the Reflective Art component of SLANT 45, click here.

Film Friday!

Watch this video to see what we did in collaboration with our many partners this summer...

The Culture of Poverty and Imagined Constraints

Guy Deutscher studies how language shapes our worldview. Unfortunately for him, he’s working against generations of pseudo-science that sometimes made past linguists sound more like tonic-selling charlatans than experts. For instance, In the 1940s Daniel Whorf peddled the idea that our mother language functions like a prison. The anthropologist hypothesized that without words to describe concepts, such as “love” or “future”, speakers were unable to understand the concept.

Years later, scientists like Deutscher have rebutted that idea. He explains, “Do English speakers who have never heard the German word Schadenfreude find it difficult to understand the concept of relishing someone else’s misfortune?” It seems obvious now that language doesn’t prohibit our understanding of phenomena, but that doesn’t mean how we speak is void of influence. Deutscher explains that language helps define understanding of colors, special reasoning and even masculinity versus femininity. In other words, language affects us all but doesn’t indefinitely bind us to one way of thinking.

This critical distinction between something that influences us and something that becomes us is often a missing piece in the ongoing war around “the culture of poverty.” Advocates of this argument have, like Daniel Whorf, led us to believe that those from low-income areas experience a prison built of weak familial ties, geography and a grim outlook on life which disallow them from ever breaking free. The culture of poverty debate centers around the notion that the human brain is immutably fixed in its ideas, in its language, in its ecology, in its poverty.

But common sense steps in and suggests that while our brain can be influenced, it’s anything but an organ that resists change. We are constantly searching for ways to break free of ties that bind. Most of us can attest to the fact that we actively work to overcome ways of thinking, bad habits and other modes of thinking that prohibit success both now and in the future. It’s human nature to be influenced by the bad but hopeful and amenable to the good.

In fact, in a recent study conducted by Gallop which measures students’ overall wellbeing, 53% of students age 10-18 say that they are hopeful for the future, 73% describe themselves as “thriving” and an overwhelming 92% strongly agree that they will graduate from high school. Since we know that roughly 1 in 3 students drop out of school before earning their high school diploma, there is a decided break in what students think and feel and what they are accomplishing. This evidence suggests that the majority of students, socioeconomic factors aside, aren’t trapped in a prison of their circumstances.

Students who grow up in our poorest areas are inevitably influenced by their surroundings, but not defined by them. What characterizes them is their ability to grow, mature, change and pursue those behaviors and activities that will lead to a successful adult life. It may just be possible that all we need to overcome the culture of poverty is to believe that students have the hope, tenacity and potential to be successful and we just need to help nurture them. If we provide them opportunities to exercise their minds and follow through on their hopes and dreams, we can help undo the damage done by our own imagined constraints.

Service-learning in action

Right now, there are hundreds of SLANT 45 projects going on all across North Texas, from Weatherford to Terrell to Sherman to Midlothian, from big cities to small towns and everywhere in between. 

Take a look at how a few of our SLANT 45 teams are transforming their communities:

The Green Team picked up trash around Lake Grapevine to make the area cleaner and safer for their community.

Girl Scout Troop 2692 from Dallas set up a lemonade stand to raise money for The Family Place shelter.

Mrs. Lilly's 5th grade class in Lewisville created and presented lessons to help teachers at their school utilize the "Smartboards" in their classrooms.

First and second grade students from Sherman ISD wrote letters to and made suncatchers for children at Scottish Rite Hospital.

Feeling inspired?  You, too can do something positive for your community.  Start by registering at slant45.org/register today!

Photo Friday - Unity in the Community

"Unity in the Community" was a mural collaboration during July 2010 with Trinity River Mission and West Dallas Community Center in partnership with Thriving Minds Out of School Time programs.

Eight teens worked together to make a positive impact in their neighborhood. They worked alongside local artist, Sal Barron, and came up with a design that reflected their West Dallas community and the vibrant, colorful people that live in it. Special thanks to teen artists who brought this project to life: Damian Lopez, Samuel Lopez, Samuel Manzay, Carina Torres, Brenda Sanchez, Jeterrius Wilson, Sha’Doniva Hardmon and Andrea Hernadez!

SLANT 45 team encourages their community to get up and get moving

A team of fifth grade students from Hill Elementary in Arlington created this workout video, Get Fit with 5th, to promote physical fitness in their school and their community.

“We feel like we provided our community with a fun way to exercise. Our 5th grade friends at school love going through our workout. It is a great feeling knowing we helped our community,” said team coach Katie Newman.

What’s your SLANT 45? Register now at slant45.org!