Artists and Teachers at the Long Island CCC.
The wonderful irony of working “locally” as a national organization is that we often travel to collaborate with organizations far from our familiar and local contexts. This summer, we had the pleasure of working with outstanding artists and cultural workers during our Culture, Community, and the Classroom workshops in Madison, WI (August 11-12) and Westbury, NY (August 18-19). It was my first time in either location, and Lisa’s first time on (not “in,” we learned) Long Island, where folks stand “on line,” rather than “in line.” Traveling with the fresh eyes of a visitor helps to make the “invisible visible,” as Lisa Rathje, Local Learning’s ED likes to say. I noted the prevalence of birch trees and roadside oases in Wisconsin while Lisa noted the distinctive garden aesthetics of Long Island neighborhoods. These simple observations proved to be springboards into deeper cultural inquiry about the places we were visiting, and the places and cultures from which we had come. Practicing the critical thinking technique “See, Think, Wonder,” that we share with educators and artists, we observed, inventoried our knowledge and assumptions, and developed some questions that we could then explore further with the community members we worked with over the course of our visit. It would take many more visits to Long Island and Madison to know them half as well as any local, but I know we have many more thoughtful questions about these places than we did when we first arrived!
Asking the right questions was a theme of our Long Island workshop, where we worked with Los Herederos, a Queens-based media arts non-profit organization dedicated to inheriting culture in the digital age, to think about ways teachers and teaching artists can use interviewing to inspire students to deeper questioning around culture and cultural traditions. Through a masterful teaching demonstration and collaborative interview session with Colombian traditional musician Martin Vejarano, workshop participants considered how to use an individual’s “personal archive” of stories and material culture to fuel an engaging and enlightening interview.
Yet, even when you have the right questions it’s important to know who to ask and who listen to. Our time with artist facilitator Karen Ann Hoffman, renowned Haudenosaunee Raised Beadwork artist of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, encouraged us to think of artwork not as material culture, but as cultural ambassadors with voices of their own. What does handmade artwork have to tell us? What happens when we pose questions to, and then listen to the response from “material culture”?
As we head into a new school year, I’m carrying these lessons with me and offer them here as inspiration. What are the ways you are inviting questioning, dialogue, and cultural inquiry into your classrooms? We’d love to hear from you and continue learning!
Onward,
Mira Johnson
Director of Learning Networks and Training
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